Hi Laura, my question has to do with how the researchers at Stomping Ground measured empathy and perspective-taking. Were there separate scales? Did the researchers collect any qualitative data? This finding in conjunction with your description of the relationship between the two children who connected so deeply despite a language difference is fascinating. Thanks! (My university library doesn’t provide access to the journal in which the study is published.)
Such a great question. I'm not the researcher so I want to be careful not to misrepresent the methodology — but the team did spend real time on the ground at camp, so there was definitely a qualitative dimension to their work.
I can actually share the article with you directly — feel free to reach out to me at laura@campstompingground.org and I'll send it along. Happy to connect!
LOVE THIS. Thank you. Is there a list anywhere of similar-ish camps to this one? Would love to know if there's something like this nearer to me for my kids to attend.
Meagan! Where are you located! I would love to see if I know anyone in your area I can suggest! Feel free to reach out to me directly, laura@campstompnigground.org
Wrote you Laura! Thank you. This email address above might have a letter out of place, as my first email kicked back to me initially, but I changed it and it went through. If you didn't get it, let me know :)
I know the feeling of empowerment and camaraderie that ensue at these camps. Wilderness or farm-based nature camps are rich with spontaneous interactions of healthy group dynamics. And everyone, sooner or later, builds a fort.
hi... I was thinking of your statement that kids show most empathy when they have agency, and it reminded me of my son. When his father died he became what seemed to me to be a feral skate kid... it was difficult to keep up with him... after a few years of what was most certainly mixed age and gender play on the streets of Los Angles, he came back to his old school friends and was able to start passing classes again just in time to get into college. I'm.a psycho therapist and the Goddess of Client/Therapist matching has chosen to send me many clients who are about the same age as my son, and I'm often struck by how empathic, and agentic he is especially compared to kids in his cohort who've been helicopter parented throughout their lives and through the pandemic. Reading this piece made me respect his time "on the streets" in mixed age play even more and explains to me his outcome. That experience was exactly what my kid needed; it was also what I needed as a parent to get the hell out of the way.... I'm proud to say I'm going to his graduation in a couple of weeks, he is graduating from a prestigious arts program (Pratt) in Industrial Design. Thanks for this substack.
I’m curious how kids with special needs and other disabilities are included and if kids who need extra support with social interactions (autism, etc) might benefit from a program like this one. What an amazing place you’ve created.
Thank you so much for this question — and for asking it honestly, because it deserves an honest answer.
We are not always equipped. I want to say that clearly. We have a high staff-to-camper ratio and we work hard to understand each kid's needs before they arrive — but we are a summer camp, not a therapeutic program, and there are times we fall short. We've had summers where we didn't get it right for a particular kid, and that stays with me.
What I can say is that the culture at Stomping Ground tends to bring out something good in kids around difference. The free play environment, the mixed ages, the circle system — they create conditions where kids notice each other as whole people rather than sorting each other into categories. Kids are often kinder than we expect. But not always. And I'd rather be honest about that than oversell it.
One thing we've found that resonates with what you're describing — we try hard to make the hidden curriculum visible. The unspoken social rules that most kids absorb without thinking are the exact rules that can feel impossible to navigate for kids on the spectrum. Naming them, slowing them down, making them explicit — that work ultimately benefits every kid in the community, not just the ones who needed it spelled out.
What A Wonderful Read. A Camp 🏕️. For Natural Beauty. For Natural Beauty’s To Seep Through in Every Child’s Surroundings. Therefore allowing for the Natural Individuality of Each Child to Seek Out and Connect to Others. The Most Important Curriculum Missing in Education. Along with Natural Observable life in the Ecosystem. There is Schools in Europe that Actually Teach Everyone Everything in A Natural Environment outdoors especially. I’ve Forgotten Where now. But An Absolute Naturalistic Society Education. This Is Where We Build The Future. Beginning with the Children. Especially Before age 7. Because the Power’s that Be. Can’t Allow Children’s Minds to Observe/Question/Solve. Any Situation. Without Intervention Or Interference. From Teachers. Who Are Institutionalized By The Masters Ways Of Conformity. Believing It’s Normal. With Question. As I say.
