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Really? It's that hard to believe? Let me think of some possible point-by-points that may not make your parents happy, but should help you set a desirable tone. Dads build the cars, it's not fair. Correction: some dads build the cars. I hear from strangers on the internet that some moms do too. Well, is it fair that Johnny loses a finger because his hand-eye is not quite there yet? Thank God they do! Otherwise some of these boys would win too easily. Mr. Smith clearly built his son's winning car, you should not allow that. Facts not in evidence. Talk to Mr. Smith, and ask if he can help you and your son build a car like that. I let my son build his car last year and he came in last, so this year I'm not letting that happen. By all means let your son team up with you or your spouse, if she is the better fine woodworker (yes, in my household that would be Mrs. Q). Also, while you're at it, can you team up with any boys whose dad's are out of the picture? Better yet (show scoutstuff site), here's where you can order blocks for your den, and maybe they can build prototypes before we roll out the pack kits! Awesome! Here's what you do: buy your son five kits. Have him build a car a month until derby day! Let's have all the kids build the cars at a Den meeting and hand them in, so we know scouts made all the cars. And steal a good Saturday away from a father and is son? And what about the boys who want to spend more than an hour sanding out their car? We have an event for that. It's called the rain-gutter regatta. Scouts should make their cars 100% themselves, parents should only watch. Some old fart on the internet told me that they don't realize it, but parents have precious little time left to spend with their kids before they conspire to gather their siblings spouses and girlfriends for a weekend backpack in a wilderness recreation area without you. (Not that he's jealous or anything ... ) Or you could send them to Bryan

I salute with whatever unit I'm serving. But here's a lot of discussion on the topic: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2017/01/23/which-scout-sign-and-salute-do-i-use/

Love the story. Don't be discouraged by the competition hassles. It's part of the character building process. Regarding your difficult scout, refer to my recent post in Scoutmaster Minutes. (Which by the way, I shared with the troop last Monday. I think they took it in the positive light that it was intended. At least I hope no mischievous 1st year is having bad dreams about looking up from the bottom of Mr. Q's latrine.)

Welcome to the forums, Pete! I save poles from spent dining flys and cut and mangle them to size. A pipe cutter, hammer, and vice is usually all that I need.

They need to try harder if they want to compare to the gerrymander that comprises Laurel Highlands Council.

@FireStone Unless my sons asked for one, we made our own woggles. A DL tried to call Son #1 on it and I made it clear we were in full compliance with the handbook, Move #1 should always be a scout making his own slide out of any material he chooses. Well, maybe not out of lead fishing sinkers.

Congratulations! And It's about time! We deal with it constantly in this postmodern culture. And, we follow the G2A, although that even falls short for youth who are more or less emancipated. Sometimes, even the SM will write the reference. In the ancient world, we would not be interested in your "religious leader" so much as your confessor. And, such a reference would be quite brief. Something like: "The scout in question doth confess to me." And, it would be on the virtues of the confessor, not the scout, that the reference would be judged.

To be fair, I lived in Blake's Jerusalem long enough to cook Christmas dinner and hear the Queen's address.

Technically: oxymoron.

Based on my experience as a crew advisor, such tickers would prove to be grossly inflated by the unscrupulous, certainly rife with cub bots of both sexes!

that's funny because up until a few years ago, cubs weren't taught the scout law!

(Caveat: My rule #1 is don't ask for a rule. You'll eventually live to regret it.) Wait? What vote? There's no vote! The SM agrees (not with you or your son, with the letter of the requirements). He signs the book. Worst case: the TC holds its BoR, declares that your son was a total slug over the summer and puts in writing what they expect from him and when they will hold the next board. My SM and I are fine with the TC being obstinate ... on their own time, according to national standards, not according to an erstwhile SM's caprice.

If this matters to your son, he should ask for a scoutmaster conference and go over the ways in which he was active and carried out his position of responsibility throughout the summer.

You're catching on. Most rules are redundant to existing guidelines, they may help folks narrow their focus at a particular time, but they inculcate a lax attitude toward working with source documents.

