Lisabob

I hear you. One easy solution is to decide that your pack won't vigorously enforce some of these items. The Hats come to mind. The change from having the same hat (and necker) for all cubs, to having distinct ones for every rank, happened while my son was a cub. The pack decided that they really weren't fussed about which hat a kid wore - if any. Parents who wanted rank-specific hats were invited to purchase them. Parents who didn't, were invited not to. The pack did provide neckers for each rank. We didn't provide slides. But most dens made their own slides anyway, which solved that problem. As for belt buckles - that's nuts. Buy the cub scout belt & buckle. Nobody is likely going to notice, or care.

Completely agree with Calico. Both of the troops my son has been part of are "full uniform" troops. Leadership - especially youth leadership - is crucial here. Young scouts/new scouts will adopt the standard set by the majority of the troop's youth members. If the culture is "full uniform" then new scouts will acquire the full uniform reasonably quickly. (but I still stand by my belief that the shirts are decidedly unpopular because they are impractical and out of date, while the newer style pants are a relatively easy "sell.")

Since I'm the original poster and since this thread has wandered quite a lot in the last 3 months, I just want to mention that my original point here was that it is now more common for boys in troops to favor the uniform pants over the uniform shirts. If BSA could do for the shirts, what it has done for the pants (make them relevant to what boy scouts actually do), then we might see a move toward wider implementation of "full uniform" troops, too. Just saying.

Weekly meetings throughout the year, with occasional exceptions for major holidays. One meeting a month is a "fun night" of dodgeball/basketball/swimming/etc at a community facility. Troop Weekend (2-day) campouts every month except July, plus summer camp (July). Leadership corp has its own events a couple time a year. Troop plans a high adventure option for older scouts at least once a year. Some patrols do their own day events and overnighters, often at somebody's house or on somebody's property. Frequency varies across patrols. Some scouts/leaders also do OA weekends, council high adventure trips, and NYLT or other overnight trainings. SM doesn't attend every one of these (though he's usually there) and that's just fine. That's what ASMs are there for.

My council has run this sort of program as a special 4 day event, just before/just after most regular summer camps are in session. I've known boys who attended, mostly because their parents wanted them to. These are the same boys whose parents feel it is imperative to earn Eagle as soon as possible, and who tend to vanish, once they become Eagles. It gives me a dim view of the whole enterprise. If it were up to me, I would say, take "trail to" anything OUT of summer camp and replace it with theme-based, FUN programs that scouts can't do at home. A week of climbing-related events, a week of water-events (as Moose mentioned), a week of wilderness survival, etc. When he was a little younger, my son used to do a week at scout camp and a week at Y camp. The Y camp offered these sorts of themes and son loved them. In my view, it is way better than being so focused on checking off requirements, as many scout camps have evolved to do.

I think I wouldn't push him to attend these merit badge workshops, unless he really wants to go. There really is no need to do them the way you are describing, or to earn all the badges (overkill!). And an adult who is determined that their child will earn X number of badges and Eagle rank as soon as possible, is really controlling their child's experience. Let your son chart his own course. If it coincides sometimes, great. If not, fine. One of the cool things about scouting is that it is highly individualized. About the boring troop meetings - maybe next year, your son will want to get elected as a patrol leader or something, attend PLCs, and make some suggestions for how to add a little fun time to the meetings. Or he could just funnel those suggestions up through his current PL.

"A brief conversation with my schoolmarm wife reveals that the boys spent in-office detention for threatening to kill another student (they just crossed over to Bear). They actually brought the bat to school. These boys need to stay in Scouting [...]" ------------ Three thoughts. 1. The school counselor should not discuss with you, whether these boys are in the CPS system - that is not public info and shouldn't be shared. 2. You say these boys need scouting - do the other scouts in the pack need these boys? If they had threatened to "kill" my child and brought the weapon to school, and they were in the same pack as my child, and the pack leadership took the position that "they need scouting," I and my child would be gone from there in a heartbeat. Be sure you aren't driving other children away from scouting by making this calculation. Other boys need scouting, too. Their safety and reasons for wanting to be part of the pack are no less valid. 3. It doesn't matter at the end of the day whether the family is in the "system" or not, or really what the felony is for. If the pack leadership feels he isn't a good example of a leader, then the pack leadership should have the spine to say so. Don't expect council staff (who don't know this guy) to carry the water here. Think about what's best for the whole pack, including all families, and not just what's easiest, or what's best for one family.

We only did this on special occasions. It was more hassle than it was worth, to do it every time and the kids really don't need it.

