highcountry

No they won't listen, waste of time and energy. Just hang it up and maybe....someday they will wonder what happened. Of course blame for it will be deflected far from the real problem.

I looked at the BSA/OA provided scripts.....I didn't gauge them as more lame vs less lame. I viewed it as one more detail, one more corner where the BSA is micromanaging how troops and volunteers do, say, plan and carry out even minute parts of the program. This is very sad, I think I need to watch Follow Me Boys again and get a sense of why I did get involved when I was between 2003 and 2011. Mandating how old kids can be to use a wagon, no squirt guns, must use scripts, my replacement at Scoutmaster got into an aguement with some woodbadge dude at IOLS about proper dish washing procedur

Eagle 94 lamented in the other thread on a WDL who was disappointed her younger scouts would not get to have the same crossover experience as her old scouts got to enjoy. There is a solution for this...."hire out" the ceremony. Our local pack used 2 types of ceremonies over the years that I saw it, sometimes thy brought in a local guy named the Mountain Man"....he was not a member of the BSA but did a fine crossover ceremony the cubs all enjoyed. Sometimes they had the OA chapter come in and do the crossover with all the Indian Regalia. So I suggest a pack that wants the OA style cro

With my experience with BSA, I don't trust them enough to lay confidence they would cover someone in the event of a serious issue coming up. At least I would never put myself in the position of finding out bad things the hard way when I should have sided on being cautious. I believe comments before are right, BSA might try to get you or the CO to cover first on your insurance and then back you up unless their lawyers could find some detail to be a reason to not cover you. I witnessed a serious event in my community involving another church and one of their volunteers late in my scoutmaste

To the original OP. You are involved with a bunch of lazy, selfish, self centered and some dysfunctional parents and the mess of a pack they created. The previous CC did NOT fix the issues, they told you that as they were burned out and fed up. You inherited a bunch of adult babies who are completely used to someone else doing everything for them, complain when everything is not just so, complain that you don't send them enough reminders....on and on. These people will not change. The only way to fix it is to eliminate (Don't allow them to recharter) all the deadwood adults and complaining par

Not entirely Jblake. We know he wants Eagle and we know he intends to drop at the end of February. We discussed all the short comings and the need for him to grow up and do things outside mom's cover, that actually working hard at and completing things neeing to be done and not waiting for adults assigning it to him is where he needed to go in his route to becoming a young man. We gave guidance on exactly what things he needed to be doing since over time he has become so detatched from any commitment, leadership or responsibility that without the guidance he would be bewildered. We laid o

What to do regarding older scouts seems to be a very common theme, but I don't agree it is as easy as blaming the adults for not having a good program or allowing the scouts to fix the program by what they put on the schedule, I have seen those scenarios play out and it doesn't fix the problem for the most part. Our scouts put the annual calendar together from suggestions made by scouts and adults during the course of the year. We also encourage scouts, particulalry older ones to add events to the calendar that they plan and run entirely on thier own to develop planning and leadership (Skiin

Although we are relaxed a little on uniforms (we encourage the scouts to wear as much as they can afford or desire) we expect scouts who are going to be at an Eagle Board of review to wear as much of the uniform as they can. We don't greatly care if they wear scout socks, pants, belt but if they do it is favorable. We at least expect Class A shirt that is clean and does not look like it was balled up in a pile producing a huge wrinkled mess, tucked in with necker and slide, clean pants or jeans and decent shoes or dark colored hiking shoes or sneakers. Clean grooming, no goofy hats, ripped pan

"Skin in the Game"......I hear that one. We have about given up on getting kids to fund raise, folks get tired of tying to motivate kids and families to do this, we have tried all kinds of methods and coaching and motivation and different fund raisers, have begged the scouts to come up with new ideas that ar workable for fund raising and other than a few exeptions nothing happens. I can't make roundtable (I have Fire Dept Trainings on RT nights so my CC and Treasurer attend) and they are hearing that it is becoming more common for troops to toss in the towel on most of fund raising and just

There is comfort in knowing you are not alone, I have this all the time but it is not quite as bad as it used to be. Being SM for 3 years now the scouts and parents know what the expectations are, in addition we have created some rules and implemented them. Some folks never learn though. Some things helped, others didn't work. I too am amazed at the parents who have given up on this battle, people's attention spans are short and with many, it is apparent they will change their minds and do something else when something "better" appears on the radar screen. I have tried to illustrate to pa

Horse manure to you too John, sorry the kids in my trioop/town are not jsut like yours, bbut that is the way things work and the way kids are wired up here. We are in a somewhat remote town, nearest next troo is 20 miles away. I can tell you it is hard enought o get parents to drive to campouts an hour away, gettting them to drive kids to merit BAdge Couneslours isn't going to work. The kids in my tropp WITH EXTREMNELY RARE EXCEPTION don't have it on their radar screen to look up and call MBC's from outside the troop. As I noted without MB Colleges and Summer camps we would rarely have anyon

We have no problems with a parent being a MBC for thier kids so long as other kids are doing the badge with them at the same time. I am SM and I am also listed on about 8 MB's to counsel. The only times I do MB's is with a sign up sheet and the badge is done outside scout meetings, each scout is tested and engaged and we watch to see each one is actually learning the skills, not just sitting through the sessions and getting a checkoff for having had a pulse and sitting there. The only other time a parent signs off on their kid's MB requirements for which they are a registered is when they send

I'm experiencing what GB and Lisa explained earleir. I had on of our Eagle Scouts (Now in College) tell me he really didn't get the leaderrship, reposnibility palnning picture until after he was 18. He is one of our most exveptional scouts too. I ahd a parent who is tiuned into reality tell me the same thing independently, that they are only ready for so much at scouting ages, they get better as they move from 12 year olds to 17 year olds but there is only so far you can go in general. I thin k short attention spans, instant gratification, narrow mided focus and other factors make this the nor

We are dealing with one of these scouts right now. The Scout in question is reaping what he has sown. He is working on his Eagle Project and it has been dragging on for months, the reason, almost no scouts in our troop will help him on the project as they have no respect for him, leaving campouts early (And sometimes showing up late) is one of his hallmarks. He will be having a friendly chat from several adult leaders soon regarding his poor attitude and lack of participation or leadership. He will be informed that no SM or ASM in the troop will be signing off on his SM conference until he sta

I don't see a seperate signature line for the DRP. Reading the DRP (It has been years since I filled out an application so I have forgotten the wording since) I see nothing that requires the unit to provide religious services. I make it convenient for each family to provide the service of their choosing so I support it in that way. We are normally back early enough on Sunday and can accomodate everyone. The problem I had was one demanding parent that had to have something custom for his kid, and I tried a couple ways to accomodate. That wasn't good enough and he remained demanding, I was glad