Lakewood YMCA Summer Day Camp at Grant Elementary School

★★Twon Mueller

This is an extremely disappointing camp, at Grant elementary. First, there is no signage for pickup, so of you aren't attending on the first day of their first week of camp you have no idea where to pick up your child. All concerns about this were met with dismissive condescension. Second, their staff openly discuss wanting to get their day over and "get away from these kids", in front of kids and parents. I found this to be highly unprofessional. Third, they appear understaffed as my daughter told me stories daily of theft and bullying behaviors that went unrecognized by staff and I myself witnessed a larger boy pushing around a little girl repeatedly with no intervention or even recognition until I couldn't watch any longer and felt obligated to intervene (which is not appropriate, but I'm sorry, I can't watch someone push around a little girl and do nothing) Finally, the entire staff speaks like they are reading from a poorly written and outdated conflict avoidance script. It's unhelpful and very condescending. It also speaks to a very poorly managed program. So, from the top down I do not recommend the YMCA camps at Grant elementary unless you have no other options available or your child is a bully who needs a place to practice being a bully without much supervision or consequences. They are poorly organized, understaffed and badly managed. The rot starts at the top, in this case. The kids are nice, but that's the only reason it's not like lord of the flies. After this summer, and thanks to this camp, we will never use any YMCA camp again.