Lisabob

OK I gotta ask. Did their patrol flag have a moon on it? Unless there's more to it that would suggest otherwise, I'd go with the interpretation that they grapple with bears in the finest "mountain man" tradition.

nothing much. the BUsh recession pretty much already killed off my savings. (there, now don't we all feel better for venting)

I don't see it either, sorry OGE. You know "rassler" is a common local pronunciation of "wrestler" so maybe the idea the boys were aiming for was that they were so tough, they wrestle bears. By the way - patrols in our troop have a tradition of using alliteration in their patrol names. For a while we had the Krazy Kangaroos. Leaving aside the annoying intentional mis-spelling, we adults were just glad they didn't choose a name with three words starting with the letter K!(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Scouter760, that's an interesting observation. I would venture to say that there is a difference between the burned out leader types, and the uninterested sideline parent types. The former are the people who, like GKlose's wife, made the pack "go" but get fed up with dealing with adult hassles. After several years of that they really deserve and need a break! The latter are the ones where, sometimes, I wondered why they became parents at all. In fact, the uninvolved sideline parents often increase the burn-out factor of the other, committed adults, through their unthoughtful behavior. On the other hand, I think it is important to remember that scouting is not going to be all things to all people. Much as I think it is a great program, for some it is just another thing to try out rather than a big part of their life. I don't have a huge problem with that, as long as people behave with a modicum of common courtesy toward those who run the program.

kind of a stretch from that to specifically denouncing boy scouts, eisley. Anyway this isn't the Issues and Topics forum! Re: the original post, I think that's really great, sounds like a very fun way to do that particular badge. And how cool, that the boys have a MBC who is utilizing modern technology to make it work for everyone.

Surely there is no shortage of other activities for boys to get involved in, and many who don't continue in scouting do find other niches. Hard to say whether that's because there's a sudden hole in their lives where scouting used to be, or whether their parents are pushing them into a more convenient activity. Probably some of both. But I think burned out parents matter a LOT because kids pick up on their parents' attitudes. Parents who are sick and tired of the hassle will send that message to their kids whether they mean to or not. Anyway I agree in part with Barry that it is probably healthy to consider a change in den leadership when you move from Bears to Webelos. While I disagree with some of his gender-based assumptions, I do agree about the burn-out factor that rolls around about now in a typical Bear DL's "career." What I also noticed was that a lot of people who were Tiger, Wolf, and Bear DLs had a hard time relinquishing control and starting to see those 4th/5th graders as increasingly independent young men. Especially the adults who had been DLs for a couple of years sort of got into a groove. They KNEW how to run den meetings, etc.. A new WDL could take a fresher look at things, perhaps. As for the tighter connection between troops/webelos, I think that's a great idea, although it could also place such distance between the Webelos and the rest of the pack as to call into question why Webelos are still considered Cub Scouts at all. And it would take careful coordination and a lot of communication so that there wasn't a sense of entitlement to "feeder dens" established. Not to mention that I don't know very many active boy scout leaders who have that much time to spare! But all of that aside, I do think this would go a long way toward improving the experience and making for smoother transitions into boy scouting.

Hi ManyHats, Sort of a tangent, but why don't you have a quiet word with the DC's scoutmaster? Supposing that the DC and his SM talk on occasion about how his DC experience is going, there might be a great opening here for the SM to suggest to the boy that he earn the age-appropriate religious award too.

I never got tired of the kids or the activities when we were active with cub scouting. What I got tired of was dealing with half-baked adults. For whatever reason, it seems to me you get fewer of these in boy scouts, and those who start out in a troop don't stick around for long. Maybe it is because in cubs you have a lot of young parents, some of whom have barely made it past being children themselves, and seem incapable of acting like grown ups. Maybe because, by the time the kids are 6-10 years old, this is the point where a lot of parents' dysfunctions are full-blown and out in the open. Maybe because a lot of parents just seem to think that they (not their kids - the parents) are entitled to have programs like cubs where someone else does all the work, everything goes off perfectly every time, and the kid is constantly being awarded all sorts of stuff, whether earned or not. It seems like some parents use this as a validation of themselves, in a sick sort of way. Honestly, I don't know what the motivating factors are, but I witnessed so much bad adult behavior in cub scouts that there were days I wondered how some of these folks got themselves dressed in the morning and managed to hold a job, let alone be parents and community members. People would shout and scream about the stupidest stuff. Most neither understood nor particularly cared to understand the program, including some "I'm an Eagle Scout" dads who seemed to just want to be in control of everything. It wasn't a person or two. It was a lot of them. And although most didn't stick with the program more than a year or two, there was a never-ending supply of new ones so that you started all over with this baloney each year. I loved cub scouting for working with the boys and for the chances it gave me to spend more time with my family, since my husband and I and our son were all involved. But sheesh. I was so glad that most of the dysfunctional adults above did NOT move along to boy scouts. So yeah, when my son moved on to boy scouts, I sure needed a break. But it wasn't from the boys!