Then there is no problem. It sounds to me like your Scoutmaster wants you to experience working on a merit badge in a setting other than group classes at summer camp. And there's a good reason why he might want you to do that. This is not hard. Go to your scoutmaster. Tell him "I'd like to earn the fingerprinting merit badge." Ask him to give you a blue card and the contact info for a local counselor for that badge. Call the counselor and arrange a meeting directly with him or her. Attend. Be prepared to talk about fingerprinting (it might help if you read the merit badge book first). Then do whatever the counselor tells you to do next. Go for it!

What Scoutnut said. If some pack would ask, I would have volunteered to do this. Probably still would, even though my son hasn't been a cub scout in years. Thing is, most cub packs seem to want DL's who do "everything" with a pack, while what I'm in a position to do is more like what ScoutNut describes. I don't have the slightest interest in being CM or CC, or COR, or wolf DL either.

Neat. My vote would be to work on 2 MBs: 1st aid and perhaps wilderness survival. 1st aid is a pre-req (or co-req) with many other merit badges, and also coincides nicely with T-2-1 requirements. No doubt that you want boys to be very well versed in 1st aid, even for just "regular" camp outs. A longer campout gives you time to get creative and really teach(and test) the boys in fun ways. Wilderness survival is just a good badge to earn. And one that many traditional summer camps offer, but frequently they cut corners. Teach your boys the outdoor skills you want them to have, and wilderness survival is a great vehicle for doing so. Also, it is a good confidence builder. Your younger scouts can feel pretty good about earning it, and your older scouts will have to really know their stuff to teach it effectively. If you are looking for a couple of others, I'd suggest cooking & pioneering. Both teach good basic skills and also overlap with T-2-1 requirements. Hope that's helpful!

Eng, I've been wondering where that was in relation to you. Hope you are not in the path.

No - not a chance. Look, first, they could have read the requirements themselves. There might also have been other internal-troop checks on eligibility, but at the end of the day, it is the scout's responsibility here. Even a cursory glance would have been enough to recognize they don't meet the requirements yet. Second, even if they aren't eligible (yet), they presumably did learn some things and had a good time? There is more to camp than earning a particular badge. And the skills they developed will still serve them well. Besides, they used the camp facilities, ate the camp food, participated (I hope) in other activities while at camp - they got their money's worth. And learned a couple of useful lessons about paying attention, in the process.

I guess it is probably human nature to assume that one's own culture (family, sports team, whatever) is really the best, but I do think American culture also reinforces this assumption in ways that are less evident in other societies. A point I try to make in my teaching is that we can better understand ourselves - where we are coming from, why we have a tendency to respond to issues the way we do, how our decisions are made - by having something or someone else to compare with. It can be enlightening to examine how other places deal with similar problems. This isn't necessarily saying we have to change as a result of comparison, but sometimes we might also decide that we want to make changes. Sometimes, we might simply better understand the trade-offs inherent in any course of action, and so feel more grounded in the decisions we have made & continue to abide by. To our UK scout friends: Welcome! Please pull up a log around the virtual fire.

I've done spring recruiting at the pack/den level and as a former district membership chair, at the district level. Some packs have success with this, while others don't. It seems to me that the packs where leaders are well connected to their community, are most likely to succeed. The years where our pack did the best, it was really because we had a couple of moms with older boys who had volunteered all year in the Kindergarten classrooms. They encouraged the rising kindergarten families to join in spring, rather than wait til fall. People join because they already know the leaders, already have older boys in the pack, are neighbors/friends with families in the pack, etc. Cold-calls, people with no experience or connection to the pack already, aren't very likely to join in spring. Now some packs also don't do (m)any summer activities, and for those packs there is not a lot of point getting a Tiger den up and running in May/June, just to have them wait until Sept/Oct to actually do any cub scouting.

As for comparison to others - this is just not a very American thing to do. We have a tendency to assume that our way is the best way, without examining the evidence or considering alternate interpretations or measures. In fact, I teach international & comparative government where part of the point is to make comparisons - and as a result, students & others routinely assume that I must be either anti-American, or a damn communist, or both, because "everybody knows we're number one!" It can be amusing, at times, though also awfully presumptuous.

