Lisabob

You guys don't listen to the prairie home companion, do you. Life is flowing, like ketchup on dump cake (ketchup, ketchup)

OK I gotta tell you all this one. According to my son, scouting has a reputation for being for geeks and nerds for almost exactly the reasons that Beavah posted a day or two ago. It is the adults, not the boys, not (most of) the activities, that can be problematic. They lecture too much, go on and on about silly rules, can't always facilitate the actual adventure the boys want, and just generally don't see things through boys' eyes. So last week the boys had a Christmas party. Mr. SPL had opted not to actually plan anything to do at this party because "it is a party - we don't need no stinkin' plan." Well ok. I'm just the driver. So upon arriving, he discovered that the SM had come with back up plans for just such an occasion. Also, the party was the same night as the school concert (they meet in the school cafeteria, highly visible location). The SM's back-up included a game that required the boys to smear their faces with vasoline and stick cotton balls to themselves to create a "Santa beard." In full view of several hundred of their middle school friends and families. So in the car on the ride home, mom asks SPL son: How'd the party go? SPL (mortified): OMG, no wonder people think scouts are gay and nerdy. How could the SM have not seen the way that a bunch of teenagers would interpret a huddle of boys with slimy, sticky faces full of white goo!!! mom: Huh, sounds pretty bad SPL (embarrassed): Yeah, and in front of everyone, too! I had to apologize to the younger guys, especially. Their classmates were all there for the concert! And so were all their older sisters! SPL (mumbling): Guess I shoulda had a plan.... ----silence while mom here tried not to bust a gut laughing ---- REally though, he had a point. No wonder outsiders think scouting is for the nerdy among us, when adults impose some of the things that they do, on the boys.

Oak, in regard to the shower situation, many camps and youth facilities are moving toward single stall showers. That situation is becoming a non-issue as a result. But even in those places where group showers remain, many boys opt to shower in their swim trunks. Not because (to my knowledge) they're afraid of being spied on by a gay youth, but rather out of a general sense of privacy. That seems especially true for the younger fellows, who seem to be rather insecure about their body images. Given this trend toward only quasi-nude group showering, and individual stalls with doors or curtains, I think this is a smaller issue every year. Calico, I agree with you. And I am glad there are people like you out there, for kids to turn to in times of crisis. Growing up is tough enough for any kid. On a side note, my son has gone to non-scout camps for several years too. He has never once voiced any sort of worry about whether the other boys in his cabin might be gay. Nor has any other parent, staffer, or camper ever expressed such concern in my ear-shot. Why this is such a big deal for some in scouting, I really do not fully understand (except through non-rational explanations).

Oak, to respond to your question, there is also the matter that gay people make up a much smaller percentage of the population than hetero people. So the probability of two gay boys tenting together is far smaller, than the probability of a hetero girl and a hetero boy tenting together. It is not zero, of course, but it isn't high on the list of things I worry about, either. Add to that the fact that many gay people do not "come out" until they are adults. This will further reduce the likelihood that two openly gay boys are likely to be tenting together at a scout function. Add to that the fact that there remains a taboo on same-sex orientation in many circles involving middle school and early high school aged boys. This will further reduce the likelihood that, even if they are tenting together, two openly gay boys in the midst of an entire troop - where tent walls are thin, privacy isn't really enormous, and the risks of being caught are very high - will engage in sexual behavior anyway. Add to that the fact that unwanted sexual advances are extremely risky - and not likely to work out well for the boy making the advances on his brother scout. Kids are kids, but they aren't dumb. This will further reduce the likelihood that gay boys are going to start hitting on their patrol mates at scout events. Add to that the fact that sexual behavior of ANY KIND is unacceptable on scout outings - something that all scouts in any troop should fully understand from the outset (if not, the troop has some other challenges). This will further reduce the probability of the small percentage of openly gay boys using a scouting event as an opportunity to engage in sexual behavior. Put all of this together and I think GA HillBilly is imagining some sort of gay boy scout version of the "summer of love" based on fear or revulsion or something, rather than based on reality. Of course he thinks I'm delusional too, no doubt, so I suppose we are even. Finally, GAHillBilly, you bring in the issue of rape in the military. Of course this is deplorable that it occurs. The solution, though, might be to establish a culture within the military where this is unthinkable (rather than tacit approval for sexually harassing women - remember tailhook, for example). The solution is not necessarily to lock up your women. I venture to say the same is true of scouting. The solution is to ensure that everyone knows that no sexual behavior is acceptable on a scout outing. Period.