Melgamatic, I understand where you are coming from but I think you are reading way too much into that phrase. "arrange to visit... a troop...you think you might like to join" is a very conditionally phrased requirement. As in, "if I were planning to continue on to boy scouting, then I think I might like to join troop A." Or "I'm not sure whether or not I want to be a boy scout, but I would at least consider Troop A, if I decided to continue in the program." As such I think it is possible for any boy to complete this step, regardless of their current intent on joining/not joining.

"So the Question of the 21st Century will be. . . can the muslims do it? " Actually I think the turn of the conversation on this thread has demonstrated rather clearly that the question might just as well be "can we do it?" People should be careful - their nativism is showing and it isn't pretty.

hrm? I must have missed where hard-working, upwardly mobile people were supposed to be denied entry to America because they were the wrong religion.

Kittle, Here's my take. First, read all you can/want to and what Kudu recommends is probably excellent reading. It has nothing to do with your decisions between WB and resource camp though. Second, WB is great fun and a worthwhile experience. I think you might enjoy it more if you aren't feeling half-guilty about doing that instead of being with your son. Third, as dg98adams mentions - teenage boys don't usually invite their moms to do very many things with them. Unless you have a boy who needs an independent experience, I'd say take his offer. If your son is the type who has a hard time with distance, then you need to evaluate his reason for asking you to go to camp. Does he just want to share something special, or are you his crutch? You're the only one who can answer that. But I know that if my son were to invite me to go to camp and I could do it, I probably would. He's been independent since the day he could walk and he'll be off to college and then adult-hood pretty soon. Tough choices, hmm.

Hi there Norman, One tradition that my son's troop has is to collect some ashes from the campfire at big events like summer camp. They have an ash tin that contains a mix of ashes from the last 20 years or so. At the closing camp fire of an event they'll mingle some of the ashes in the tin with the fire. Then when things cool down they'll replenish with ashes from that fire so that they can "keep" the memories and experiences. It is a nice idea. The boys take it seriously and I've seen a few older boys in tears as they mingle the ashes at their last summer camps or campfires with the troop before they age out. At the pack level we came to the same conclusion you have reached. One thing we did was to start modeling pack spirit. Adults showed up to the PWD wearing matching PWD shirts that a committee member made for us. Adults started doing run-ons at pack meetings. The committee made its own flag. Silly as it was, pretty soon the dens started catching the spirit too and new den flags, totems, skits, and other signs of life emerged (that adult-led aspect works better for packs than troops I think). Hope this helps. By the way I grew up in WNY about 10-15 miles from you. You guys still buried under the snow up there?

I got a pretty similar message to what John describes. Our district has a designated GTA guy who is supposed to log all the hours any units tell him about, for the whole district. This has become a district committee position. I've asked a couple of times what the point is in having a district GTA position. Don't get me wrong, the individual in that position is a great guy, talented and passionate about scouting, but I can just see so many other holes that he could fill instead and this appears to be a make-work position. The one answer that has made any sense at all is that it is easier to do PR related to scouting when you have one person that can tell the local media about all the good stuff scouts are doing in the community. But I'm not sure I really buy that either, as we still don't get that much publicity and when we do, many times it isn't generated by him. Scouting for Food still happens (I think) locally but is coordinated mainly by individual units. Some years the actual coordination part is pretty thin. We could do a better job with this. Alas, the GTA position in our district doesn't include organizing Scouting for Food, although it does include recording # of hours of participation.

I'm curious about other people's perspectives on this. Every time I hear about it, I become more ambivalent about the actual benefit of having this formal program. What starts out sounding like a nice idea seems to get overtaken by motives other than simple community service. Some folks seem to take the view that once they have completed the GTA requirements for the year, there's limited value in encouraging additional community service that doesn't result in a patch or doesn't fulfill any particular requirement. Lesson to the kids: community service is a once-a-year effort motivated by getting something, instead of an on-going effort motivated by community spirit, empathy, and good will. Some folks get so caught up in logging the # of hours that they enter all sorts of odd things. Locally, I've heard of a few pretty dubious "service" efforts in this department. Some folks seem to be more interested in getting some kind of recognition for the hours than they are in improving the lives of people in their community. It all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Heck, this is the Boy Scouts of America! Boys ought to be encouraged to "do a good turn daily" because that's just the right thing to do and part of being a good citizen and community member. If they want a reward, it should be the smile they bring to someone's face, or the knowledge that they helped and the good feeling that comes with that.

