July 28th- August 8th

July 28th- August 1st

All summer there has a been a young boy in camp whose grandmother works at Smuggs. Last year we had a lot of trouble trying to get him to listen, and he has had a lot of behavioral difficulties. This year started off really well in terms of his behavior and listening, but things have slowly started to get worse for him. I was told it was because they switched his medication and dosage. He went from having a "breakdown" every couple of weeks to at least once a day. When I say breakdown I mean he would refuse to talk to anyone and he would not listen to anyone- he wanted to do what he wanted and there were very few things we could do or say to keep him from doing it. Fortunately these breakdowns only lasted 5-10 minutes, but when they did happen it would be very difficult for his counselors to take care of him and the rest of the kids in their group. This is when Jess would have to step in and take him away from the group for a few minutes until he was able to regain his composure. We started doing a reward system with him. If he behaved then he would get a ticket, and once he got six tickets he would be able to go on a golf cart ride with Jess. This could have been really successful except for the fact that he was being given 5-6 tickets a day. He would be given a ticket as soon as he started listening to the counselor after a breakdown. To me it looked like he was being given a ticket stopping his bad behavior, so I noticed that he would have more and more tantrums and he would be given more tickets for having them. I talked to Jess about this and told her that it was not helpful. I suggested giving him 2 tickets a day, one for the morning and one for the afternoon, and if he had at least 7 (out of 10) by the end of the week he could go on a golf cart ride. We did this for a little while, and it worked, then after a few weeks his medications were all figured out and we went back to giving him the same treatment as the rest of the kids, which has been working great.

August 4th- August 8th

There is a huge problem at camp this week! 3 employee kids in camp have lice. They were all sisters, but now we are checking all of the employee kids' heads for lice. We ended up having to send more kids home with lice. The camp director told all supervisors and staff to only tell guest kids about it if they have had an employee kid with lice in their group. At that point only a few more kids had been found with lice and we were doing everything we could to keep it from spreading. The camp director went to the drug store and bought out all of the tea tree oil and lice repellent shampoo and spray. She had the floors shampooed, the chairs all sprayed, and all of the furniture wiped down. She also told all of the staff to get check, and everyone with long hair to wear their hair up. I believe that she did a really good job keeping her head straight in a very stressful situation, and I commend the way that she handled the situation.