About Trip Camp

Trip Camp Margate and Trip Camp Columbus are day travel camp held in Margate, New Jersey and Columbus, Ohio.

Families travel from across the country for their sons to participate in Trip Camp and enjoy what the Jersey Shore and the Columbus area have to offer while their son is at camp. Margate is a family oriented beach town and a popular vacation spot for generations of families. Margate is approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes from Philadelphia. Columbus is the second most populous city in the mid-west, boasting many exciting attractions for campers and families. 

Margate, NJ Trip Camp and Columbus, OH Trip Camp are structured the same, teach the same material, etc. What differs are the activities (given the difference in location). Additionally, the overall cost for families to stay in Columbus will be less.

There are a maximum of 12 campers each week.

There is no “typical day” at Trip Camp as you might find at a typical day camp.  While our days are structured and active, our schedule changes each day based on our activities for that day.

Here’s a sample schedule:
9:00 AM Arrival/Make Lunch
9:20-9:50 AM Learning Time
10:00-11:30 AM Leave for Trip
12:00-3:50 PM Daily Trip
3:50 PM Snack and “future planning time” for tomorrow’s trip
4:00 PM Dismissal

Boys who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, or learning differences are eligible to apply for admission to Trip Camp.

We do not offer a level of support for boys whom:

• are prone to physical/verbal aggression, emotional outbursts in school or in public
• prone to elopement when upset/angry
• attend cyber school due
• make threats of aggression towards teachers or classmates
• require 1:1 support in school or are in a self-contained behavioral classroom for the majority of the school day
• are diagnosed with an autism spectrum diagnosis
• have significant anxiety that manifests as negativity/outbursts when in a group setting
• present with significant difficulty being part of a similar-age peer group in school or outside of school

Additionally, Trip Camp is not a good fit for parents who have separation anxiety from their sons, as we do not permit campers to have mobile devices at camp.

Trip Camp is a small camp with a very high return rate. As a result, there are few openings each year. Hundreds of families join the mailing list each year for the few openings each summer. Please note that adding yourself to the mailing list does not guarantee there will be be space in camp. The mailing list is not held from year to year as a new mailing list is started a year in advance.

Because Trip Camp is the only camp in the country specifically for boys with ADHD our camp families come from across the United States and internationally.   

Campers do not know each other beforehand, however, some may know each other from previous summers if they attended the same week. 

Overnight camps that market themselves as “ADHD camps” or “social skills camps” must take campers with a wide variety of profiles and support needs (ADHD, autism, etc.) in order to fill beds. These camps could not teach the skills we teach at Trip Camp as it would not make sense for them to make a tremendous financial investment in training their staff as most overnight camp staff only work at overnight camps for 1-2 summers.  

Trip Camp is a small program specifically for boys who present with ADHD. We are not a special needs camp or a therapeutic camp and are not designed for campers who present with behavioral challenges. Through the admission process if we determine that a camper would be better served at a camp with a greater degree of support than we can provide we will provide you with a referral to a camp where we think your son can be successful.

As with any experience, the more time your son spends at camp the more he will generalize the strategies and concepts we are teaching. Parents have remarked how their sons have developed a greater degree of self-confidence, independence, and flexibility through attending Trip Camp. Most importantly, they comment on the fact that their son’s felt connected to the other boys as they share similar profiles.

During Trip Camp, we focus on foundational skills that form the basis of executive functioning and social thinking skill development.

No. We do not believe in teaching academic executive function skills during the summer as there is no relevant context for them.  Furthermore, the kids we’ve known who have attended academic executive function programs in the summer were very unhappy with sitting indoors all day working on “school stuff” during the summer.  We focus on improving global executive function skills such as planning ahead, improving self-directed talk and situational awareness.  

You have done your homework correctly!  There is no camp like Trip Camp operating anywhere in the U.S.  

Trip camp uses the ADHD Dude methodology and curriculum, which has attracted worldwide attention for it’s forward-thinking, practical approach. Ryan Wexelblatt, Trip Camp founder, is one of the few males in the country to have received a Social Thinking Certificate of Completion for participating in the Social Thinking Clinical Training Program (Level 1). A Certified School Social Worker, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and father of a son with ADHD-related challenges Ryan is the Founder and Director of ADHD Dude. In addition to Ryan’s expertise, Bob Orlowski, owner and director, has a masters degree in special education, has been a special education teacher for over a decade, and is also a father of a son with ADHD. 

Trip Camp is unique, there is nothing similar in your area, which is why families travel from across the United States and internationally so their sons can participate in Trip Camp. To our knowlegde, there are no ADHD-specific camps for girls.