Community Corner

Camp Iris Way Deals Blow to Paranoid Parenting [Part Two of Two]

Part Two in a series about Camp Iris Way in the Duveneck neighborhood of Palo Alto.

It all began on Halloween. A single piece of poisoned candy. A dead child. You know the story. And as history would reveal: a total hoax proceeded by decades of paranoia and overprotection.

News outlets and hyper-caffeinated parents everywhere have been slow to return, however, to the pre-hysterical parenting era defined by free play and, yes, fun with strangers. It was this misbegotten trend that prompted Jennifer Antonow and Diana Nemet to create Camp Iris Way.

Antonow traces the origin of modern-day parental worrying to that oft-repeated Halloween hoax.

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“It taught a whole generation of parents to be really paranoid about sending your kids to the neighbors, and it wasn’t true to begin with,” she said. “I think as a result we’ve as parents become pretty anxious about our kids’ safety to the point where kids aren’t playing outside in front of their own houses anymore.”

Mike Lanza, founder of Playborhood and a soon-to-be author on parenting free-range kids, says the paradigm shift is already under way, and Camp Iris Way is helping lead the charge.

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“I'm totally, totally thrilled,” he said. “Diana and Jennifer contacted me for advice when they were planning the first Camp Iris Way in early 2010 because they had read an article I wrote on Playborhood.com about my own neighborhood summer camp, Camp Yale.  They really outdid me!"

[SEE PHOTOS OF CAMP IRIS WAY]

Lanza, himself a parent of three boys, ages 2, 3 ½ and 6 ½, thinks parents would be less fearful if there were lots of other kids outside, plus a few parents.

“That wouldn't make the things they fear—cars and creepy people—totally vanish, but the danger of them would diminish a lot. After all, I don't think any working parents of Camp Iris Way participants are worried for their kids this week.”

Quite the contrary, it took the buy-in of not only every parent living on Iris and Primrose Ways to sign-off on the permits necessary for the road closures, but also every other of the 50 residents on those blocks. If only one person had not consented to the road closure, the only way the camp would have gone is that of the dodo.

The camp’s financial structure is transparent and is managed by a volunteer parent “camp banker” who opened a special bank account for the camp, according to Nemet. The banker issues reimbursements and paychecks and collects the camper fee. The fee in turn covers the wages for each of the counselors, snacks, t-shirts and basic supplies for the camp.

Both Antonow and Nemet pay the set rate for their own children to attend.

Bob Semple, a neighbor (without kids in the camp) who has lived here for 30 years, especially appreciates the diversity of the camp’s participants, which he says stems from the many new, young families that bought homes here in part to get their kids into Duveneck Elementary School.

“The whole demographics have turned upside down,” he said. “When I first moved here I was one of the youngest people on the street, and now I’m one of the oldest people on the street.”

Semple also appreciates the value of kids of different ages playing with each other.

“Camp Iris Way gets kids out of the house. It gets them to interact with each other not only at the same age level but also ages older and younger than they are.  This program of teaching teenagers to become counselors is a very positive experience. It gives them responsibility and broadens their interaction with their contemporaries and the kids.

From the perspective of a parent, Lanza says, this phenomenon is the antidote to couch-potato syndrome.

“The central question that I try to address at Playborhood.com is, how can we make our neighborhoods so attractive that kids will want to go outside when they have free time, rather than stay inside and sit in front of screens (TV, computers, video games),” he said.

Antonow, a frequent Playborhood reader, says one important answer to that question lies in making parents relaxed.

“Part of what we want to do is kind of get over that and get neighbors comfortable with neighbors again. We’ve got a lot of really cool freeform play going on our street right now.”

The first part of this series appeared Thursday morning.


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