A Child IS a Perfect ADULT. Till ADULTS. FUCK THEM UP. Unknowingly Sadly By The System they Were Thaught With. IS Conformity. Herd. What A Wonderful World We Would Have. If Education Was Completely Re- Structured. For Independant. Free Thinking 🤔. Outdoor activities and Learning in the Ecosystem Surrounding Us All. Without Ever Even Knowing It. Or Seeing It. Or Learning. We Are All Part of The Same Ecosystem and Planet 🌎. Adults Are Sadly Compromised In Regards to This. Are Of The Hive Mind Of Conformity. Therefore Never Changing. NOW. Break the MOULD. Those Children Can Advance In Their Lives and Outlooks. By Instilling the Principles of Natural Law in Their Sub-Conscious Minds. As Early As Possible. Before 7. Then You Will Be Fermenting The Real Teacher’s of The Future. That is The CURE. For the ROOT PROBLEM. God’s Speed. And It’s NEEDED.
Can you share more about or point me to a blog post on your site about how you do handle safety and safety concerns of parents? I run a microschool for ages 5-14, and ended up separating my 5-7 year olds to give them more supervision and social-emotional coaching, but I would like to help my parents understand that conflict resolution is a huge part of what they will learn here.
Such a great question — and honestly, we don't get it perfect. We're always learning.
What I can say is that parent onboarding is something we invest in heavily. Families know what they're signing up for before they arrive — our community agreements, our circle system, our approach to conflict — all of that gets communicated in advance through scaffolding videos and written materials. By the time a kid shows up at camp, my hope is their parents have already opted into the philosophy. That shared understanding makes a huge difference.
Safety is always the floor. Free play and child autonomy live inside a structure that adults are absolutely holding. We're just trying to be invisible about it when we can.
I don't have a blog post to point you to right now — but this is making me want to write one! In the meantime feel free to reach out at laura@campstompingground.org. I'd love to hear more about what you're building at your microschool and swap notes. The work you're describing — helping parents understand that conflict resolution is the curriculum — is so important and not easy.
Mixed-age play was probably THE highlight of our homeschooling life. Especially seeing teen boys' cultivating tenderness towards the littlest ones in any group. There's a lot less "toxic masculinity" when it's entirely normal for a 13 year old to swing a crying 4 year old up on his back to make him laugh and forget his hurts.
Reading this I had a vision in my mind of a world dotted with little community learning centers instead of schools. All ages. A range of maker spaces, music, video, tech, play, art, quiet, play etc areas. Indoors and out. Adult docent/ facilitators around. Kids moving freely and developing their own rules of governance. Peter, you've often spoke of this kind of thing in the Sudbury (sp?) school but I believe (?) this was older kids. What if it was community kids, all ages. Kept fairly small like a hunter-gatherer play group or a little bigger like a summer camp. Now, imagine everyone growing up like that.
Age 4. That's awesome. I keep thinking about two people who's work you might be very interested in. The first is Kate Raworth the author of "Donut Economics." She teaches at Oxford's Enviromental Change Institute. As I think about the issues that have led to the progressive loss of childhood and loss of respect of children as individuals, the further I drill back I can't help but get to the shift from hunter-gatherer to land owner-serf societies. Raworth is not addressing this dichotomy, but she does address other current false dichotomies and shows other ways we can structure our world. She's after sustainable and more humane ways. And I think that with in these ideas that she develops, we would also find a better more humane place for children.
The other person I recently came across in a conference for parents of teens with adhd. Now, I know you believe that adhd is mostly a condition of the environment and not the child and on this I largely (though not completely agree). This person's whole child nurturing of stregnths approach might really appeal to you. Dr. Stephen Cowan is a pediatrian who spent years in the medical model, but later rejected it for a very different way of supporting kids and families. He kind of blends western and chinese medicine ideas. His book is "fire child, water child." Watching his talk made me think of you. I'm hoping this link will work for his talk: https://community.strategicparenting.com/c/day-1-adhd-teen-brain/sections/987968/lessons/3755025
Great post Laura! In my experience, parents complain about mixed ages in playtime when something happens that challenges, usually the younger child. It requires that the group have a system for social justice repair work. Valuable learning happens when we allow life to lead and then deal with what comes up. I grew up in a family of 8, with a twenty-year range in our ages. It never occurred to me that age or conflict would divide us, but then again, my mother would have it no other way. We were together as kids and have stayed close in adulthood.
