Eagledad

Backpacking chair. I hate sitting on wet muddy ground and the chair also has enough support to lean back.

What I'm saying is you are basing your rant from a vivid imagination. Sure, if it were your troop, the OPs plan would likely be destructive. But you really don't know. If you want the discussion to go that directions, (and I think it is a good discussion) then lead into it without implying or attacking the OP. Barry

Well there is no reaction like an over reaction. You don't know enough to whether this trek will damage a troop program. This troop could have 150 scouts in it with only 6 scouts interested in the trek. Learn the art of asking questions so you can make an informed opinion. Barry

Well maybe, but how do they know if they have never done it before. That is what forums are for. That is why he asked. Boy Run is an aquired taste, very few adults do it right their first time. Barry

I've seen it snow in June. Worse, I've seen thunderstorms with hail, which really lowers the temperature. I'm not sure about the EN tested, but we would be recommending 20 degree bags for a June trek. 65L to 70L is the average pack size our scouts use, some externals might be a little smaller. But crew gear and food take up a lot of room on the Philmont treks. Equipment has improved a lot over the years, but 10 years ago we tried to arrive at Philmont with a maximum weight of 24lbs before crew gear and food. I think it should be less with todays gear. Barry

Two training trips a month for nine months? And why the 14 age limit? Two weekend trips with a couple of one day hikes is plenty for everyone to learn their gear and their physical limitations. Our troop is a adventure troop for all scouts, we only limit scouts by age when required at BSA camp like Philmont. We don't even use the BSA camps in the Northern Tier so we can take youngers scouts. A scout should be limited by skills and physical/mental maturity, not age or rank. We provide twice the training weekends required incase someone can't make a training trip. We do a progressive payment plan withe a deposit at the beginning to get commitment at the beginning. On average we experience about a 40 % drop out rate for various reasons on long range planned trips, so we also sign up alternates who pay and train with the crew. We have never left an alternet home. I do encourage fitness training at home, especially the adults. We have found that fitness training is hard to enforce. But most boys are pretty fit and can do OK if they did ok on training hikes. Adults on the other hand need to do some fitness training. I would also suggest you plan the first day to be a 5 mile trip, it allows the body to adapt to the gear. I think 5 days is a perfect for a trip like this. If you are thing 50 mile award, add a couple longer days. Be careful not to take the fun out of it.

I want the scouts to have an experience that motivates them to learn. I would not interrupt, but I might ask him later about the situation to hear what he learned. There are many answers depending on the history of the two scouts. I would also ask the SM his opinion. Barry

When someone jumps up and says let their sons pick the troop, I like to tell about the crossover ceremony where I asked the Webelos why they chose to join this particular troop. They said it had the best game of the troops they visited. None of them were in scouts a year later. Sadly the forum isn't what it used to be because this question always brought out some good advise for parents needing reasonable answers. Many posters now seem more expressive of personal prejudice like 300 ft, and no wood badge adults instead of looking at who runs meetings, asking the SM his goals for the scouts and what they think is boy run. While many on this forum kind of know what 300 seperation rule really represents, nobody outside the forum does and they will think of you a clueless geek for asking. Truth is many here on the forum these days are a bit extreme in their opinions, so they don't help much in real life situations. KDD, may I suggest learning from forum contributors who give more grounded advise that is closer to your local programs like MattR and Eagle92. Scouters in the real world don't know what 300 ft means and it's ok to work as a team with your son to help him find a good troop. Let your son hang with a patrol For a meeting while you pepper the SM with questions of program. Then compare notes and see where that goes. I remember one mom who brought her son four times before choosing our troop. It took her that long to see why our program worked for her son. So there is no huge hurry. Barry

What I meant was tune up hikes are the place to learn trail etiquette and each members physical abilities. You should have been torward the front of the crew on the first day because they already knew you were a slower hiker.

