There's a small window every year where one of the most letter-worthy things happens to a lot of families at once.
Summer camp.
Not because camp is some grand life event — most camps are a week or two, and most kids come home covered in bug bites and slightly weird about something that happened in the cabin. Camp is small. That's part of what makes it work.
But there are two letters worth writing around it, and almost nobody writes them, because in the rush of packing and signing forms and remembering the sunscreen, nobody thinks to.
The first is a letter from a parent to a kid, mailed to camp so it lands in the kid's hand somewhere around the lonely middle of the session.
The second is a letter the kid writes to themselves at camp, mailed home so it arrives a few weeks after they're back — when they've already forgotten most of what they were excited about and would otherwise lose the whole summer to general memory blur.
Both are good. Both are easy. Neither will ever happen unless you plan it now, which is why this post exists.
Letter #1 — The parent letter to a camper
Here's the truth nobody tells first-time camp parents: there's a window in the middle of every camp session, somewhere around day three or four, when even kids who love camp feel a little flat. The novelty wore off, the homesickness hasn't fully landed, the new friends haven't quite consolidated. They're just sort of in the middle of it.
That's when a letter from home does a startling amount of work.
Not a big letter. Not a deep one. Just a piece of mail, in your handwriting (or even typed, that's fine), telling them small specific things about home. The dog. The garden. What you had for dinner Tuesday. The new thing happening in their bedroom while they're gone. The thing you noticed about them before they left that you wanted them to know you noticed.
Camp kids, when they get a letter from their parent, do roughly the following: they read it once standing up. They read it again sitting on their bunk. They keep it in their duffel bag and read it before bed. Some of them sleep with it under their pillow because they don't want to admit they want to. The letter does its work without anyone announcing what it's doing.
What to write:
- Specific small home details. Not summaries. Not “we miss you so much.” More like “the tomato plants are taller than the fence and I think your sister is afraid of them.” Specific is the entire game.
- One thing they did before they left that you've been thinking about. A small kindness, a moment that made you laugh, an observation about who they're becoming. They don't get told these things enough.
- Something boring on purpose. Camp kids love hearing about the boring stuff at home. The trash schedule. What's on TV. What the neighbor said. It reminds them home is real and still going and they have a place in it.
- Nothing that requires a response. They're a kid at camp. They don't have time to write back. Don't make the letter feel like homework.
- Don't sign it with too much weight. “Love you, see you Sunday” lands harder than “I will always be with you wherever you go.” Less is more in this letter specifically.
What NOT to write:
- Don't mention anything that's gone wrong at home. They can't help and it'll worry them.
- Don't list out everything they're missing. Even if it's positive (“we had pizza, you would have loved it”), the cumulative effect is alienating.
- Don't tell them you're sad they're gone. They feel guilty enough already about leaving.
- Don't include news about pets unless it's good news. Trust me on this one.
The whole letter is maybe a page. It doesn't have to be impressive. The fact that it showed up at all is the point.
How to actually get the letter to camp
If you're sending paper mail directly to camp, mail it 3-5 days before you want it to land. Camp mail systems are notoriously slow.
If you're using us: Hold My Letter will print, seal, and mail a letter to any US address on a date you choose, from one month to two years out. So you can write the letter while you're remembering to do it (right now, in May or June), schedule it for the exact day in the middle of camp when you want it to land, and forget about it.
You can also write a letter today and have it sent to your kid after camp — to arrive home the same week they do, or a few weeks later, as a small “from before you left” message that's now from a slightly past version of you talking to a slightly grown-up version of them.
Either way: it costs $9 for typed, $19 if you want to handwrite it on your own paper and have us mail your actual handwriting. One letter, one date, one envelope.
Letter #2 — The camper writing to themselves
This one is for older kids — usually around 9 and up, though some 7-year-olds can pull it off if a counselor helps.
The idea: the camper writes a letter sometime in the second half of camp, when they've actually settled in and have things to say, addressed to themselves, to be mailed home about three to six weeks after they get back.
What the camper writes about is up to them, but the prompts that work tend to be:
- What's the best thing you've done at camp so far? (Not the most exciting. The best — the thing they'd want to remember.)
- What's the friend's name you don't want to forget? Camp friends fade fast once school starts. A letter listing their names brings them back.
- What did you eat that you'd never eaten before? Camp food is genuinely formative and they'll completely forget it. This is a great prompt.