What fantastic stories Peter. It is so true that our age segregated education system is broken and we need models like this that reflect how humans lived for all but the last 12,000 years out of 2.5 million.
I love these stories, and I fervently want experiences like these to spread as much as possible. While reading, however, I couldn't help thinking about my personal experience of age-mixed groups as a child. I grew up spending my summers in a few-hundred-people village in Italy. With everyone knowing everyone else and very few cars around, we could roam the streets and the surrounding countryside freely. Kids and children were also a relatively small cohort, and mixed-age unsupervised play was the norm. It sounds idyllic, but my memories of it are often very unpleasant. I remember much hazing, bullying, a strong pressure to conform, exclusion of those who did not fit in. I felt great relief when I found a handful of other kids (who happened to be more or less my age) with whom I actually got along. This certainly confirms that, with no adult interventions, my friends and I ended up finding each other (and we are still friends to this day). However, I cannot help wondering what would have happened if they hadn't been there. That was my sister's experience: twelve years younger, same village, very similar social dynamics, but even less people around; she did not find an equally well-attuned tribe and ended up much more lonely than I was. I do not think that much more adult supervision would have made things better (it might actually have made things worse, as kids were obviously imitating the toxic social interactions they saw between adults). I wonder, however, whether in your mixed-age schools and camps you ever see unhealthy hazing dynamics emerging; if so, do you intervene? How? And in general, do you think parents can help if they notice something like this happening to their children - or should we just trust them to somehow find their own solutions? I know this is a big question about bullying in general; I ask it here because I think it can be even more challenging in mixed-age groups, as older kids who behave as bullies end up setting an unhealthy standard for the younger which is then absorbed as the norm.
Hi Laura, my question has to do with how the researchers at Stomping Ground measured empathy and perspective-taking. Were there separate scales? Did the researchers collect any qualitative data? This finding in conjunction with your description of the relationship between the two children who connected so deeply despite a language difference is fascinating. Thanks! (My university library doesn’t provide access to the journal in which the study is published.)
Library. Of course Not. It’s a Form of Natural Medicine. For the Mind + Body + Soul. Goes Against the Herd Mentality of Compliance. 🧐
Such a great question. I'm not the researcher so I want to be careful not to misrepresent the methodology — but the team did spend real time on the ground at camp, so there was definitely a qualitative dimension to their work.
I can actually share the article with you directly — feel free to reach out to me at laura@campstompingground.org and I'll send it along. Happy to connect!
LOVE THIS. Thank you. Is there a list anywhere of similar-ish camps to this one? Would love to know if there's something like this nearer to me for my kids to attend.
Meagan! Where are you located! I would love to see if I know anyone in your area I can suggest! Feel free to reach out to me directly, laura@campstompnigground.org
Wrote you Laura! Thank you. This email address above might have a letter out of place, as my first email kicked back to me initially, but I changed it and it went through. If you didn't get it, let me know :)
whoops! You are right. try Laura@campstompingground.org
Thanks, sent!
I know the feeling of empowerment and camaraderie that ensue at these camps. Wilderness or farm-based nature camps are rich with spontaneous interactions of healthy group dynamics. And everyone, sooner or later, builds a fort.
hi... I was thinking of your statement that kids show most empathy when they have agency, and it reminded me of my son. When his father died he became what seemed to me to be a feral skate kid... it was difficult to keep up with him... after a few years of what was most certainly mixed age and gender play on the streets of Los Angles, he came back to his old school friends and was able to start passing classes again just in time to get into college. I'm.a psycho therapist and the Goddess of Client/Therapist matching has chosen to send me many clients who are about the same age as my son, and I'm often struck by how empathic, and agentic he is especially compared to kids in his cohort who've been helicopter parented throughout their lives and through the pandemic. Reading this piece made me respect his time "on the streets" in mixed age play even more and explains to me his outcome. That experience was exactly what my kid needed; it was also what I needed as a parent to get the hell out of the way.... I'm proud to say I'm going to his graduation in a couple of weeks, he is graduating from a prestigious arts program (Pratt) in Industrial Design. Thanks for this substack.
