Re: Den Meeting Discipline

On 23 Sep 98, at 18:19, Karl Ward thought:

> I'm asking all of you current and past Den leaders to relay any
> special tool or program that you used in your meetings to instill
> discipline and maintain control of those wonderfully wild cub
> scouts. I'd love to hear anything that worked as well as well as
> any that didn't. I find this topic of great interest to both new and
> experienced leaders <snip>
>
> So e-mail me privately, if you wish, and I'll compile the list. I'll DO
> My Best to post the results to the list later. Thanks in advance.
>
> Karl Ward

Four things I have found work quite well with boys who are, shall
we say, "spirited". These are now starting, or have been used in
our dens.

1. The talking ball. this is preferably a bean bag or one of the now
popular stress relief balls. A boy raises his hand to speak, without
the ball he does not speak. DL tosses him the ball and then tosses
it back or to whoever DL designates.

2. Behaviour jar. When the boys come in they are given three
polished pieces of glass "stones". These can be marbles, beads,
beans, whatever. The normal 1,2,3 method of discipline is used. 1 -
warning, 2 - five minute time out, 3 - boy calls parent to come pick
up. The added twist with the trinkets is on number 1, he turns over
one trinket, one number two, another and on number three, the
third.

Those with trinkets left at the end of the night put them into a
provided jar. We use one like those used for canning preserves.
When the jar fills up, we go across the street from our meeting
place for pizza the following week. This encourages the boys to be
more or less "self policing".

3. While working on our communicator, we had a deaf interpeter
teach us some common signs. One sign she taught was that deaf
people use the finger spell for "T" while shaking their hand to use
the washroom (T=Toilet). This keeps the talk to a minimum and is
less disruptive in both pack and den since it can be done from
across the room without the scout having to come over to ask and
then cross back.

4. The one you are tired of telling people. We use the cub scout
sign, or "Akela's ears" quite effectively at the den level, where it
needs to be taught for it to be effective anyplace else. We are
always telling the boys that actions have consequences. Early on
last year, our scouts learned that when we held up our hand, it
wasn't coming down until everyone did likewise and was quiet. We
say nothing, just stand there making the sign. The longer it took,
the less time we had for snack or a game.

When a boy misses either one of those, you can bet it won't take
as much time to quiet them down next time. Eventually, it is
almost instantaneous.

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