Well I am glad to know that what I thought I read was not what you thought you were saying. It might have been the "HERE" part that led me to believe you were talking about those of us on this forum, you know, here. At any rate, your argument hinges on the idea that sexual predation is a major issue among gay youth when they are with their non-gay, same-gender friends. Seems kind of unlikely to me. I truly do not agree with this idea that gay people are more likely than straight people to force unwanted sexual attention on others. By the way - out of curiosity and only tangentially related - people keep talking about how 1-man tents will never be acceptable. Huh. Looking through the backpacking catalogs, I see a whole lotta one man tents out there. They must be popular with other outdoor types. (Come to think of it, nearly all the adults in my son's troop seem to have one man tents. So do I. What's good for us isn't good for the boys, hmm?)

While we're at it, GAHillBilly, I am not sure I understand how you came to the conclusion that people here, in this discussion, are "ho hum" about teen sexual behavior. Perhaps this is a matter of interpretation, but I have not read that here at all. I've not yet seen one poster say "well everybody is doing it, so what if they do it at scout camp" or anything even remotely like that. Admittedly I have skimmed some posts in this thread - it is a busy time of year - but I was pretty dumbfounded by your claim on this matter. As far as I can tell, most "pro-gay" folks here have said that Scouts should NOT BE HAVING SEX of any kind at all at scouting events. That is really quite, quite different from your suggestion that people are indifferent about the issue.

"Telling a driver, don't worry about directions, we will be in a caravan may result in a driver who isnt sure of the destination who then does crazy stuff to stay behind the car in front of him. " Amen to that. This is one reason I really don't like driving with my son's troop. They have been known to do this. Problem is, most of them grew up around here so if they take a wrong turn out in the boonies, at least they have some idea where they are. I didn't, I don't. It makes me a little paranoid. Also, I don't like to speed, especially with other people's kids in my car. Some of my fellow scouters have different thoughts about that. I don't want to be forced to drive like a race car driver, just to avoid getting lost. In my book, caravaning just encourages all sorts of bad driving behavior.

He's 12. He may not have been thinking about summer camp with his alternate calendar in mind. My son (who is 15) is attending Jambo and I know that his perception of how his summer will be laid out - when he's home, when he's not, what else he can commit to - is unclear as well. July isn't so far away for those of us who do long-term planning, but it is eons away for a kid. Have you done a sign up for summer camp 2010 yet? If so and the boy signed up and his parents didn't remind him that he'll be away, then you have a legit gripe. If not, then I don't think you do.

I'm confused. Why is December too late to tell the troop about an event in late July? Regarding Jambo, around here the council is still desperately recruiting boys to fill our council contingents. We probably will have boys joining the jambo troops right up to about April, the way things are looking now. In fact, I heard recently that nearly half of the people on the jambo rosters have paid less than $100 so far, which puts them at a high likelihood of not going. Maybe things are different in other parts of the country, but with the economy in the tank (17% unemployment in my state, thanks) I don't think the jambo rolls are filling up as quickly as has been the case in past years. Maybe this kid just signed up recently.

"attracted to each other" If we start with the supposition that most scouts are straight, then the odds of putting two young men who are attracted TO EACH OTHER in the same tent go way down. Now if you are talking about something that is not consensual, then we have a very different problem. But even so, our society expects people - gay or straight - to be able to control themselves. Otherwise, there's no reason for men to stop themselves from raping the first pretty girl they see. Hey, not the guy's fault, he couldn't help himself. Right? Wrong. (and the same holds true in the other direction) Bigger issue is that sexual behavior of any sort is unacceptable at scouting events. ANY youth engaging in such behavior, with ANYONE else, should be dismissed. Immediately. Gay men (or women) have no corner on the market of creepiness, GAHillBilly. I am sorry for you that you had the undesirable experiences you had, but that is a mark of some people who have various other problems - it is not necessarily BECAUSE they are gay, that they chose to act that way. But if we wouldn't tolerate it or accept the "I can't control myself" argument from straight men and women, I see no reason why we would lower the standards when it comes to our expectations of appropriate behavior from gay men and women.

Well there's your problem then! (ketchup, ketchup)

Oh, whoops, I had the wrong dad there.

