MattR

Come on guys, be Courteous. You can't tell a book by it's cover. We tell parents how they can help their sons get Eagle as few scouts do it with adults that don't care. Things like get involved, teach your son how to solve his own problems, how the program works are all parts of what we talk about. If someone put that in a book it would be hugely beneficial.

How about fear, ignorance, and a lack of confidence? That's for the scout. For the adult it's ignorance, lack of time, and lack of training material. ​I have no idea why there isn't much better training material available from BSA. The one size fits all method currently used reduces to the least common denominator. Let's face it, you can't fail SM specific training but a scout can not make it to Tenderfoot. So how good is the training? I'm not saying let's fail SMs, but let's help those that want to get beyond the very basics. My guess is this website has the same couple of do

I agree that the adults have to be on the same page. Another important thing is developing trust between the adult leaders and the scouts. You don't trust them to organize and plan a complete campout. Do they trust you to look out for them? If you're threatening them with not getting requirements signed off then it's not a good relationship. If you've been asking them for months to get something done, then they aren't really leading. They're just doing what you ask them to do, and that's too much like going to school. In other words, your relationship with them should model how their relations

You have a PL that's asking for more responsibility. You have a SPL that's burning out at every campout. And your ASMs want efficiency. I vote for the PL because the idea is to develop some leadership. Leadership is about making decisions and living with the resulting glory or pain. If all the PL is doing is filling out paperwork then he's not leading. What decisions belong to the PL and what belong to the SPL, and what belong to the SM? If the SM tells the SPL what all the decisions are and he just passes that onto the PLs, then who is leading? If the SM skips the SPL and tells the PLs d

We have a tradition in our troop that at Eagle COHs there's a chance to tell stories about the scout. 90% of them are about something that went wrong on a campout and everyone laughed about. So that's still happening. The better scouts tend to have more stories to tell. Adults that didn't camp or were not scouts as kids are not always bad. I gave my philmont slot to a dad that had not done any backpacking before his son joined scouts. He'll do fine. He is a fishing nut, though, so he does like the outdoors. I also have a parent that was not a scout but did a lot with the Sierra club. He's

I would include a pie in the face. Seriously. Well, OK, you can't put that in the letter, but somewhere in the first pack meeting you should get pied. It's fun for everyone and that's good. Then pass the sign up sheet around.

At summer camp the areas are already booked. there's never enough time to get the scouts that are signed up for rifle to qualify. There are a few free shoot times but the whole camp shows up. I asked about letting patrols go to different areas in the afternoon and the answer was no. My idea of summer camp is some merit badges in the morning and all afternoon for patrols to go where ever they want. I even joined a committee to help make this happen and the answer was no way, they want more merit badge periods because that's what the parents tell them. I don't have the time to fight that one.

I'd certainly like to get away from the scouts needing these week long MB mills. Barry, how does your troop do merit badges all year long and still let the scout do merit badges on his own? As in, call the counselor, do the work, .... Or is it just that you set up your own MB colleges? We used to organize merit badges troop wide and few scouts would finish, so we bagged it. I've tried with little success to get the scouts to just pick the fun bits of merit badges as activities to entice the scouts to do the rest on their own. Anyway, it sounds like the worst case scenario is still better

I think the real problem is money. Camps make money. 16 year old counselors are cheaper than 18 year old counselors. The programs that require certification (shooting, climbing, water, ...) tend to have the best counselors and the scouts get more out of them. How much are you as parents willing to spend? The 700% figure is an eye opener to me. So back in the good old days nobody cared about Eagle, they just had fun? I'm jealous. We just did a review of summer camp with the scouts and it's evenly split between those that want to have more fun and those that want more merit badges. I'd chuc

Calico, of course he's insane, just like all the rest of us that volunteer. The scouts in my troop with any POR volunteer to temporarily put their POR on hold if they know they can't fulfill their responsibility. They will usually find another scout to take their responsibility during this time. These are good kids. There seems to be a few issues with the boy. First, the troop has not given him an opportunity to succeed. Bad on the troop. Second, the boy hasn't shown up. Well, if he had an opportunity to succeed, would he have shown up? Nobody knows. That's water under the bridge. Th

Some civic lesson. A scouter knocks over a rock in a state park and it goes viral, yet when a Federal Agent pulls a gun on a scout it goes ... nowhere? There might be two sides to this story, but still, I get this feeling if it didn't involve scouts this would be getting more coverage.

Nature is timeless and so are parents' desire to raise kids that can be responsible for themselves. Nature is a good play ground that's a lot of fun and also presents a consistent set of problems to help develop responsibility. So the nature/boy match is still a good fit. I agree with Eagledad that the adults don't understand how to use that. I'm not sure they ever did, or at least the BSA never gave them many ideas on how to do it. I think it's more a case that there were a lot of vets that could figure out how to translate what they learned in the military to scouts. And there were plen

Jo, I don't think it would be beneficial to "force the pastor" to do anything. It would likely be better to create a good relationship with him or her. Once a quarter the CC and I go have lunch with our COR. We chew the fat, talk about similar problems, talk about things coming up that might be a problem, and bring up silly little issues like the key. Yes, we have the same issue. Once there was trust developed between us the key became a 1 minute problem. "Oh, sure, why don't we just make you an extra key?"

