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Jul 23, 2021, 10 tweets

Parents at ritzy summer camps like Tyler Hill and Camp Modin have been driving staff crazy over camp photos. 📸

Camp directors have responded with stern letters asking parents to chill out. 👇

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Andrew Itkoff spent 30 years as a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist.

But navigating the demands of high-maintenance summer-camp parents, he said, "is the hardest work I have ever done."

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Through the summer, Itkoff works from the crack of dawn till late in the evening, uploading hundreds of photos of campers daily.

Should he miss a kid, he knows it won't be long before parents start calling.

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Camp directors say that parents have been inundating staffers with an array of increasingly inane and hyperspecific demands every time a new batch of photos goes out.

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An email from Wendy Siegel, a director at the chichi Tyler Hill, was passed feverishly through the camp's parent community.

She gently chastised parents for "continuing to parent your children as if they were living in your house all summer — not ours."

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Heidi Green is a photographer whose kid attends Timber Lake camp, Tyler Hill's sister camp.

Even spotting her son's shin guard at a soccer game makes her feel comforted. "If you see nothing, it's this very strange, distant, anxious feeling," she said.

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Timber Lake mom Sandy Burko told @thisisinsider that after eight years as a camp parent, she finds herself playing the role of therapist to hysterical newbies.

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Parental concerns about the camp experience are not wholly unfounded, especially this year.

Along with the increase in homesickness and nervousness for both parents and kids, there have also been issues with food-supply chains.

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For now, camp directors like Salzberg just want parents to enjoy their summers while they can, and let their kids, and his staff, do the same, at least while everything is still relatively normal. They might not stay that way for long.

businessinsider.com/sleepaway-camp…

Subscribe to Insider to read the full story about stressed-out parents who are driving summer camp staff nuts over their kids' photos. ⬇️

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