Wellspring News

One of life’s biggest challenges that almost every father faces is, Bonding with their children and getting closer to them like they are with their mothers. Mostly, kids nowadays, develop a much closer relationship with their moms than their dads, and this happens due to a lot of conditions and obstacles, including work load, lack of communication, lack of know-how…etc.

Well, it’s not easy neither on moms nor on dads, but, there is always a chance to make it better, to build that bond you always think of! Once kids turn 6 or 7 they start thinking about the “What-ifs” a lot! “What is I could spend some more time with my dad?”, “What if I went and talked with my dad with an open-heart, would he listen”, that’s the main problem! You love them a lot and they cherish you and your presence in their lives, but you rarely find a mid-point that you can catch up with them at.

Attending a Father and Child camp is like having a one-day getaway with your child, away from the stress of work, their moms, their mobile phones and tablets, it’s a one day that is all about you and them where you get a chance to pour your heart out t them with how much they mean the world t you and listen closely to what they want and need to tell you. It is the time where you get a best friend out of your child!

It’s the end of a very successful summer season at WellSpring and we’re super excited to start the new one with a lot of new projects with Schools and organizations! 

Let us give you a heads up on the previous projects we worked on with our partners, varying from Schools to big corporations and residential compounds around Egypt as well. So, starting with Schools, last Fall we;ve hosted several successful Family Day Camps at the schools’ premises where students and their families come to join us for a day full of bonding fun activities that get them to make some good memories and share unforgettable bonding laughs. 

Not only do we host family camps for schools’ students and their parents, but we also focus on creating a memorable overnight camp experience for the students throughout the school year. We take students on a 3 nights overnight camp where they get to play, learn new values, experience the adrenaline rush of climbing the low ropes, and bond together in a happy fun atmosphere during the campfire while roasting some good-tasting marshmallows! 

Whereas for corporate organizations, we’ve hosted Family Day Camps too where employees get their spouses and kids to spend a day with their colleagues, play together, and bond in different ways too. This brings the employees a chance to not only create a bond with their family members, but also get to know their colleagues and their families better, resulting in creating a family-like work environment and thus improves the employees’ productivity when they get back to work! 

One of the projects we very much love was the Mother and Child Camp we cooperated with the National Bank of Egypt in hosting last March to celebrate some of the “Mom employees” in the bank! Hosting around 60 moms from one organization in an overnight mother and child overnight camp gave us an enormous feeling of happiness and pride! 

We can’t wait to partner up with more schools and organizations in the new season to create an impact with more students and families! 

As for the students, our precious campers, we can’t wait to have you all again in our upcoming Autumn and Christmas Day Camps and Overnight Camps too! Different topics covered in every camp, exciting activities and highlighting games too. Campers also get to make new friends throughout the camp which is a great add-on to every camper who attends. 

“My daughter’s friend got sick and canceled last minute before the camp, and my daughter didn’t want to come at first but when she attended, she got to make new friends and came for 2 more weeks after that!” - Said one of the campers’ moms attending our Summer Day Camps.

Bullying, a word we got used to hearing for the past year a lot, and unfortunately, we got used to being sarcastic about it, while the truth here is, it’s one of the biggest challenges our kids face in their schools, in their sports training, with their friends, sometimes even from their families!

Well, we believe that bullying is a serious matter that may affect the psychological health of the kid till old ages, and that’s why it should be taken seriously! It’s definitely not a joke to point a finger at someone and come up with something to make people laugh at!

Kids, especially in the age starting 4 years old and up to 12 years old need to be taught more about respect, boundaries, and how to have limits with the words they use with their friends and people around them! It's important to teach them how their words may affect someone badly, and also how their words may help someone or make them smile:) 

Most of the parents out there look for smart ways to apply ethical values with their kids, but that’s where most of them face the problem of “Why does it have to be me?”. Kids almost hate the rules their parents apply because they think those rules are applied only to them, that’s why it’s important to continuously enroll your kids during in WellSpring Camps where they actually learn something useful and also have fun! 

WellSpring Camps are hosted to focus on helping kids face those challenges in a healthy manner by: 

• Giving them the chance to be put in groups with kids of the same age.
• Teaching them the right values of honesty, integrity, and the importance of having boundaries.
• Providing them with the opportunity of spending a fun vacation yet a useful one.

We always guarantee your kid's well being and an unforgettable experience!

If you’re reading this, it definitely means that you’re thinking about sending your child to an overnight camp. We know and understand that you indeed have concerns about that, or you may question if it’s the right thing to do for them. Would they handle being away from home for a few days? What would it be like for them not to have their mobile phones on them for the whole camp? And you’re definitely wondering how much you’re going to miss them! Well, we’re here to answer those questions and highlight how life-changing it is to send your child on a WellSpring Overnight Camp! 