Baden, I completely disagree. These sites are public spaces, but kids often do not realize the potential range of their online actions. To make a comparison: if a boy in the troop were standing on the corner in his town, drinking and carrying on, would you expect that the SM would drive past, see the boy, and say nothing? Last year I was on my way somewhere in my town. As I drove down the street, I saw one of our scouts who had just received his license driving (fast, in the middle of the road) toward me. With another boy, also from the troop and a Patrol Leader, on the roof of the car, "hood surfing." These boys are both Life Scouts. The SPL was driving the car right behind them, laughing. He's also a Life Scout. There were a couple of younger scouts in both cars as passengers. That's an example of very poor judgment that could have easily led to the death of the scout on the roof of the car. I've known the boy on the roof since he was 6 years old and in the same wolf den as my son. Yup, I called that kid's mom and told her. And I told the SM too, since this involved our scouts and happened when the boys were on the way home from a PLC at his house. He called the driver's parents. If it had been my kid, I sure hope that someone would have called me. What happened between those boys and their parents is the parents' responsibility. But expecting a scout leader to see public displays of seriously bad judgment and illegal behavior and to stand silently by so as not to upset boys is wrong. Part of building young men of character is to make clear to them when they've gone wrong and what the consequences of their actions are. Often that can be done between the scout and the SM in a quiet way, but not when it comes to illegal or life-threateningly stupid behavior.

There was a case a couple of years ago where some teens got caught drinking and the judge gave them a fairly light punishment. Not too long after, those same teens posted a bunch of photos of themselves drinking and carousing, along with some expletive-laden rants about how stupid the judge was, on a social networking site. The judge stumbled across the site and hauled them back into court. They did not get off lightly the second time.

I'd take it to their parents now. If they are engaging in illegal behaviors then their parents should be told. So should the Scoutmaster (if you aren't the SM) and the Committee Chair. Quite aside from the scouting angle though, you do not want to find yourself in a position of telling the parents AFTER something happens to their kid that you knew about it but declined to tell them.

ManyHats, just tell 'em you mis-spoke, but that what they were doing is still a good thing. Kids respect adults when we're open with them and 3rd graders are old enough to understand that not every good deed needs a tangible reward. (Though, if you still want a reward, there are plenty of doo-dads out there, or you could bring them a special snack at the next meeting or something)

Stosh, I don't disagree but that's kind of not the point. What I wanted to know is whether the objections offered by other adult leaders in the troop, particularly the food cost issue, are reasonable. I've been frustrated that I can't get people to look past that issue. I was kind of wondering if maybe I really just don't understand because I don't typically go on the camp outs (my son doesn't especially want his mom hovering around while he's off camping - and I can't blame him!). With regard to that specific issue, what I am hearing here from Brent, baschram, Mike, gwd, and SMT224 is that I'm not off-target and that this is just another example of adult excuses that don't hold up to scrutiny. I'm thinking of printing this off and taking it with me next time to show people that yes, it can indeed be done.

Stosh you don't offend but it is clear to me that you do offer a very different sort of program. I'm not saying what my son's troop does is always right and I am quite open about the fact that I don't think they follow the patrol method very well, at least 50% of the time (probably more). I am in the minority viewpoint in terms of adults in the troop though, which makes that a bit of a challenge. Please reference the spin-off thread on ad hoc patrols as an example of what I mean. On the other hand, what I described in terms of annual planning is pretty standard practice from what I can tell. In our troop, the PLC is expected to participate in/run the annual planning process although other boys are welcome to take part if they want to. In general I feel the adult leadership has too many fingers in the process, but the boys do make many choices about activities, trips, monthly campout themes, etc. Sometimes they come up with things that don't work very well in a scouting context. One year some boys decided they wanted to spend a week in the Carribbean. Great, but they had no interest in fundraising for it. Their idea was that mom & dad would simply pay and any boys who couldn't pull it off just wouldn't go. Hmm. Another year some boys wanted to do some sort of experimental flight thing (can't recall details - maybe ultralights? hang-gliding? anyway it was something much more serious than just hopping in a cesna and it raised some big G2SS concerns). The point is that sometimes there really are limits on what one can do in certain venues. Nothing saying mom & dad couldn't arrange that vacation or that the boy couldn't go hang-gliding independently, but those are not good themes for a monthly camp out in most scout troops. This business of troops doing an annual plan does not preclude patrols from doing other things on their own. In fact we have a venture patrol that formed for that reason and yes, they do things that larger groups could not do (although you may have seen another thread where I vented a little bit on how that's going recently too). However, realistically, I've noticed it is quite difficult to convince the boys themselves that they can and should be doing more separate patrol activities. Most don't have the time and some don't believe me when I tell them the BSA allows this. So there are hurdles there, some self-imposed, but high and solid none the less. Boys join a troop, not a collection of loosely affiliated patrols. The patrols are a fundamental sub-set of the troop and I certainly would like to see more attention given to the patrol method in my son's troop, but that doesn't do away with the need for some coordination and activity of the troop as a whole. At any rate, what I was describing was typical monthly camp outs where the whole troop could participate. On those, we do not set participation limits, nor do I think it would be good if we did/needed to.

