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I’m sort of responding to this after reading the docs and also just saying how I continue to feel about the process on Day 538+. One of the other things that makes this so gut wrenching for me, speaking for myself as a victim claimant, is it’s almost impossible to discern what is cover fire for my/our cause, what is incoming and what is friendly fire. Not being able to tell who is for me and who’s agin’ makes the churning all the worse. Should I hope the insurers succeed in getting to rummage around in the potentially fraudulent claims and expose some no good attorneys or not? Does what t

I found the greatest role modeling action that bonds and raises trust with scouts is admitting a wrong choice or action. Adults instruct at youth so much of their early life that they rarely see admissions of being wrong from the adults. Youth feel an adult admitting they are wrong raises them, the youth, to an equal level of character and it changes the relationship. Barry

While this is true, and is something that is indeed related to leadership, you don’t teach someone to laugh at themself by putting them in a situation where everyone else is laughing at them and they are pressed to laugh too to save face. You teach them to laugh at themselves by creating a situation where everyone is laughing at themselves, and so joining in is a positive thing. The best of Scout campfire skits are great ways to teach that lesson, since often everyone in the patrol looks ridiculous in the process and that is truly part of the fun. Sending scouts on hunts for nonexiste

@docSquatch, welcome to the forum. It's up to you about joining a unit. But it's great that you want to be a counselor for more than a troop.

We had one new Cub who broke down and cried because he was not turned upside down like his two older brothers were when he received Bobcat. He had been looking forward that that. Dad took him outside after the meeting, flipped him upside down, and ha oldest brother pin on the Bobcat rank. New Bobcat was happy then.

I'm sure I awarded at least 1000 Bobcats for that ceremony and I never saw a single scout who wasn't giddy with excitement waiting for his turn. I was the CM of a pack with 140 scouts, so 30 bobcats wasn't unusual. We looked for several dads to alternate, mainly for the scouts safety. Then Branding became popular to replace the hazing ceremony. An ink print of the Bobcat was dipped in a water base paint and applied to the arm. But, political correctness ended that ceremony. That was before tatoos were as popular as they are now. I'm thinking the ink print might be popular now. Adu

??? We do it often, adult association, and all in good fun.

It depends on what the person doing the teasing is trying to do, what is the intent? How is it received? It is a thin line that all too often is crossed.

IMHO, seems quite a jump to equate "teasing" with "hazing". Back to work, I need to fetch a left-handed screw driver and a sky hook.

@MattR ... Your words are thoughtful and well written. My two comments. #1 Teasing ... Even teasing is a gray issue. Grey for those on the other side of the pond. ... Teasing can be fun, but can easily and very quickly turn into bad behavior too. Personally for me, this is my weakness. I have been consciously trying to minimize my teasing of others. Instead, I'm trying to focus on authentic, open discussion. #2 "if not done right" ... It's not about correctly or not correctly using such a scenario (smoke shifter, bacon stretcher, snipe hunts, etc). It's in the eyes of

You're right, we shouldn't treat others badly. But speaking of different opinions, I assume teasing is okay? At least if it's gentle? If not let me know and I'll remove all of my other posts in this thread. Oops, there I go again. In other words, looking for smoke shifters can be used as an opportunity to show scouts how to stop things before they go too far, how to be gentle and how to pay attention to how others respond to your actions. But you're right that, if not done right, it can get out of hand and people get hurt. But that's all the fun parts of scouting. It's a good thing w

This is an old argument. My apologies for raising it again, but I see the discussion and it's hard to not remind everyone that others have different opinions. Coddling? No. That's pretending to have an excuse for boorish bad behavior. I'm saying it's setting a bad example. We should not be teaching that it's okay to treat others badly; aka being a jerk. ... This specific situation is called hazing and against the rules.

Kids are a little different today. Maybe that's what Fred is referring to. It's not coddling. It's recognizing that the 10 and 11 year of today is different than the 10 year old of 20 years ago. Social media, 24 hour cable, peers, whatever, they don't have the same tolerance for games that they think make them look silly. It's why I feel like a lot of the program that seems great and nostalgic to many adults is actually out of sync for a lot of kids. When I did my first cub scout summer camp, the kids loved the shaving cream song. By the time of my last camp, they mostly thought it was really

Hmmm, that could explain the groaning I hear when I tell a joke. Personally, I cannot recall misery when I searched for smoke shifters, henways, or hunted snipes - harmless jokes. Good thing to be able to laugh oneself. Better thing to teach how not to take a joke too far. I wonder what kind of leaders we develop from coddling our youth? So a scout walks into a magic forest and tries to chop down a talking tree. "You can't cut me down," the tree complains. "I'm a talking tree!" The scout responds, "You may be a talking tree, but you will dialogue." My $0.02,

Enough. This is like arguing over where curly brackets go in C. This thread started in 2011 and was added to in '12 through '16 before being started again recently. And nothing has changed with regard to pinning mentor pins on uniforms. Some people care and some don't.

I don't believe the KKK was ever considered a noble organization. It's less that "almost any institution" from the past can't "withstand the scrutiny of the present" so much as no institution can withstand scrutiny based on its own grandiose view of itself. It's where humility should come in.