mbscoutmom

Twocubdad, I already apologized and said I was finished with this thread. You didn't need to add another attack. Now I would like to ask the moderator to please delete this thread, but not the other one. The posters there have been kinder in their comments and have given me some information that may be helpful to me and other people in similar situations. (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

Oak Tree, you seem to want me to stop posting here, but you asked me some questions, so I will answer them. "Someone at the Chartered Organization must not want you at the meetings. Who told you that you are not allowed to attend?" The CO, but he told me the reason was because the council forbade it, and as soon as the council tells him I can attend meetings, he will allow it. "A parent recommendation is one of the requirements for Eagle. How was that handled?" I have no idea. "Plus, you signed him up for Scouting. You did sign him up, right? And didn't have him remov

moosetracker, thank you for your courteous response to my question. Lisabob, and everyone else who reads this, I'm sorry if I have offended you by posting here. I thought y'all could help me understand the troop leaders' thinking about what my son was doing, and you have, so thank you for all of your responses. And if my son or anyone in the troop is reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you for anything you did that inadvertently or intentionally hurt me, and I ask you to forgive me for anything I have said here that hurt your feelings.

I am already allowed to attend courts of honor, and the CO has no personal objection to me being there. He is just trying to follow the directions from the council as he sees them. And once he makes a decision he does not change his mind. The only way to change it is to for him to receive new directions from the council. Thank you for the reference to the guide to safe scouting. That may help.

"None of us here have the details to say one way or another." What details do you need? I told you that he deliberately kept information from his parents that we had a right to know. In that act alone, he broke several of the scout laws to some degree: trustworthy, loyal, kind, obedient, friendly, courteous, and reverent, and maybe cheerful and brave as well. (I'm looking at the explanations of these laws here: http://usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/bslaw.asp) Based on the responses here, I have another question. Do the scout oath and law really mean anything anymore? Do we expect scou

Eagle92, I'm getting the picture. It's scary how much harm someone can do to an innocent person and they have no way to fight back. In my case, my son did not directly cause my membership to be revoked. He was locked up with no way to contact the outside world at the time, and I doubt that he would even have thought of it. An adult leader in our troop must have reported it to the council.

"A Board of Review with a lot more information made a decision." The information they had is something I wonder about. I have not been present at one so I don't know what kind of questions they ask. For my other son, I made a scrapbook to take along, and included pictures and awards received in scouting and in other activities. I was told that they wanted to know that he was a well-rounded person. Would there have been questions about his home life or how he gets along with his parents and siblings? If they knew he was on probation until his 18th birthday would that have had an impact on

"Gee, I thought the question was "Does every boy deserve Eagle?" Apparently that really wasn't the question. So what's the question now, should your son have been awarded Eagle without your permission?" Sorry for the misunderstanding. "Does every boy deserve an Eagle" is the title of the thread, but the original question is this: "My question: did he deserve an eagle when he was breaking several points of the scout law while getting it?"

"My point was even if the Council said you were ok to return your CO can still exclude you." Okay, I understand now. But the CO wouldn't do that. I'm only an "unacceptable risk" to the BSA. In the same buildings where I'm not allowed to enter a scout meeting, I teach Sunday School to 25 6th and 7th grade boys every week. If you met me, you would not seriously think that I could physically harm a boy of boy scout age. I'm a 56 year old grandmother of small stature with arthritic hands. My son's accusation had no substance. From the time he arrived in our home at age 7, I couldn't even run

"Something doesn't make any sense...... I doubt that the council would act on just a rumor In my opinion, your selfish needs are not worth the risk you pose to the boys whether the accusations are real or not....." It doesn't make sense to me, either, but it happened, and you, like the council, are judging me with no evidence. "You have lost your oldest, instead of worrying about scouting maybe you should focus on the other two...." I completely agree. "Done with this conversation......" Bye.

"I understand perfectly why the CO, SM and CC don't want you at the meetings......" Because I insist on people understanding what I say and not reading other meanings into it that are not there? I never said the CO, SM, and CC don't want me at the meetings. They never said that, and in fact they all have supported my efforts to be reinstated.

I didn't come here to rant. I came to ask a question, but you asked me a question, so I will try to answer it. "What did the leaders and your son say when you accused the SM's wife of having ulterior motives?" I didn't say she had "ulterior motives". I said "her own reasons". You have interpreted what I said in a negative way, and that is not what was meant. "When you accused them of working behind your back?" I didn't accuse them of anything. There is no denying that the eagle was obtained without our knowledge. I stated in the first post what they said when my husband ta

"District or Council cannot tell a CO or Troop who is allowed to attend meetings." Are you saying they can't tell them whether I can or cannot attend meetings? The letter revoking my membership stated that I must "sever all connections with scouting." The CO interpreted this to mean that I could not be at meetings or other scouting activities. After talking to someone from the council, he revised that to say that I can attend events where parents are generally invited, but not regular meetings, campouts, or other events. So, for example, I could attend the annual scout banquet on Fri

Thank you, ScoutNut. That was a helpful answer to my actual question. shortridge, that's why I haven't posted all the details. If my son and the troop leaders see themselves here, that's fine. Go back and read what I posted, the actual things I said, not a negative interpretation of them. I haven't said anything here that I wouldn't have said to their faces.