I would describe most of the families of boys in our troop as middle/upper middle class and so there's a bit of a buffer for many of them. However, we also have a lot of boys whose parents work in or around the auto industry or for state gov't and neither of those lines of work are secure these days. The troop is going out of state to summer camp and while the camp looks wonderful (Camp Read in NY), it is a little more expensive than local camps. I think the base fee was $310 while most camps around our area are $250 or so. Add in the travel costs (driving, let's hope gas stays low) and it looks closer to $400 for summer camp this year. A number of parents have voiced concerns. We'll see how many boys attend. So far boys in our troop have been allowed by parents to continue to fundraise and to use their own pocket money to defray costs. But FOS donations have fallen pretty flat.

So in the other thread the topic turned to ad hoc patrols and Brent observes that he doesn't see how you can build patrol spirit when you are always recombining boys due to variations in patrol attendance at camp outs. My son's troop does this all the time, nearly every camp out. I agree with you, Brent, that it destroys patrol identity. The patrols don't truly have their own patrol boxes because when they make temp. patrols for campouts, boys from a bunch of patrols end up using others' equipment. The patrols barely have an identity because they don't actually do many things along patrol lines. Patrol menu planning and duty rosters end up being a joke because if 2 patrols plan menus but then they get combined due to low participation, one of those menus is going by the wayside. Patrol leaders are undermined because half the time they're leading boys who are not really from their patrols which changes the patrol dynamic, etc. Now when I've suggested that we quit it and just let patrols deal with low turn out from tmie to time, I am always shot down by other adult leaders, esp. the CC. The reasons typically relate to food costs, tent partners, and divisions of labor. We give the boys a budget for food (I think it is $11/boy for a typical campout) and other leaders don't think that it is possible to buy food for decent meals on that amount of money for just a couple of people. They argue that economies of size help out when you have a larger group. With labor, I'm told there is just too much to do for a very small patrol and it would be more efficient to combine with other small patrols. And with tents, people say you have to have tent partners for all boys so small or odd #s are a problem and require shuffling of patrols to compensate. My thoughts are that reasons 2 and 3 are hogwash, pure and simple. As for #1, I dunno. Am I unrealistic? Can you not cook two breakfasts, a lunch and a dinner for two people on $22? Any thoughts on how else to overcome these objections? So far I've not been successful.

My son's troop varies between 40-60 boys most of the time. Setting aside HA activities which might require participation limits for obvious reasons, our regular monthly camp outs are not capped. Of course, when the troop does its annual planning, the boys talk through the challenges of certain activities for a troop of our size. And there are some lovely camp sites that couldn't accommodate us. So the boys choose activities that fit with the needs of the troop and we select campsites that work for us. Although that means there are some places that we don't tend to go, better that than frequently setting participation limits on ordinary camp outs. Now if we got a lot bigger (say, 80-100 scouts) then I can see where we'd need to take another look at the way we do things. But I seriously doubt that would happen. 60 boys is a stretch for us and the troop seems to function more effectively when we're between 40-50 boys.

There are some other threads on similar topics, if you use the search function. I know that this came up a year or so ago. In my council, blood drives get scrutinized by the scout executive, the top paid professional in the whole council. They are rarely approved. We had a boy put this forward as an Eagle project in our troop last year and after talking about it, I see why they are seldom given a green light. Due to the nature of the activity, most of the work and coordination is done by the Red Cross and not by the scout in many cases. With just a standard drive, there is limited opportunity for the scuot to show leadership as the rules for collecting blood are very standardized and leave little room for the scout to make decisions, other than what sort of cookies to offer. I'm not saying it can't be done, but this is a project that requires a lot of careful thought by the scout in order to pass muster - at least, in my council.