Ed, have you not had enough ketchup lately? I hear it has natural mellowing agents. Might want to check that out. http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2009/11/21/scripts/ketchup.shtml (Seriously, give it a rest! Your gripe - which doesn't even apply to the original poster in a meaningful sense - is way off the point of the thread anyway. Behavior like this chases off posters with legitimate questions and kills useful discussion.) Mom2Scouts06, I hope you will hang around the forum. Have a virtual cup of coffee and piece of cobbler with us. We'll slip that extra ketchup into Ed's piece and all will be well.

Tell that dad to take a look at the expectations regarding the scout oath and law. Boys are supposed to live by these guidelines in their daily lives, and not just for the hour a week that they are at a scout function. His argument is bogus. Tell the dad that the troop has to stand up for the other boys it serves. Who would want to be in a troop where known vandals who target their fellow troop members, are put on equal footing with kids who strive to be good scouts (by which I mean, young men of character)? And by the way, what would the other parents say about such an arrangement? I know if it were my son's troop in question, I'd be doubting the judgment of the SM and CC, and wondering if I wanted to keep my son in such a troop. Invoke the power of the CO. Since you are the COR, make sure you provide a brief head's up to the Institutional Head of your CO in case the matter makes its way to him or her through other channels. As you know, the CO has full say over who is, and is not, in their troop. Let this dad know that the CO does not believe that their troop is the appropriate place for his son at this point in time. Don't give in to this dad. Scouting is about more than just his son's Eagle which, in any case, it seems this boy is unlikely to earn at this point in time, considering his recent behavior. And if his dad is the advancement chair, well then start looking for a new adv. chair too. And get your new adv chair off to a solid start by ensuring he/she goes to training, understands the BOR process, and pays attention to how scouts "earn" merit badges. From what you've written, the chief quality of this particular dad as adv. chair has been that he's a warm body. You can do better.

A couple of years ago my son's patrol got onto a box oven kick, had a lot of fun with it (and box oven pie became a staple at their camp outs for a while). While the link I'm posting here is actually for dutch oven cooking, I think many of these recipes could be done using a box oven too. http://www.idosmedia.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=20

The boot trick works for me too, and is about the only thing that helps me keep my toes toasty. Not that I've tried it in as extreme conditions as JoeBob describes! At least in my case, once my feet get cold it is hard to get them warm again, so every little trick helps.

I agree with Brent. This is an adult matter. Don't put it off on the boys.

To my mind, this would be cause for removing the boy from any leadership position and suspending him from the troop, possibly permanently. He vandalized a fellow scout's personal property. It matters not that he didn't actually cause any real damage (only because the police caught him first!). If that boy were in my son's troop, I think this would be the point where the other boys would ask - is the troop going to continue to back that boy, or is the troop going to back the rest of the boys? If the troop is going to back that boy, then the troop should be prepared to lose their other boys. Time to decide where the troop stands.

Brent mentioned in his post that maybe he needs a suggestions box where boys can put their ideas for new meeting ideas. I thought it might be fun to have a virtual box here, for us. I'll start us off. The other day I was reading this article in Cook's Illustrated about kitchen grease fires (pg. 25 in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue, if anyone is interested). The author teamed up with a local fire department to find out what the typical causes and characteristics are for such fires, and how people should respond if they have a kitchen fire. And she wanted to test out different approaches to putting out grease fires. So, they bought a bunch of different types of fire extinguishers, went to the fire department's practice area, and WITH the fire chief, they set a bunch of grease fires to try out the extinguishers. The results were really interesting, combining some common sense, chemistry, and experience. Some of the extinguishers were easier/harder to use. Some actually caused the fire to grow or spread. Some were not terribly effective. Some worked pretty well. The author points out that most people do not have experience using a fire extinguisher, and the fire chief said you typically have less than 2 minutes before the kitchen fire gets beyond the point of what a typical little home fire ext. can handle anyway, so you don't have time to run and find the thing, read the directions, and learn how to use it on the fire. I thought, wow, this could be a really cool troop meeting activity(WITH the fire department!). I've never met a boy who wasn't at least somewhat fascinated with fire. This is a real-life emergency preparedness skill. The kids' parents might not even know how to use a fire extinguisher (I've never used one...have you?). At a minimum, kids might go home, look around the kitchen, and ask "Where is our fire extinguisher?"