- What did you try that you were nervous about? Climbing the wall, swimming the lake, sleeping outside, talking to a new kid. Whatever it was. They'll forget how scared they were and only remember they did it. The letter restores the original feeling.
- What's something the counselors said that stuck with you? Counselors say weirdly meaningful things to kids and the kids forget them by October.
- What do you want to remember about how you feel right now? A 12-year-old at camp, on day 6, is a very specific person. They won't be that person in three months. The letter is a way to catch them.
When the letter arrives weeks after camp ends — when the kid is back in school, in a routine, dealing with regular life — opening an envelope with their own handwriting from when they were at camp does a strange and wonderful thing. It's almost the only way to give a kid the experience adults call “reading something I wrote a while ago.”
Most kids don't have that experience yet. The camp-letter-to-self might be the first time they do.
Logistically, how this works for the camper version
Two options:
Camp helps facilitate it. Some camps already do versions of this — they have campers write letters to themselves on the last day and mail them home or release them at the end-of-summer cookout. If your camp does this, great. If they don't, you might suggest it.
You set it up before they go. Send them with stamped, self-addressed envelopes and a sheet of paper. Tell them to write a letter sometime in week two, seal it, hand it to a counselor, and the counselor mails it home with the right delivery date.
Or you do the future-mailing part for them. They can write the letter at camp, mail it home in a regular envelope as soon as it's done, and then you (the parent) seal it and put it in a drawer until October or November when you mail it back to them yourself. We can do the holding part if it's easier — they hand you the letter when they're home, you log into Hold My Letter, pay $19, and we mail it back to your house on a date you set up to two years out.
The point is, the letter doesn't arrive on day one of being home. It arrives later, when camp is already starting to fade, and brings the whole summer back in one envelope.
A small thing worth saying
People who didn't grow up going to camp sometimes don't get why it matters. Why this specific kind of summer would warrant a letter at all. Why eight days at a lake counts as a milestone.
It counts because the version of your kid at camp is a slightly different person than the version of them at home — and the version of them after camp is again slightly different from both. A summer camp is one of the only times in childhood when a kid gets to be a freestanding version of themselves, away from their parents, for long enough that it changes them a tiny bit.
That tiny bit fades fast. By Halloween, most of what they learned about themselves at camp is gone. The friendships have drifted, the inside jokes are forgotten, the specific feeling of being a kid alone at a lake with a flashlight and a bunk has dissolved into general childhood memory.
A letter — from a parent who saw them go, or from the version of themselves who was actually there — is a small intervention against that fade. It doesn't preserve everything. It preserves one piece. That's enough.
If you write nothing else this summer, write one of these two letters. Both, if you can. Your kid won't really know what to make of it the day it arrives. They'll know exactly what to make of it years later.
A few questions parents ask
My kid is too young to write a letter to themselves. Can I just send them one?
Yes. For younger campers (under 9 or so), skip the camper-writing-to-self version and just focus on the parent letter. Mail it to camp to land mid-session. That's plenty.
What if they hate camp?
Send the letter anyway. Especially then. A piece of mail from home in the middle of a hard week is exactly the thing that doesn't fix the hard week but makes it more survivable. Don't write the letter about whether they're enjoying camp. Just write the normal letter, about normal home things, and let it do its work.
How far in advance do I need to write the parent letter?
For mid-camp delivery, write it any time before camp starts and schedule it to arrive on day 3 or 4 of the session. We need at least one week between you sending us the letter and us mailing it back out, so build that buffer in. If camp starts June 15, get the letter to us by June 1.
Can I send more than one letter?
You can — they'd be separate purchases. Each letter gets its own delivery date and arrives in its own envelope. Some parents send one for the start of camp, one for the middle, and one to arrive at home after the kid is back. Three letters, three moments. There's no limit.
Will the camp accept mail addressed to the kid?
Almost always yes — but check the camp's mail policy before scheduling. Some camps have specific addressing requirements (camper's name + cabin name + dates), and some have limits on package vs. letter mail. A short check-in with the camp office takes 30 seconds and saves a returned envelope.
Is this only for sleepaway camp?
No. Day camp letters work too, though the dynamics are different — a letter mailed to a kid going home each night doesn't have the same effect as one waiting for them in their cabin. The future-self letter (camper writing to themselves to receive months later) works for any kid old enough to have a memorable summer, whether camp is sleepaway or not.
Hold My Letter holds letters for you and mails them back as sealed envelopes on the date you choose. One-time purchase, single letter. No subscription. Just real mail, on a day you scheduled.