Let’s start with a similar situation: you send your kids to school to learn something new, get a certificate, make new friends, get exposed to new experiences, and develop their characters in a safe environment. Well, sending them to a WellSpring Overnight Camp is similar but more! Our WellSpring camps are eligible for kids starting at age 8 years old, and it helps them: 

• Be Independent; even the most dependent children learn to rely on themselves by spending some time away from their parents.
• Love working/ playing in a team; the camp provides a community for your child to join. For example, campers learn to work together in keeping their cabins clean, work together to win a camp-wide competition, or work to help one another learn new skills.
• Self-reflect; may seem like a grown-up thing, but the truth is without electronic toys, your child will learn to slow down and appreciate other worthy experiences.
• Appreciate the Small Things; Spending some time away from home help the kids appreciate what they know as the “Normal” in their lives. For example, they get to appreciate all that home offers — a warm bed, a refrigerator full of snacks, a bathroom of their own, a television, etc.
• Learn New Skills; the experience helps the kids find a hobby or a passion they otherwise may never have known about. 
• Make new friends; a good camp program will make it easy for kids to find friends fast, and WellSpring is the expert in that! 
• Learn to make choices, not critical ones, but for their age, picking the top or lower bunk is a choice, and deciding their sports major in the camp is a choice. That’s the perfect practice for the teen years ahead, which would be offering responsible decision-making opportunities every day.
• Appreciate their parents; a child who spends some time away at the overnight camp learns to appreciate all his parents do for them. The little extras, such as making their favorite dishes, or driving them to and from sports practice, may suddenly be appreciated.

To sum it up, it may seem like a few-days experience when you look at it from a far perspective, but thinking of how beneficial and life-changing it may be to your kids would definitely change how you feel about it and help you get answers to all your questions! Take the upcoming chance and send your kid on one of WellSpring’s Winter Overnight Camps taking place next month! 

The relationship

Describing the mother's relationship with her daughter or son often makes it difficult to reach a point that is as accurate as it should be! It leaves us overwhelmed with the amount of love we witness in our Mother and Child Camps, and even when we see Mothers driving their kids to our Day Camps every morning. We can indeed say that when the child looks at their mother, they feel as if they've seen a comfort zone that they run to, hug, and feel the safety and comfort they search for in every minute of the day! 

On the other hand, when we asked the mothers about their feelings when they hug their children or when they bond with them during the Mother and Child Camp, they said that they realize that the hug they give to and receive from them enrich their souls with the love and comfort they need. They stated that no matter how old they get, they will always need their children's hugs and always feel their love. 

The "Mother-child" bond and how to strengthen it

No relationship is perfect, even a mother-child one, but the bond shared always makes them find their way back to each other, building a stronger bond. At our Mother and Child Camp, we may see and face a lot of fractions in the relationship between a mother and their child. It is our role to help fix those fractions, help them create an unbreakable bond, and give them some essential tips on improving it further.

Some of the critical "DON'T-S" in a Mother-child relationship are:

1. The controlling relationship as it removes the child's freedom and shrinks their desires and passion.
2. Emotional disconnect as it creates an urge for the child to turn to another person to fill the emotional gap they have at that moment, and this may result in considerable disturbances in the child's character growing up. 
3. Judgemental relationships because a child considers their mother to be their safe zone and comfort place, so being judged by this too would cause colossal confusion. 
4. Role reversal would be a massive disappointment to any child growing up, and you shouldn't think this could ever happen because it does. It may occur in the tiniest thing, like making your daughter care for her little brother and sister by putting on them a responsibility that is not theirs to carry in the first place, it is yours, and they're only required to love and care as an elder sister, not a mother. 



Enrich them with love to get back the love you need to feel too!

The love in this unique relationship is essential; a kid learns to love and give back when they feel this from their parents. Loving them and showing that love would never make them feel "spoiled" as some parents think; they make them feel loved and so know their self-worth.

Joy vs. Happiness; not everyone understands the difference! 

We mostly search for happiness; happiness in the good company of people, happiness in finding a good restaurant to eat at, and happiness in spending a good vacation. The thing is, most people do not know that there is a difference between happiness and joy.

Happiness is temporary, but joy is a state that comes from within, reflecting happiness on one’s mind, soul, and body. This is what we aim to teach kids during the first week of our Summer Day Camps this year, to pursue happiness but choose joy! The truth is happiness often depends on our emotions and circumstances. But joy is something deeper, something we can access regardless of our situation.

What is Joy?!

It is an overflowing sense of extreme happiness and pleasure; that's joy! It's not just a fleeting emotion - it's a lasting feeling of inner peace and contentment that you can experience when you are selfless and care for others, express gratefulness, or have uplifting spiritual experiences. Even if it requires great personal sacrifice, the joy you get from helping others reach their own levels of contentment will be well worth it.

Some differences between Happiness and Joy:

1. Joy is Constant. Happiness is temporary

Being joyous is an ongoing state that comes from within, but happiness is a feeling that you experience because of a specific situation and is temporary. 

1. Joy reflects on one being selfless. Happiness focuses on pleasing oneself.

Putting others first requires being selfless, and to do this with absolute contentment, it has to happen because one feels joyous from helping others instead of thinking of pleasing oneself. 

1. A person chooses to have joy but chases happiness. 

Because happiness is temporary, people chase after it, but being joyous is a choice that one chooses to make. 

Joy is difficult to define in words, while one can easily describe happiness.

The joy that life offers us is a gift that can be hard to put into words. It has the power to move our hearts and souls and make us feel alive in ways we never knew existed. It can be hard to understand its true beauty unless we have had the privilege of experiencing it firsthand. Yet, happy moments are easier to describe, as they are more common, and many of us have come across them at least once in our lifetime. The joy that life brings us is a blessing that can give us strength and joy and remind us of what truly matters in life.

Enroll your kids now in our first week of Summer Day Camps, taking place from 2-6 July, to help them learn more about how to choose joy!

This year for the the first time you child can have an amazing summer with us at MV-ICity.

Full of High Energy Engagement and lots of Water Experiences.