Fiddleheads
- March 2023: Fiddleheads closed in 2021 per their Facebook page.
Fiddleheads creates a safe and stimulating environment for children and youth to experience and enhance their connections with their bodies, inner worlds, peers, and the natural environment. Formed in 2010 to support quirky children and their families, Fiddleheads is a holistic, heart centered therapeutic approach to social and emotional learning.
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Parents, please Sign in to post a review on this page.Seeds of Awareness is a counseling center in Oakland that offers a summer camp program called Fiddleheads. We went there two summers ago and it was a great experience for my son. https://www.seeds-of-awareness.org/
Fiddleheads Camp.
multiple locations in the Bay Area
https://www.seeds-of-awareness.org/our-services/fiddleheads/
nature based with therapist on staff!
Hi Mom of Clueless,
I have a 12 year old son who is in a wonderful, emotionally supportive, fun social skills group (ages 8-12) that meets in Tilden Park. They have other groups that meet in different places in the area. The organization is called Seeds of Awareness and the group is called Fiddleheads. The number is 510 788-0876 and you should ask for Bruce. It is facilitated by a licensed therapist and 3 interns (there are about 7 or 8 kids, the groups are kept small on purpose) and we look forward to it every week. I would urge you to get in touch, they most likely have an opening somewhere and they also have summer camp when the time comes. I love that my kid is in nature because he spends all his time on the computer, and he looks forward to this time every week to be with other kids. I really felt he needed the emotional support, rather than just pragmatics, and I know that he feels understood and cared about in this group. And thank you to the BPN parent who told ME about them, it is just right.
My daughter did the Fiddleheads summer camp last year and I cannot recommend it. While the adult to child ratio is great, as is the small group size, we just didn't have a good experience. There was a lot of turnover with counselors (I think she had 5 in a 2-week period) and frankly the counselors didn't seem to really know how to handle challenging kids. My daughter came back with a whole host of new, undesirable behaviors learned from other kids and was subjected to a lot of 'mindful sits' which were basically time outs as she was given no instruction about mindfulness. I could not see any benefit from the camp. Add to that that it is extremely expensive and even she doesn't want to go back — it's not worth it!
We had a very negative experience with Fiddleheads. We also experienced high counselor/therapist turnover and for kids who need social skills help, this is not conducive to trust and growth in that area. While mindfulness is a good concept and showing kids how to agree on the rules they make amongst themselves with adult guidance is a positive thing, they were in no way prepared to handle my child's emotional upsets when things weren't fair or another kid was mean or didn't listen to my kid's words. They blamed my child for their problems, the very ones I brought them there to get help with. The concept is great on paper, but it doesn't happen in practice because they really don't seem to know what they are doing.