Trust Is Built Before Drop-Off: What Smart Camps Do Differently

Semana Santa is coming up, and I’m already preparing for a conversation with my gut.

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Here in Costa Rica, where my family lives most of the year, Semana Santa—translated as “Holy Week”—marks what is essentially a three-week spring break. For parents, that means schedule juggling, camp registrations, and a steady stream of internal gut checks.

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If you’re a parent, you know the feeling. No matter how much information you gather, how many reviews you read, or how many assurances you’re given, new fact patterns always emerge. Parenting presents a constant series of unpredictable scenarios that require not just logic, but intuition.

 

This year, our girls will attend camp for part of Semana Santa, and once again, I’ll have to make some decisions. Last year, I enrolled my three-year-old in a nearby camp. When I arrived on the first day, I saw a teacher sitting in the corner on her cellphone. There was an ungated, unattended pool. And, there were roughly 30 large cows roaming freely across the campus.

 

My gut didn’t whisper. It yelled, “No.” I listened. I pulled my daughter out immediately.

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Sometimes danger is obvious. Often, it isn’t.

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The harder situations are the ones that fall into the gray zone—where nothing looks overtly unsafe, but you’re still being asked to place your child in the hands of strangers. In those moments, what settles a parent’s gut isn’t marketing. It’s structure.

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Camps can meaningfully reduce parental anxiety—and actual risk—through a thoughtful combination of:

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• Thorough background checks,

• Bias-aware and safety-focused hiring practices,

• Clear policies and protocols for working with minors,

• Well-drafted agreements that define roles and expectations,

• Appropriate insurance coverage, and

• Physical safety measures (including, yes, barriers between roaming kids and roaming cows).

 

Parents will always have gut conversations. That’s part of the job. But, camps that build visible, intentional systems of safety don’t just reduce risk—they build trust. And trust is what quiets the gut.

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To learn more about how to mitigate risks involving minors, register for a webinar on the topic here.

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