MattR

I went on most of the campouts my son was on and all of the high adventures. In hindsight I was really glad I went with him because three months after he received his Eagle he took off to Argentina for a year long youth exchange program and we weren't allowed to even talk to him for the first month other than him telling us he made it. He did fine. Taking off for a weekend of independence is nothing compared to taking off for a year to a country where you don't even speak the language. He got into the program because of his scouting experience. The fact that I camped with him didn't hurt his e

Oh man, I'm in trouble. 16 years as ASM & SM that included such things as wrestling, white washing, the "what's that on your neckerchief?" gag, arm wrestling, high fives, the entire troop hugging me for my birthday, the older scouts saying "let's get Mr R!" and the ensuing moshpit with me at the bottom, throwing kids in the pool, water fights on rafts that included throwing scouts off the raft .... Watch how the scouts play with each other. They do touch each other. They wrestle. They pig pile. They jam 6 kids into a 2 man tent and play cards. If you suggest to any of them that what t

I think fun should be an official method. Let's face it, not fun is not motivating to a scout. But think a bit more about what is fun. Different strokes for different folks. This is a really important idea. Trying to treat every kid the same is a mistake. There are a lot of really outgoing and really quiet kids. Treating the quiet kids like they're outgoing could easily put them in an uncomfortable position. At the same time, treating the outgoing kids like they're quiet could put them to sleep. I've seen studies on how quiet kids are the way they are because everything stimulates them. T

@WisconsinMomma, while there are plenty of opportunities for conflict resolution, why waste this one? I mean, learning how to do a practical joke when you're 13 and among people that understand how to do practical jokes is a lot better than waiting until you're in a frat and people are forcing you to drink shots. This may sound extreme but a lot of kids do not have any opportunity to screw up before they're sent off to college where they suddenly have much more freedom and no experience on how to deal with it. This is the whole point. The adults telling the scouts not to do something beca

@Eagle94-A1, this is really good advice that will make your life easier. One way to make the problem smaller is to pick one simple task, like menus, signing off on Tenderfoot reqs, uniforms. Another is to pick a smaller group of scouts to work with. A patrol might work. Younger scouts will more likely trust you but older scouts that want more room might also trust you. Whatever section you'd like to work with it should have very clear boundaries. A patrol, the QM, make it distinct. The wolf patrol doing tenderfoot advancement, for example. I'd stay away from something vague like "all the

This doesn't seem to work with the new SW? @RememberSchiff Instead, Start with the @, start typing their login and a window with options that match will pop up

Getting back to the OP's Q, which was how to talk about it with the existing adults. Here's my boiled down view of the Aims of scouting: teach scouts how to make good decisions. The only way I can see that scouts can do this is to make decisions and live with the good and the bad. You can't talk about how to ride a bike, you have to ride the bike. The same goes for all the people issues that are involved in a patrol. Picking leaders, deciding what to eat, developing skills, washing dishes when it's cold, .... So, the real question is why do the adults want to put in these restrictions tha

No, because I can't even imagine 1) scouts that would walk that far (our town isn't that small), 2) anyone that would allow them on their land, 3) any parents that would allow their kids to walk on a road with all the cell phone based car accidents I've seen. I can almost envision something similar, where parents drop the kids off at a trail head. Still, we have issues with people camping on blm or national forest land and drinking and smoking and shooting off weapons (just a mile or so from the scout camp, to be exact). In other words, I can envision the scouts doing this, but I wou

It's a good list but it's missing two things: Having fun and being in the outdoors. If you show that list to a scout they might not be so interested, so number one should be having fun. Also, we all know how important the outdoors are. Fresh air, away from electronics, ....

I knew the 14 and older program was going away. I thought you meant they were pulling out of Boy Scouts as well. What I didn't understand is how this will impact the 14 and older boys. Is the push to get everyone to Eagle before they're 14? The BSA likes that but I sure don't. The backlash is a shame, especially given how poorly the troop is being run. Honestly, what's to say the new program will be better than the old, given the people that are running it?

on the right side, at the same level as the bread crumbs, there's that icon (that looks more like a newspaper) and "Unread Content"

Good point. I think it's a matter of trust. Scouts won't talk to anyone they don't trust about crap that happens. That's probably true for everyone. Anyway, I've had situations where getting a scout to talk was like pulling webbing from a spider's butt. The scouts did try before I got involved. In one case the scout was conflicted. He wanted to be loyal to his mates even though some of them were treating him like dirt. I had to create trust quickly and the best way I could think of was to just ask him for specifics. He got real shy and I told him I'd probably heard much worse from other people

