The time before Roboteka is an exciting and often nervous time for both you and your child. In addition to packing camp gear and finalizing plans, we recommend talking with your child about the time away from home, the camp environment, personal expectations and goals. We find this to be an excellent way to prepare your camper and help them get the most out of the Roboteka program.
Be Excited For Your Child
For some parents, especially parents of first-time participants at Roboteka, the separation while their child is away at camp can be difficult. Sometimes the separation is harder on the parents than on the child. With this in mind, while discussing your child’s time away at camp, focus on how excited you are for your child and how much confidence you have in them is an excellent way to help your child acclimate to and become completely immersed in the camp community. Dwelling on how much you’re going to miss your child and how different everything will be without he/she around can make the separation harder on everyone and possibly even subtly convey that you don’t think your child can succeed on her/his own. Children want to know that their family supports them, is excited for them and believes in them.
Setting Goals
Open and relaxed discussions about your child’s goals for the summer are another great way to help them get the most out of the camp session. Concrete goals like learning to build a robot, make a computer game, or learn to play basketball are a great place to start, but social and growth goals like making friends, overcoming a fear, trying something new, actively participating in all activities or just getting more comfortable being independent and being away from home are equally important. Often, your child’s goals for themselves may be different than your goals for them. Camp is a place for children to gain independence and self-sufficiency and to make decisions for themselves; children are always more successful if they’ve been involved in the decision to attend camp and if they’ve set their own goals for the summer. Being supportive of your child’s goals and decisions for the summer is an important step in camp preparation.
Don't Make Deals
For some children, simply leaving home for a week may be a big challenge. It may be a little frightening, as many new experiences are. At Roboteka we anticipate that this may be the case for some campers; as such, we work hard to get all campers involved in the program and the community. Please DO NOT, under any circumstances, make a deal with your camper concerning the length of his/her stay at Roboteka. Telling your child, “If you don’t like it, you can come home,” may paralyze his/her ability to commit, engage, risk and, ultimately, to succeed.
We believe that overcoming adversity and challenges and learning the importance of a full-term commitment are important steps in a young person’s development. When children leave camp early, it is also very disruptive to the child’s group and camp as a whole. If your child is having an especially difficult time adjusting to camp life, we of course want to work with you to help them be successful. We know that you know your child best and we hope that working together we can help your child to have a great experience. If you have any concerns or want to check in on how your camper is doing, please call the Camp Assistant Directors for an update. Additionally, if camp dates conflict with another opportunity, we feel the best bet, and best way to support your child’s development, is to discuss camp and the other opportunity with your child and help he/she choose one or the other. To help you, we provide few different dates for participation.
Reviewing the Code of Conduct
At Roboteka a diverse group of participants and staff come together from all over the country and all over the world, bringing with them a wide array of cultural, religious and geographic backgrounds as well as varied life experiences. The community that is created forms the backbone of the Roboteka experience; campers and staff alike return yearly because they love being a part of the extraordinary Roboteka camp community, seeing old friends and making new friends!
In order to make camp a fun, safe, healthy and enriching experience for all participants, we have developed a Code of Conduct that campers must follow and live by while at camp. We’ve found this very successful in supporting and creating the camp community and ensuring that all participants and staff have a great experience. The Code of Conduct is included in your welcome packet or can be downloaded together with the application package on this website. Please take a moment to read over these with your child.
Contact Us
If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact the Camp Assistant Director at the business offices of ATTE - Bitola.
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Info for Parents 