I'd show him what he did and what is required and then ask him what the right thing to do is. He'll most likely tell you the right thing. Then I'd bring up the fact that grandpa would sure love to do the extra work with him. He might even suggest getting the other scouts to join him with your dad.

There are a couple of details I should add about this boy. My troop has more than it's share of kids with issues. Aspergers, ADHD, PTSD, a kid whose parents are in jail, and who knows what caused by medications (why does it take you a half hour to make a bowl of cereal?). The boy of the OP is probably one of the best kids in the troop at getting these other kids to participate. He has plenty of good to work with. That's not a pass for the bad, but it's enough for me to try. There are other scouts that, if they did this, I'd just show them the door and say that's it. This kid doesn't fit that.

I agree with the rant. This is why I'd like a camp that has few merit badges and more summer camp. Something that would help would be an instructor manual for each merit badge so the 16 year old kid that teaches the merit badge can learn how to teach the material. Another would be to tell the scouts to do all of the explain, describe, and discuss requirements at home, and just do the Do requirements at camp (except for important safety reqs). It would make more time for the scouts to do something besides sit in a classroom and be a lot more fun. Something else would be to do fewer MBs and

And the underlying question is How do we motivate someone to do the Right thing? Isn't that question as old as religion? Or at least as old as there have been parents with teenagers? Or maybe the question is How do we teach scout spirit? The problem with setting a minimum is it can become the maximum and that's the problem we have with it. Rather, what if we ask each scout at his SMC what he should do for his next rank? Then make him justify it and hold him to it. Just getting him to think about it would be worth more than making a flat requirement.

A guy by the name of Maimonides wrote a list of charity types in order of importance (circa 12th century) . At the bottom of the list is when one gives unwillingly and at the top is when one spends considerable effort and teaches someone how to fish. This is in the context of give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime, which, by the way, is a quote I've seen attributed to Maimonides. Anyway, below the top level is when both the receiver and giver of charity don't know who they are receiving from or giving to. In such a case the giver receives no

I spent an hour talking to this boy last night. I spent the first 5 minutes telling him I'd like help him to get through this in a positive way. Then I told him if he ever lies to me again he will be out of the troop that day. Then I asked him some hard questions. He gave me honest answers, some of which surprised the parents. He even told me I scare him but that he respects me. Fair enough. ​It's really easy to talk about character in the abstract. When it's put in the context of real people with real issues, it's much harder. The hard part won't be for him to understand that what

KDD, I won't be setting specific challenges for him, that will be up to him. My tribe puts a big emphasis on atoning for one's mistakes and I'm going to start with that. If this boy's religious beliefs pull him in a different direction I can go with that as well. But I'm thinking something along the lines of admitting he screwed up - remorse and humility - understanding the impact of what he's done to other people and himself, making amends to those other people, and putting in an effort to make the world a better place, just to remind him. He also needs to confront his friendship with the peo

This thread and the "too young to be an eagle" thread are similar in a way. Both are partially about whether a scout deserves Eagle. Both scouts have done the check boxes. One is "too young" to gain the experience and one made a huge mistake. One thing that’s not mentioned is how to motivate scouts, especially when it comes to making good decisions. The best thing I can do to motivate a scout is to praise him in front of his peers for doing something well that a man is expected to do. The other end of that is denying that praise when he does something poorly that a man is expected to do

He has a little over a year before he turns 18. He still has a few merit badges to do, so I was wrong on that. He now has a summons. I've been digging and it's a mess. I don't think he's been doing this for long. He seems to have some new "friends" and doesn't do much outside of scouts. I'm not distressed so much as collecting ideas. I'm certainly not going to yell at anyone. I don't see a difference between any illegal substance, and since he's a minor it's all illegal. I don't trust him and until I do he won't go camping with the troop. I would like for him to earn back my trust but it'

My troop is at summer camp and I'm not. Got a phone call this morning about a scout with marijuana. It was found. He offered some to a younger scout and lied about the whole thing when the adults confronted him. Some of the adults wanted to handle it internally and some wanted to call the sheriff directly. I said go to the camp director and follow whatever process they have. My only rule is he's going home today. The scout is going home, sometime after the sheriff talks to him (camp policy). He's a life scout that has completed everything but, you guessed it, the scoutmaster conference. T

Good samaritan rules? I can't imagine a day of training for that. That would create more problems than it would solve. Imagine what the helicopter parents would do with this info

Peregrinator, probably the same way you do (they're all fixed). At least in my temple there's a mix of English and Hebrew. We sing most of the Hebrew prayers. Considering I wouldn't come within a mile of a karaoke bar, I really like the singing. It gets me in the mood, so to say. What do Catholics think of ad-hoc style prayers at scout functions?