We tried allowing the entire family to show up for a campout, once. I hate to say it but all the bad things everyone mentions here actually happened. There's a huge pull between the families that showed up and the young scouts of those families that just wanted to be with their family when, say, the young scouts were supposed to be helping their patrol clean up. It just didn't work. I suppose it could work but it would require some severe rules on separation. But what you also asked was whether you could go camping. There seem to be two views of adults on campouts. One is that they should

One thing about thorns, roses and buds, is scouts will often just bring up thorns they have no control over. They'd bring up the fact that the weather was bad but not that one of the scouts would not help out. It's the things they have control over that bring up the best feedback and yet the hardest issues to raise. When I see the struggle with this I also tell them it is indeed hard to do but they'll really need that skill in the future. Once they know that courteous confrontation is hard to do for everyone they're more willing to try. This is why I said in an earlier post that a facilitator

Due to the new software I suspect many people might not be seeing this. All I can say is you're doing the right thing. The Scoutmaster should not just ask a question and sign off a MB. Nobody should just talk about a subject and then sign off cards. The point of a MB is to do the work. What you're describing is a complete disregard for the advancement method. You have to ask yourself what Eagle means under such circumstances. Well, it sounds like you already have, but what can you do about it? What we usually tell parents in situations like this is talk to someone outside the troop. Talk

This is good but BOR's don't happen often enough. I did something similar with entire patrols, just as the manuals mention. Thorns and roses. We got some very good responses from them. It did take an adult to facilitate because the scouts would naturally just grunt and move on. Rocking the boat is very hard for a teenager.

I didn't intend to pick on the moms. I can see how doing something just to make a point to someone else is not a good thing. At the same time, external motivation can be a good thing. Two scouts are best friends. One wants to do something and the other is on the fence. The first says hey, come on, we're doing this. That's external. I've done that to others and others have done it to me. My key point was that, given that there are scouts that want to push themselves, the adults should not be holding them back. There are few that will push themselves so that's a huge resource for the

It's always been an issue with new parents that are looking out for their sons and don't see the whole troop. Quality control might not be the right term. It's an attitude. It's about the scouts figuring this out on their own and adults encouraging them to push themselves. I honestly don't know if this is a guy thing or not but I suspect this is what underlies this whole reason we're at some huge number of posts about moms and girls in scouting. My son, who is now 26, had an idea this summer. He rode his bike 50 miles, starting at 10pm and climbed nearly a mile in elevation, met me at a trail

Not quite sure, but is a descending view one where you look at your shoes? That is certainly not civil disobedience, but who really cares? dissenting?

I wish this were still an option. Besides being really unique and unusual (what everyone was going for with the bright busy patches) it would be simpler.

I wonder if the Pope gets 41 pages of comments when he makes a decision. Probably a lot more.

Look at the Eagle application. There's room on it after the SM && CC signature for the council's signature, called the BSA Local Council Verification, saying the council agrees that all requirements have been completed. There is no EBOR until that signature is on the app. Therefore this whole subject is moot, unless this has nothing to do with proving all the MBs are completed. Maybe it used to be an issue but not anymore. Brian, tell your friend not to worry. If they give him grief at his EBOR he should point to the council's signature and say he doesn't need any more proof. S

My troop went through a phase where campfires were falling out of favor. When I talked to the scouts what was really falling out of favor were the skits. So I told them to do something else and they made up something that was really great. My goal was not the event. It was the hanging out after the main event that was where the magic happened. It wasn't so much the fire as them just being on their own. I've seen the same thing with six scouts crammed into a tent playing cards. The brotherly relationships are still there. Granted, some brothers don't get along but that's part of it. I'm not

I always thought it would be great to have a one day training to explain at least what PLs are supposed to do. I searched and it looks like some districts still do this. It would be great to see a syllabus.

So ask your EMR teacher if you can take the time off to honor some fallen soldiers. Maybe he's a vet. You won't know until you ask. Think about this Brian. Yes, it won't be easy. You might get ridiculed. You might not. You might also help bring a tear to a parent of someone that has died for their country. You're right it's about self esteem. And this might just be the time where you realize that your self esteem is more about what you choose to do than what your friends choose for you to do. One thing us old farts know is that this change will be coming for you. It came for all of us as w