I agree Barry, that boys can be very adventurous and creative. They don't have to be conservative and shy about putting out new ideas. I also agree that they are trained, in our society, away from exhibiting the former behavior a lot of the time, and that scouting can be a wonderful tool to develop their own sense of confidence in their ideas. Consequently, because many boys are conditioned to think inside the box (and the box is often fairly narrow, adult-driven, and boring), they tend to need a LOT of encouragement and hand holding AT FIRST, to get them to peek out of the box. Once you empower them with proper tools for doing cool things on their own, then watch out! Because they can and will amaze you. But it is the starting point that is hard for many troops, I think, and that's what Mafaking seems to be saying about his troop right now. I also agree - very strongly - that meetings do need to be enjoyable for the boys, or they will simply drift away from the troop and from scouting. Of course fun and productive *can* be the same thing in many instances, but that takes a lot more planning in order to execute well.

Shriscov, I wonder if you could parlay your expertise into something more directly related to the program in your scouting unit. For example, if you are involved with Cub Scouts, you could offer to host a language & culture beltloop night where you shared with people about the culture of a Spanish speaking country. That beltloop can be a lot of fun, and it is a really positive thing to expose young kids to the notion that there is a whole wide world out there. If you are working with a troop, maybe you can encourage scouts to earn the American Cultures merit badge (where they learn about various cultural groups' histories, ceremonies, holidays, etc.) or maybe you can be the catalyst that causes some of your middle school boys to decide to study a foreign language in school - or study more than the minimum language requirements, if they have them. In this era of No Child Left Behind and budget cuts, many schools are so focused on math and literacy that there is little time or energy for history, geography, culture, or language education that encourages students to expand their horizons and learn about the rest of the world. You might be that spark for some child in your unit, especially considering that if the schools teach ANY languages, they probably teach Spanish - so the kids might make concrete decisions in terms of their schooling choices, based on their interactions with you. So I say, go for it!

Teaching the PLC to properly plan a good meeting is a ton of work. It requires a lot of encouragement, a lot of extremely specific instructions, a lot of follow up, and a lot of "show me" or "demonstrate to me how you plan to do this" type of interactions. Let's face it. Running a good troop meeting is a lot like managing a classroom (though hopefully more fun). Teachers who go into every class and wing it because they haven't got more than a vague notion (at best) of what they are going to do that day are seldom highly successful teachers. Planning a good lesson, figuring out exactly how it will be implemented, and how long each component will take, and having some back-up tricks for just in case takes time, preparation, and practice. Kids need to be taught how to do this if they have a chance at running a better troop meeting. We need to model it explicitly. Too often, kids say to us, or we tell kids, "make the meetings more fun" or "better" or "more productive" without giving them the proper tools to do it. Handing the kids a book and saying "here are some ideas" is great, but it is not the same as actually being able to implement those ideas. Kids also learn by doing and seeing. If they're used to boring and repetitive meetings, they will replicate that. Kids are often NOT terribly adventurous. They are conservative creatures who are afraid of risking looking dumb or something not working. Half the time they don't even know what else is possible, so they stick with the same old, same old because it is safe and they know what it looks like. Changing meeting culture is tough. You need to guide the PLC through every step of the process, more than once, to start to make a difference here. I've been watching my son's PLC as they struggle with this, too. They know they aren't happy with how things often go in meetings. But they are extremely resistant to doing any serious advance preparation to make things different. And in talking with my son, I think they probably would be more open if they actually knew what it takes to run a really good meeting, and what a really good meeting should look like. Someone needs to show them, first, and then break it into manageable steps (with deadlines and follow-ups). Then maybe it will start to happen.

Oy vey, we had a couple of parents like that in our den. They about drove us nuts. We just consistently told the boys that THEY (not their parents) had to bring in the projects and explain/discuss/present them, in keeping with whatever the particular requirements were. On a couple of occasions we had brothers who could not explain the projects that "they" had completed! This wasn't stage fright or anything, just that they had absolutely no idea what the project was about. It was so obvious that they had not done it. So we asked them to go home, take another look, and tell us more about it the following time. That was about the best we could do. Talking with the parents helps minimally in cases like this and can cause a lot of stress. Parents who do this stuff just don't understand why they ought not to do it. So go ahead and have that quiet conversation with them, but to be honest, I think you'll get further with the boys, than with their parents.

I could qualify, but the languages that I speak well are not ones that are in high demand (mostly Scandinavian languages). So I've never bothered with it. I wonder if the person in question feels the same? Now if I were planning to go to the World Jambo in Sweden...maybe then I'd bother! Alas, alack, it is out of my price range.(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Let's be careful not to start a witch hunt here, Mafaking. I don't know if the FB Rodgers is the same person, nor do I really want to know. But if it isn't, why open that unrelated individual up to scrutiny. The legal system is dealing with this, apparently adequately, and that's enough for me.