Article Reveals How Rich Kids Get Spoiled at Summer Camp & We’re Dying

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Summer is here, which means dozens of kids are packing up their shorts and sunscreen and heading off to summer camp. But if your version of "camp" is a Slip 'n' Slide in the backyard and a half-melted Popsicle, you might be surprised to hear about just how out of control some of these so-called camps have gotten. One writer recently dished the dirt on how the "ultra-rich" spoil their kids at summer camp, and it takes "Glamping" to a whole new level.

In a piece in the New York Post, writer Dana Schuster detailed the absurdities Odd Mom Out creator Jill Kargman observed during a visit to her children's Maine sleepaway camp. "Someone had a red wheelbarrow, pulling all the presents … There were people with Nobu sushi and I said to these moms, 'How is that fresh?' and they were like, 'Oh, we were only wheels up an hour ago and we have ice packs,'" she recalled.

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Yeah, that's right: "wheels up" — as in they fly to camp. On private jets. And, hold on to your knock-off Marc Jacobs bag, because it only gets more outrageous from there.

Gone are the days of throwing some DIY tie-dyed shirts in a rucksack and sleeping on a squeaky cot. Apparently the new trend at sleepaway camp is to hire a "professional trunk packer," which Schuster reveals can cost upwards of $100 per hour and comes with a three-hour minimum (are you thinking what I'm thinking? The answer is hell yes, we all need to change jobs).

These pro-packers load kids' camp trunks with "customized camp gear ranging from $100 splatter-painted sleeping bags to $175 Uggs with their children's name spray-painted on" — you know, just the necessities. Then the kids ship off to their "$8,000 to $13,000"-per-stay camps aboard private planes (remember: cars are for peasants) with "platters of Zabar's smoked salmon."

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Once the kids arrive, they presumably spend their time swimming in hundred dollar bills and paying someone else to catch fireflies. Halfway through the camp term comes "visiting day," when parents show up with all the little tastes of home their kids have been missing for the past three weeks: gourmet steak "from Wolfgang's," their housekeepers and nannies (because, duh, those cabins aren't going to clean themselves), and lavish gifts, including $70 "candy-covered lacrosse sticks" and custom "bunk gifts" — like iPods — for each of the 10 kids in their child's bunk.

Some parents don't even bother bringing their own swag. They have "their people" do it. As one mom revealed to Schuster, "The [hired help] will set everything up on the grass with a little tent and everything and leave."

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Even though the ultra-rich summer camp experience reads like an Onion article about the people who benefit from income inequality, parents apparently told Schuster they go to such extravagant extremes in an effort to prove their love for their kids. And somewhere in my blackened, envious heart, I believe them. After all, isn't that kind of what parenting has become in 2017?

We spend hours scouring Pinterest to plan elaborate birthday parties or bake the most squee-worthy, Instagrammable gluten-free snacks for the class bake sale. Sure, our kids aren't talking Pokémon over a plate of Zabar's smoked salmon, but on some level we all exist inside a hyper-competitive parenting culture that tells us loving our children means going full Troop Beverly Hills whenever we get the chance.

Still, it's pretty hard to relate to people who send their maid to summer camp when I can't even get my kid to throw her own damn dirty underwear in the hamper that's three feet away. I'd love to be able to end this with a sentimental, "Rich people: They're just like us." But they're totally not, and what the hell is a candy-covered lacrosse stick anyway?