I’m curious how kids with special needs and other disabilities are included and if kids who need extra support with social interactions (autism, etc) might benefit from a program like this one. What an amazing place you’ve created.
Thank you so much for this question — and for asking it honestly, because it deserves an honest answer.
We are not always equipped. I want to say that clearly. We have a high staff-to-camper ratio and we work hard to understand each kid's needs before they arrive — but we are a summer camp, not a therapeutic program, and there are times we fall short. We've had summers where we didn't get it right for a particular kid, and that stays with me.
What I can say is that the culture at Stomping Ground tends to bring out something good in kids around difference. The free play environment, the mixed ages, the circle system — they create conditions where kids notice each other as whole people rather than sorting each other into categories. Kids are often kinder than we expect. But not always. And I'd rather be honest about that than oversell it.
One thing we've found that resonates with what you're describing — we try hard to make the hidden curriculum visible. The unspoken social rules that most kids absorb without thinking are the exact rules that can feel impossible to navigate for kids on the spectrum. Naming them, slowing them down, making them explicit — that work ultimately benefits every kid in the community, not just the ones who needed it spelled out.
What A Wonderful Read. A Camp 🏕️. For Natural Beauty. For Natural Beauty’s To Seep Through in Every Child’s Surroundings. Therefore allowing for the Natural Individuality of Each Child to Seek Out and Connect to Others. The Most Important Curriculum Missing in Education. Along with Natural Observable life in the Ecosystem. There is Schools in Europe that Actually Teach Everyone Everything in A Natural Environment outdoors especially. I’ve Forgotten Where now. But An Absolute Naturalistic Society Education. This Is Where We Build The Future. Beginning with the Children. Especially Before age 7. Because the Power’s that Be. Can’t Allow Children’s Minds to Observe/Question/Solve. Any Situation. Without Intervention Or Interference. From Teachers. Who Are Institutionalized By The Masters Ways Of Conformity. Believing It’s Normal. With Question. As I say.
A Child IS a Perfect ADULT. Till ADULTS. FUCK THEM UP. Unknowingly Sadly By The System they Were Thaught With. IS Conformity. Herd. What A Wonderful World We Would Have. If Education Was Completely Re- Structured. For Independant. Free Thinking 🤔. Outdoor activities and Learning in the Ecosystem Surrounding Us All. Without Ever Even Knowing It. Or Seeing It. Or Learning. We Are All Part of The Same Ecosystem and Planet 🌎. Adults Are Sadly Compromised In Regards to This. Are Of The Hive Mind Of Conformity. Therefore Never Changing. NOW. Break the MOULD. Those Children Can Advance In Their Lives and Outlooks. By Instilling the Principles of Natural Law in Their Sub-Conscious Minds. As Early As Possible. Before 7. Then You Will Be Fermenting The Real Teacher’s of The Future. That is The CURE. For the ROOT PROBLEM. God’s Speed. And It’s NEEDED.
Can you share more about or point me to a blog post on your site about how you do handle safety and safety concerns of parents? I run a microschool for ages 5-14, and ended up separating my 5-7 year olds to give them more supervision and social-emotional coaching, but I would like to help my parents understand that conflict resolution is a huge part of what they will learn here.
Such a great question — and honestly, we don't get it perfect. We're always learning.
What I can say is that parent onboarding is something we invest in heavily. Families know what they're signing up for before they arrive — our community agreements, our circle system, our approach to conflict — all of that gets communicated in advance through scaffolding videos and written materials. By the time a kid shows up at camp, my hope is their parents have already opted into the philosophy. That shared understanding makes a huge difference.
Safety is always the floor. Free play and child autonomy live inside a structure that adults are absolutely holding. We're just trying to be invisible about it when we can.
I don't have a blog post to point you to right now — but this is making me want to write one! In the meantime feel free to reach out at laura@campstompingground.org. I'd love to hear more about what you're building at your microschool and swap notes. The work you're describing — helping parents understand that conflict resolution is the curriculum — is so important and not easy.
Mixed-age play was probably THE highlight of our homeschooling life. Especially seeing teen boys' cultivating tenderness towards the littlest ones in any group. There's a lot less "toxic masculinity" when it's entirely normal for a 13 year old to swing a crying 4 year old up on his back to make him laugh and forget his hurts.