I agree with everything you say because I've experienced it. If we provide adventure, they will come. But National has the problem of keeping a product interesting and that has become more challenging. Nobody saw it then, but bringing women into the program changed the general image of boy scouting for the majority of adult volunteers joining the program. I think close to 70 percent of volunteers today didn't have a scouting experience as a youth. That is a big problem because it is fair to say that likely the majority of adult volunteers never camped more that 2 days in their life before they joined the BSA. The new Wood Badge program introduced in 2000 is direct result of National trying to deal with that kind of adult leader. To get to the program many here keep harping that would bring back more scouts, National ironically would have to consider loosing at least 50% of membership. That is certainly a huge guess on my part, but I think reasonable considering the number of inexperienced scouters that enter the program. I am considered a Boy Run extremist in my council and was always preaching boy run to units. But it wasn't until I was the District Membership Chairman that I humbly learned that even boys in adult run programs had fun and grew a lot in the Fitness, Citizenship and Character as a result of their troop experience. So the question is do we want to provide a top shelf program to less than 50% of boys served today, or is what we provide today enough? I don't have the answer, I was a boy run extremist. I ran a 300 feet apart style program and we where very active outdoors. But I do respect the situation. Barry

This is what tune-up hikes are for. Barry

We averaged 10 per patrol and 7 per patrol at scouting activities. It wasn't a problem in our troop, it was part of the program. The expectation on our scouts to their patrol is loyalty, not attendence. The expectations on the PLC attendence are high for obvious reasons, but we found the scouts planning their leadership ambition around their schedule. Football players and band members didn't take on a high leadersip positions until Spring. One of my best SPLs planned his schedule around his swimming schedule. Barry

Through the years I learned that scouts are surprisingly resilient and can handle most physical stress really well, so I got to where I didn't worry much about them, even with crappy equipment. Adults on the other hand don't bounce back well from physical stress and need to be in shape before the trek if they want to enjoy it. My son was also a small scout and did a lot of backpacking at around 95 lbs. He carried about the same weight as the other scouts and never once complained. I am not recommending that, I didn't know because I wasn't on most of his treks. But the one 10 day trek we did together, the sole of his boot came completely off the leather the second day on the trail, so he used duct tape for about 70 miles of the trip and never complained. As I said, I just quit worrying about boys physically. Barry

We backpack in most of our gear every campout and do a serious backpack weekend two or three times a year, so we find the scouts don't really need tune-up hikes other than for getting use to a new crew. The adults on the other hand tend to need the hike to get waken up to the physical and mental stress of a longer distance hike has on their older bodies. It reminds them to what a week on the trail will feel like. They tend to get a lot more serious about their equipment after tune-up hikes. I used the hikes to guide the adults as to how boy run works so that they don't try to take over the crew. I don't know why adults feel they must have majority control of the crews. It's never a problem on the patrol hikes, but high adventure crews really struggle with it. Strangely, Boundary Waters is the worst problem with new adults because they just don't see how canoeing all day can be all the strenuous. What's a rod anyway? I have lots of adult stories. Barry

I think you stated it well Brew, our troop while I was SM typically had about 65% partiicipation during most activities because of sports and band. But we had a reputation for accepting other outside activities and were a popular troop as a result. I remember a 100% attendence during January and summer when there were no sports. It was normal for band and football players to show up to campouts on saturday mornings. After their season was over, they were full time scouts again. It worked well for us. Barry

We have few LDS units in our district and you just described exactly their situation. Also frustrating is that the District can't help the adult membership problem much because the church controls that function. I did get to train their SMs and enjoyed that, but they always seem to feel the stress of managing a program that few adults seem to want. Barry

Actually I have seen Boards deny Eagles for not demonstrating scout spirit. But National rarely supports that reasoning. You can make a personal statement though. Barry

We had a pack in our district that decided to quit recruiting Tigers as an attempt to fix their burned out leader problem and they had the same number of scouts 5 years later without a Tiger program. Nationally there is some concern that the new membership requirements will hurt recruitment. If that turns out to be the case, there is little you can do about. Likely you will get a good crop of Wolves next year. Barry

I lived through a lot of presidental terms and I'm pretty up to speed to what's really going on in Washington now. My biggest concern for our countrie's future is that the next generation will believe that Obama's behavior is presidental. I've worked for the government for many years and I've never read such a immature letter like the one Obama sent me yesterday. No way would a responsible media ever let any president ever get away with it. I am really concerned for the country my kids are being stuck with. Barry