Nike, my husband and sons have friends in this troop and don't want to leave it. I'm not going to ask them to leave the troop for my sake, but if it becomes too painful for my husband to be there because of the eagle thing, he may quit being a leader. Thank you, John-in-KC. I have been looking for something like that. I'm not worried about getting into "deeper waters" because there really is no case against me. If they would do a background check on me, they would find nothing worse than a traffic ticket. As for hiring an attorney, it would probably not accomplish anything but making peop

"You mentioned that both you and your husband are scout leaders. Would this be in the same troop as your son? How could you not know he was working towards his Eagle rank?" Because the other leaders that knew about it deliberately kept it from us at our son's request. "And here's something else: at 17 when you state he went to live his SM and wife, he wasn't an adult was he? Why wasn't it possible for you to call the authorities and have your son brought back to your home? If as you say, there was no CPS investigation, why wouldn't they have returned your son?" At 17 in our stat

"You posted some REALLY vague information. I think what you wanted was for the SM and the BoR to deny your kid his Eagle because he didn't do it on your terms." I wouldn't expect him to be denied an eagle if he fulfilled all the requirements for it, and parental permission is apparently not one of them. I did want to be told that he was doing a project, what, where, and when it was, and I did want to know that he was going to his board of review, and I did want my husband to have a chance to talk to him about it. It would be nice to have been asked to help him make a scrapbook to bring wi

"It seems that this post is basically a means for you to vent, and/or get support that the SM and his wife wronged you." No, I'm not just trying vent or to get you to agree with me. As I stated before, I would like you to give me an objective answer. I will restate my question this way: assuming the parents have not deliberately alienated their son, and are willing to help and support(and not by controlling how he does it) their son in achieving the eagle rank as they have helped and supported him all through his previous ranks, should scout leaders assist the child in obtaining the eagle

Thank you shepo1, that was a helpful answer. ScoutNut, I did apply for a copy of the records from CPS and received an automatic response that it could take several months to get the records. Having some experience with CPS as a foster parent, I read that as several YEARS or NEVER. And you are right that it might not help convince the BSA anyway. I really have no idea what would convince them since the only thing they have told me to send them is a final disposition of the nonexistent case and letters of support. From the responses here, it is looking like I might as well give up ho

When a child goes astray, the parents automatically get blamed. I could spend a lot of time trying to explain to you why my son did what he did and why it's not my fault, and not really his fault either. But some people are still going to judge me and assume that since he claimed abuse, it must be true, so there's no point in trying to defend myself in this forum. If you want to answer my questions, please do so. If you want to cast stones at me instead, go ahead. I'm used to it.

I am thankful that my son has turned his life around, but I don't give credit for that to any other adult. He made that decision himself and he would have done it no matter where he was living--he told me that much. He thinks he's doing it all on his own, but he is really building on the foundation my husband and I laid. Hopefully he will realize that someday, but for now there's nothing we can do about it. What I can do is to try to convince SM and his wife that they would serve him better to encourage him to reconcile with us rather than perpetuating the rift the way they are doing.

Since there was no investigation, I have not been able to get anything in writing from CPS.

I wish I could be proud of his achievements, but he doesn't want me to--he doesn't even want me to be his mom. The reason I'm asking this is because I'm too emotional about the whole thing to judge whether or not the adults were right or wrong to help him do this behind our backs. It seems to me that it would have helped him more for them to insist that he do it the way our other son did--with our full knowledge and support. It could have been a time for us to work with him on our relationship. Instead, they helped him shut us out more.

My son lives elsewhere and doesn't want me to know about important things like getting his eagle, so how am I supposed to focus on my relationship with him? I would like to focus more on the rest of my family, and since my husband and two younger sons are active in scouts, a lot of our family activities are scout-related. Since you're trying to redirect this thread, I guess you don't want to answer the question.

Why do you want me to focus on his time in juvie? It's over, and from what I can tell, it helped him focus on what's important to him. Besides earning the eagle, he is getting very good grades in school and has been accepted to at least one college. Now that he has his eagle, I wouldn't try to take it away from him, even if I could. What I want most of all is to someday have my son back, and trying to take his eagle away wouldn't accomplish that.