Reading this I had a vision in my mind of a world dotted with little community learning centers instead of schools. All ages. A range of maker spaces, music, video, tech, play, art, quiet, play etc areas. Indoors and out. Adult docent/ facilitators around. Kids moving freely and developing their own rules of governance. Peter, you've often spoke of this kind of thing in the Sudbury (sp?) school but I believe (?) this was older kids. What if it was community kids, all ages. Kept fairly small like a hunter-gatherer play group or a little bigger like a summer camp. Now, imagine everyone growing up like that.
Kathleen, actually, the Sudbury Valley School has kids ages 4 on up to late teenage years. I would love to see the kind of world you envision here.
Age 4. That's awesome. I keep thinking about two people who's work you might be very interested in. The first is Kate Raworth the author of "Donut Economics." She teaches at Oxford's Enviromental Change Institute. As I think about the issues that have led to the progressive loss of childhood and loss of respect of children as individuals, the further I drill back I can't help but get to the shift from hunter-gatherer to land owner-serf societies. Raworth is not addressing this dichotomy, but she does address other current false dichotomies and shows other ways we can structure our world. She's after sustainable and more humane ways. And I think that with in these ideas that she develops, we would also find a better more humane place for children.
The other person I recently came across in a conference for parents of teens with adhd. Now, I know you believe that adhd is mostly a condition of the environment and not the child and on this I largely (though not completely agree). This person's whole child nurturing of stregnths approach might really appeal to you. Dr. Stephen Cowan is a pediatrian who spent years in the medical model, but later rejected it for a very different way of supporting kids and families. He kind of blends western and chinese medicine ideas. His book is "fire child, water child." Watching his talk made me think of you. I'm hoping this link will work for his talk: https://community.strategicparenting.com/c/day-1-adhd-teen-brain/sections/987968/lessons/3755025
thank you for all your work!
i saw the benefits of mixed age play at my son's school after school daycare.
they learnt a lot from the older kids, and the older kids showered the younger kids with love and nuture.
it was a truly beautiful sight to see
Great post Laura! In my experience, parents complain about mixed ages in playtime when something happens that challenges, usually the younger child. It requires that the group have a system for social justice repair work. Valuable learning happens when we allow life to lead and then deal with what comes up. I grew up in a family of 8, with a twenty-year range in our ages. It never occurred to me that age or conflict would divide us, but then again, my mother would have it no other way. We were together as kids and have stayed close in adulthood.
What fantastic stories Peter. It is so true that our age segregated education system is broken and we need models like this that reflect how humans lived for all but the last 12,000 years out of 2.5 million.
I love these stories, and I fervently want experiences like these to spread as much as possible. While reading, however, I couldn't help thinking about my personal experience of age-mixed groups as a child. I grew up spending my summers in a few-hundred-people village in Italy. With everyone knowing everyone else and very few cars around, we could roam the streets and the surrounding countryside freely. Kids and children were also a relatively small cohort, and mixed-age unsupervised play was the norm. It sounds idyllic, but my memories of it are often very unpleasant. I remember much hazing, bullying, a strong pressure to conform, exclusion of those who did not fit in. I felt great relief when I found a handful of other kids (who happened to be more or less my age) with whom I actually got along. This certainly confirms that, with no adult interventions, my friends and I ended up finding each other (and we are still friends to this day). However, I cannot help wondering what would have happened if they hadn't been there. That was my sister's experience: twelve years younger, same village, very similar social dynamics, but even less people around; she did not find an equally well-attuned tribe and ended up much more lonely than I was. I do not think that much more adult supervision would have made things better (it might actually have made things worse, as kids were obviously imitating the toxic social interactions they saw between adults). I wonder, however, whether in your mixed-age schools and camps you ever see unhealthy hazing dynamics emerging; if so, do you intervene? How? And in general, do you think parents can help if they notice something like this happening to their children - or should we just trust them to somehow find their own solutions? I know this is a big question about bullying in general; I ask it here because I think it can be even more challenging in mixed-age groups, as older kids who behave as bullies end up setting an unhealthy standard for the younger which is then absorbed as the norm.