The youth can seek another unit until National takes him off the row. I've never seen it get that far because either another unit is willing to take the kid or his reputation is bad enough that he can't find another unit. I have seen this scenario lay out more often with adult leaders than scouts. Barry

Yes, I like that. Nothing worse that seeing a problem and doing nothing. Some kinid of change will give a new perspetive. And it might be fun for the boys as well. Barry

Brewman, I'm am not in the least critical of your program and I don't think I've said anything of the sort. We've all been where your are at, so to be critical would be hypocritcal. I spent a lot of years working and guiding other adults with programs and I guess I'm just in my asking rhetorical questions mode to help direct thoughts in a certain direction. I learned it working with a 1000 scouts. Maybe it's a habit I need to change. I have no doubt you are doing the best you can and we are very thankful. As to the question, I have found that more often than not, adults tend get lost in the chaos when they don't know where they are going. All I was trying to do was maybe help you find a little light in the darkness. Barry

Looking at it from this point in time, what life lesson do you think the boys will take from this experience? What life lesson would you like for them to take from this experience? Barry

Great question Paul, the aim of character is one of my favorite discussions. Ignoring of course adult role modeling being a critical part of the aim (can't have a half uniformed adult asking a scout why isn't in full uniform), character development is getting the scouts to evaluate their "decisions" with the traits of the law and oath. Scouts make hundreds of decisions during scout activities, so we adults have a lot of opportunities. And most of the time adults don't have to say very much because the answers are obvious. Is a scout wearing flip flops in camp when the policy is no opened toed shoes? What about cussing? Even talking while someone else has the floor is obvious in it's right or wrong. A simple question of which law is being challenged is all a person needs to ask then move on without waiting for the answer. What I learned working with many hundreds of youth is getting them to develop habits of making right decisions on small stuff has a direct relationship on making right decisions on the hard stuff. Something as simple as brushing ones teeth every morning because mom ask you to. I tell the scouts often that developing good decision habits take practice, but they start with the smallest decisions. The uniform policy is easy in our troop because we use direction from the Scout Handbook. That way their is no confusion from one scout's opinion to the next as well as no confusion with adult opinions. So the choice of an adult or scout making a right or wrong decision is obvious and starts at the beginning while getting dressed. the key to the Aim of Character development is getting the scout to challenge himself to change. Motivate him to want to make right decisions. Get him in the practice of asking himself if he made the right choices. As I said, scouts make hundreds of choices a day in the scouting activities, so they have a lot of opportunities to practice. But without a doubt "leadership responsibility" pulls on charter decision making the most. We humans tend to make our worst decisions under stress and nothing in the scout program is more stressful than the true responsibility of leading others. Especially servant leadership. Servant leadership forces us to choose between them or me. Are the choices I am making to benefit me, or those for whom I am responsible? The oath and law are very clearly servant actions, so next to the Bible, I can think of no better guides for character development. The key for adults is to point out wrong decisions, not bad decision makers. Don't react emotionally or be lecturas. Don't yell, be calm, pointed and nonjudgemental or emotional. If you cant do that, either ask another adult to handle it or wait until your anger passes and you can talk in a quiet tone. Sorry this is long, the editor is a challenge. Barry

Interesting discussion. Our scouts are responsible for taking care of paper work and getting it to council. They are responsible telling the SM the date they set their BOR. We did not realize how challeging that was until we had a 16 year old transfer who only needed 6 badges to finish. He showed up one meeting with his dad to ask why the scouts were responsible for paperwork and taking care of BOR instead of the adults like his previous troop. No one had ever asked that before, so I was caught off guard. But I simply said we expect our Eagles to act like adults. That was a satisfactory answer for dad, so we help the scout get started and he did fine. I'm not sure if that was the reason, but the scout told us later that he was glad he got the Eagle in our troop instead of his previous one. That scout was a local hero a year later when revived an infant found at the bottom of a pool. My thoughts on Eagle coaches is district should train unit leaders the process the district and council expects. The biggest problems I've seen with eagle applications in our district is the confusion (ignorance) of unit leaders with district and council Eagle committees. Its ok to point the scouts in a direction and wait for questions, but when the coach becomes a crutch, they went to far. Barry