MattR

I'm guessing more poeple die from suicide than arterial bleeding. My friend's daughter committed suicide. It was/still is tragic. What they learned after the fact is shocking. Definitely mental illness. I'm not sure what would help scouters but the idea is reasonable.

I've temporarily changed my religion to Futbol. I have a different take on the Jewish scouts that mumbled through the "prayer." I have a couple of Jewish kids in my troop and they are bright, and well educated in their faith. They would do the same thing. It would be great if one of them started with the Shima in Hebrew but they're young and peer pressure is a big thing. The real issue, as in a lot of these types of things, are people with authority making assumptions. I watch out for these kids so it won't happen to them. Not every scout gets that support. I absolutely agree with en

I'd say they aren't equal (for whatever this has to do with the thread). There's a difference between local and not allowing the refusal of some group. My understanding is that no unit can refuse a gay scout. That's not local. I don't know if locally a unit can officially refuse a woman leader.

I would be fascinated to read anything newly written by Schultz. Talk about someone with a fantastic perspective.

It's amazing how a disaster can focus things. I saw a Shakespearean tragedy of a scout meeting last night. Everything that could go wrong did. I just took notes and asked other adults to let it happen. It would be fun to tell you the details but I won't. The thing that really stuck out was that a lot of scouts, leaders or not, knew there was a problem and didn't do or say anything. The troop guides already had plans for their patrol and "had" to change them. Even at the end of the meeting when I asked how it went I got a collective shrug. Nobody said it was fun. Nobody said anything. Nobody wa

Barry, thanks for the "summary." Now I understand what you've been talking about. I have never seen it written anywhere that adults own the aims and the scouts own the methods. It's not that I disagree, it's just not out there. I'm not sure what it means that the boys own the methods. If the boys "own" uniform and decide it's now optional, then what happens? If they own advancement and say first aid is nothing more than call 911, where do adults fit in? Is it that the adults say we will implement the methods but it's up to the scouts to decide how? ​Working with the scouts to deal

Unfortunately, it's not rhetorical. I think it would be really useful. It sounds easy but character and leadership are about how people interact with each other and that's about as big a topic as you can get. Maybe that's why it's so hard. Slightly off topic but there are some common problems that keep coming up on these forums. It just seems that someone should be able to write down some guidelines on how to solve them. How to work with a selfish boy with parents that enable it is a current thread. The line between adult and scout decisions. Developing trust. The two dozen most common i

His POR problems should have been dealt with when he wasn't doing his job. He doesn't respect the troop leadership because he knows they hold nothing over him. Machiavellian rules take precedence when everyone is selfish. When the SPL sends him home because he can't act like a scout then he'll likely start listening. As for the discussion, he won't change unless he wants to. If he wants to he'll listen to what you have to say. He'll listen if he respects you. and there is some other pressure on him to change from, say, the scouts. (BTW, If his PL and SPL gave him the bad news then you cou

Eagledad, is there some description, anywhere, of how the program should work? Scoutgipper, we also used to be able to send scouts out for left handed, blue metallic, telescoping smoke shifters, and we can't do that anymore because it's considered hazing. Underlying allowing scouts to do something on their own is trust. I agree with Eagledad that it can still be developed with the current system. The problem isn't the rules so much as society and the change in adult perception. Maybe the methods of scouting were obvious when we were kids because kids and adults stayed away from each

My guess is a lot of adults are doing the best they can with what they have. The training doesn't cover 10% of what we talk about here. For some it may be an ego/pride thing but for the rest of us, we've never seen it done right. My solution is to get into arguments with people on this forum to squeeze out bits of wisdom. (BTW, Stosh, now I understand your aversion to the word mentoring.)

The French might not agree with that. But all y'all do have some history with them. Don't pull me into this fight, I've had good food all over the world, even places that speak English.

Stosh, we actually probably agree with each other. If I turned my pyramid upside down then I'd be making all the decisions and the youngest scouts would be coaching the PLs. Mentoring goes down and decisions are done as low as possible. Case in point, tonight's meeting of my troop. The scouts wanted to have a scavenger hunt in our down town area. They put it together and they did a good job. I asked about the buddy system and they already had it taken care of. I did not make any decisions. At the end of the contest a bunch of scouts were hanging around listening to some guy standing on a

Sounds like a high class problem. What's the cause of the change? My first guess is they don't have enough people at the main office to even fix typos, so they aren't in the way. My second guess is they don't have marching band. What's your guess, Cambridgeskip?