Helping parents understand the role they are expected to play, and that the folks who volunteer are just that - volunteers, probably also parents, not paid staffers. Consistency & quality of program - often seems to be the blind leading the blind, unless there's a "repeat" parent or two in the Tiger group. This turns off a lot of folks. Getting past the "not it" syndrome where the last parent to object is the one who gets picked to be the leader, frequently resulting in rather poor leadership choices. Explaining the family-oriented nature of cubbing, esp for Tiger partners (and coming up with creative & flexible solutions for would-be Tiger parents who can't attend many meetings but want their boy to participate) Helping first-time cub parents understand the relationship between den and pack. ETA: I guess a lot of this is really about teaching young parents about being good civic volunteers - an experience many of them have never had in their adult lives, before cubbing. -------About training:---------------- By the time we get a person to do the online training, they're already hooked and will likely do whatever needs to be done for the pack. These are not the typical Tiger parents though. Wavering parents aren't going to jump through the hoops to do the training. I have thought it would be better to do the training en masse, maybe at the first den meeting (with some other activity for the little guys). We run (used to run?) Tiger Den Leader training in person, in November. By then it is too late. A den that is off to a weak start will have lost half of its members by then and expectations about behavior, participation, and the nature of the cubbing program have already been formed. (This message has been edited by lisabob)

Look, most girls are NOT going to be all that inclined to attack the boy in the sleeping bag next door. So nope, I'm really not too worried about mixed gender tenting, in most situations. Same with gay youth - just because one boy (or girl) is gay, doesn't mean they are going to start assaulting everybody within 300 feet as soon as the sun goes down. That's vampires - not gay people.

My son's patrol is camping this weekend. They have a patrol tent that sleeps 6. I'm pretty sure, if one of them decided to accost one of the others, it would cause a stir. I'm really not worried about it. "Gay" does not rub off. I'm just not bothered by the idea of a gay boy and a straight boy tenting together. I seriously doubt it will lead to sexual assault or the previously-straight boy suddenly "becoming" gay.

For me, I think the expectations for everyone, of every age, gender, and orientation, should be that people just refrain from sexual activity at scouting events. Whatever they do at home, with consenting partners of legal age, is their business. But don't bring it on a camp out. For this reason, if those expectations are clear, I'm not too worried about who is in which tents.

My son's former troop had one expensive outing each year. In the winter they would either go dog sledding in Northern Michigan, to a cost of about $200, or luging ($70). Turnout was light, esp. for the dog sledding. We are just finishing out the year with my son's current troop. They have had three more expensive campouts this winter/spring: snow sports = $50, an international campout (in Canada) = $70, and this weekend, a campout at a national park that has some beautiful beaches & dunes ($50). Attendance on all three is pretty good, but I admit, I had a little sticker shock. One difference is that the boys in this troop are more active in fundraising, and there are also some wonderfully generous sponsors in the background, to help boys whose families have tight budgets.

Thanks for all of the suggestions! The event was way back in 2003 and I honestly have NO IDEA who was there, or how to find most of them, anyway. So I'll take up a few of the other ideas, to get the patches (or proceeds) into hands of scouts who can use them.

ryetye, let me make a suggestion. There is no reason you & your son, or other parents & their webelos sons, can' contact the troop directly and request this sort of invite. If you want the boys to go on a troop camp out and the WDL has not been sharing info, go above his head, straight to the Scoutmaster of the troop. Ask for an invite to an upcoming "regular" campout (not boy scout summer camp, and not high adventure stuff, not rafting). Regardless of the communication issues & den leader issues you have mentioned, the rafting trip does NOT sound like a great one to tag along on. For one thing, the troop probably doesn't know these boys from Adam, and now they're going to take them on a water excursion? (Lots of rules about cubs and water but beyond that, common sense dictates that you don't usually want to take kids of unknown swimming ability on a water trip. Further, it could be a pretty big challenge to take kids who know little about how things function in a boy scout troop - who is in charge, what needs to get done to stay safe, how they are expected to behave - and put them in the water. That could seriously tax the leadership ability and safety of all on this trip.) For another, the boys in the troop may see this tubing/rafting trip as one of the really super-cool end-of-year things they get to do. Having webelos along will change that for them. Save this trip for when the boys have actually joined the troop. Not a great fit, and I'm pretty surprised that the troop would have invited cubs to join in on this particular event.

While cleaning out some boxes in my closet I came across a bunch (20-30) of patches from a council event that took place maybe 7-8 years ago. I don't know how I ended up with them, and as I don't collect or trade patches, I also don't want them. The patches are all in great shape. I feel sort of bad just pitching them in the trash, but I don't know whether anybody actually trades/collects these sorts of council event patches? What should I do with them?

The kid is a CIT! He shouldn't have to deal with "jokes" like this at all, but I also see nothing here to suggest he has especially thin skin. For goodness sakes, if the camp expects him to want to come back in the future as staff, they had better deal with this effectively, now, and the CD will probably thank the SM for contacting him. Alternately, if the Camp Director doesn't respond effectively then this is not a camp I'd want to send my kids/scouts to in the future - because the staff will know that this is acceptable behavior in the eyes of the CD. If they treat their CITs this way, imagine how they will treat the campers. And actually, I think the camp director will be thanking his lucky stars if he ONLY gets a call from the scoutmaster. Because if the boy's parents start calling, this guy can expect quite an ear full.