Wade's Best Kids Summer Camp After School

★Adrianna

This place severely damaged my mental health growing up. I went here around 4(?) years ago and still remember it. They did have some fun programs that allow kids to express their creativity, but the main issue is how they treat bullying. At the time, I had undiagnosed autism that really showed in my personality and also caused anger issues. I knew of these issues and was trying my best to work on them as I did not want to keep getting in trouble in schools or similar establishments. Several kids here, especially this one girl, bullied me often. I do not remember the specifics apart from a few incidents, but rarely were they penalized whatsoever despite my often reporting of this to the people working there. The constant bullying made my anger and mental health in general worse. I have pressing undiagnosed issues currently I believe are caused, at least somewhat, by bullying (not specifically from here, just in general). There are only three incidents occuring here that I can remember the details of. In the first one, I was outside and got stung by a bee. When I ran inside, never having had this happen before and seeing a stinger still in my thumb, the teacher there told me that I didn't need any sort of assistance as it was "just a phantom sting". The second incident happened when the girl I mentioned before was bullying me. I wanted to punch her, but quickily decided against it due to the reprocussions I knew I would receive. Still, though, I tapped her on the hand with an orange as I felt I had to do something. She later went crying to the teachers saying I had stabbed her in the arm with a pencil, and showed them a healed scrape clearly from far earlier that day. I was penalized for this "offense" despite arguing that I had simply tapped her. Finally, what got me expelled from here was when we were doing multiplication assignments. I asked a teacher what the point was if we had no grades, and if summer camp was simply for staying at if your parents were busy and to have fun while waiting for school to begin. They just said that we needed to do it without telling me why we needed to do it. This made me press a bit more, and apparently this was the final straw and got me expelled. Luckily, this was just a few days before I was moving out of Chicago, and I was actually glad to be rid of this place early. Hopefully nowadays they have far better staff who actually know how to handle this, but I really doubt it. Unless this is the case, I do not recommend sending your children here, especially if they are neurodivergent or considered "weird kids".