I wonder if there's not a better way to describe the leadership in a troop. Assume there is a pyramid then mentoring and guidance go down and decisions come up from the point closest to the problem. If the decision coming up is not what the leader above likes then he has to either just ignore it and go with it, ask the scout below some questions to make sure he's seeing the entire problem, or, in the worst case, overturn it. The last case is probably reserved for safety and extreme cases of poor scout spirit. The main idea is to develop the leadership and trust of those below. So, say a n

It's difficult to quantify and fairly obvious when you see it. Character can be defined as what someone does in the dark (when nobody of consequence is looking). This makes it difficult to measure. So I agree with packsaddle, you have to get to know a scout. And part of that is listening carefully to what other scouts say about him. OA election results, at least in my troop, are very informative. What I tell the scouts is spirit is knowing the right thing to do and then doing it.

I think you just did talk about your faith. We should break beer together and compare notes some time. We have a somewhat similar history. I agree with you that questioning a scouts beliefs in the context of Boy Scouts is bad if it leads to judgement. I've been close to that edge before but stopped after I asked about it on this forum. But just getting a scout to talk about their beliefs in a completely non judgmental way is something I wish someone had done for me when I was that age. Learning how to be that adult is obviously hard. Courteous discussion like we saw here could be a benefit. If

Pack18Alex, thanks for the correction. "wait it out" sounds harsher than I meant. I do the exact same coaching with the Jewish scouts in my troop. AZMike, yes, I like what you have. While I'm not sure how you jumped from an invocation to getting scouts to explore their own beliefs, I would certainly like to get better at encouraging scouts to explore and talk about beliefs. Probably another thread. Not sure if anyone wants to deal with the rules, though. SSScout and Merlyn, great joke, but I knew the punchline before it showed up. He should have pushed him off at about Northern Bapti

That's a different thread. I'd say closer to soccer, band, and robotics, They don't decide where they go. The other activities decide. A lot of kids are over scheduled and more activities are longer and now require 100% participation. 5 years ago it wasn't nearly this bad in my town.

I quote myself: 1) There will be no mention of anything political or legal, including anything from national. Nothing about Dale or the Constitution. Nothing about polls. Nothing about anything the BSA has written about religion or the meaning of Reverent. No nuanced legalese meanings of some phrase buried in some declaration of religious principles. I made this rule up based on a long history of arguments on this forum. Merlyn, AZMike, please start a new thread. For everyone else, PackSaddle asked for feedback in a previous post. I'm curious what you think. Pack18Alex, it

What I meant: One, of the two, should be a PL or APL.

Merlyn, I have a question for you that is 100% respective of your position (which to be honest I'm not completely sure what it is). The original question was how to do an invocation for multiple faiths (or none) and you never answered it. I can see that it's possibly a bad question for you. So let me try and reword it so it works for you. If you were a SM for a troop with all manner of beliefs and you wanted to start or end a meeting with some sort of way for all the scouts to dig a bit deeper and be a little more selfless, what would you want to do? Not many people answered the question but I

There is an issue. If scouts decide who's the next PL by drawing straws ("I don't want it, it's your turn") then nobody respects the position. That's a chicken and egg thing. Nobody respects it so nobody takes it seriously so nobody tries so nobody gets anything done so nobody respects it, and the adults always step in to save the day. Get the adults to stop saving the day, talk to the best scouts and tell them you need their help, ask lots of questions, let them fail, celebrate success. The SPL should be doing most of this but he may be learning at the same time.

Hey guys, everyone gets their toes stepped on in this. Just let it go. It's about selfless. ​SSScout, there's a joke among Jews: If there are two rabbis in a room then there will be at least three opinions. But, joking aside, the lack of clergy reminds me of a quote (Gandhi)I saw: "Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart." Le Voyageur, I was trying to learn about Buddhist prayer and read that some Buddhists don't like the idea of prayer. This kin

I have had two scouts with Aspergers in my troop. I don't know the difference between "high functioning autism" and aspergers but it sounds similar. Your description of your son sounds similar to these two. One of them got Eagle and left because he was so goal oriented he didn't understand just hanging out. He still comes to service projects and always says hi to me. He was a typical teenager in that he didn't like to push himself and would participate in all the fun easy stuff. He liked things done the right way and the only way. The other boy left the troop early and really didn't enjoy scou

Oh my. Nuts is right. How about starting with the interaction between the SPL and adults. The SPL made a decision which, by itself, is a good thing. Honestly, getting a scout to just make a decision is big. The adults are fighting over the decision he made. That is a sure way to crush his confidence in making decisions. What is the absolute worst thing that can happen with the way the SPL broke out the patrols? Maybe some scouts will get hungry. There will be no hurry cases so why not just let the SPL live with his decision? Does the SPL care enough about the scouts in his troop to watch out f