Oh. Then maybe the job of this subcommittee is to find out which policies are/are not being followed, and which ones are. For example, maybe it was the boys who wanted monthly inspections to keep the adults from wasting meetings with excessive announcements. But, I suspect that actually they are saddled with a goal that's nearly impossible to meet.* This thing needs more strikethrough than insertion. For example, under SMCs. Have: Our SM and assistants will arrange conferences with scouts promptly in accordance with the BSA Guide to Advancement. Actually, I would not have it under "Advancement", it would be under a category "Delivering the promise of scouting." Then there would be another category "Cashing in on the promise of scouting." It would have items like: Scouts will appear in uniform as described in the Boy Scout Handbook when possible. When not possible, scouts will present themselves neatly dressed in apparel suitable for the activity according to Boy Scout Handbook, Field Book, and Guide to Safe Scouting. The SPL may devote meeting time to uniform inspection using standards in the Boy Scout Handbook, BSA Uniform Inspection Sheet, and BSA Insignia Guide. The Librarian will ensure that inspection sheets and insignia guides are the are at the ready for the SPL, and may re-stock the library using troop funds as necessary. And so on. *Just my experience: when boys in their late teens find themselves in what they think are catch 22's, they will quit rather than doing the hard work of resolving the underlying issue.

@Hawkwin your strategy, if anything like the one a former UC and SM tried, will get you all in protracted arguments and only lead to one more document which will be ignored in upcoming years. Proof is in their willingness to ignore the G2A. What you need from everyone in leadership is a commitment to live up to the promise of scouting as outlined in the BSHB, heed the approach to advancement, uniforming, and the safe activities according to the various guides, solicit advice of other scouters by attending roundtable and bringing up questions that you all have, inviting the district advancement chair to your committee meeting to help you do better BoRs and SMCs. That won't come in a policy document. That certainly won't come by bullying the SPL and telling him if and when he should have uniform inspection. Basically, with all I know now, anybody who would hand me your laundry list would be told in no uncertain terms to never let it see the light of day. So, simplify, simplify, simplify ...

Props to you for trying to collaborate with your neighboring pack. Find as many opportunities as possible to do so. One day your scouts will be teens and will tell you how stupid it is that their buddies are in different troops.

Short answer regarding Eagle app: no. Worst case scenario he's a camping maniac, meets requirements at age 11.4 and someone doing the math tells him to wait six months for his BoR. meanwhile he keeps earning MBs and racks up instapalms. Not pretty, but not calamitous. But if he's anything like the one scout in Son #1's den who started a little early, he'll take his good old time, and that gun-jump will be of no consequence. You all sound a little harsh. I'd tell the scout that if he completes his Webeols badge, he can start attending the AoL, then next year he could be a denner for his buddies in his grade and help them to AoL quickly and move on to more fun things. As soon as he meets the age/grade requirements for crossover, he can do so. Talk directly to the scout. If he's mature enough to read, then he's mature enough to know what is required for crossover. Don't make this a committee decision. Read the book, do what it says, flex where you can.

Just like our POTUS needs a scout by the podium to hold a swear jar the next time he addresses a throng of scouts, we need parents to have their scout hold a moan jar for us while they wish for moonbeams. They drop in a quarter for each minute of moan. @Cambridgeskip, at twenty pence a minute, that should give you a bit of extra ice cream, even if the EU pulls a sugar blockade! P.S. - I think our district executive (DE) would be the counterpart to your GSL. Although, as you may have read, we often manage them!

I can assure you that top on the list of unpleasant crew advisor experiences is telling a half-dozen gun-ho girls that we lack the requisite female adults for them to join our expedition. These girls rightly trusted the male adult leaders, so the sense of the YPT rule was completely lost on them. On the other hand, they found (strong-armed) a female leader for the next weekend. I was quite proud of them for the rebound. I can only imagine this being replayed for clusters of girls throughout the country. If you've got a dozen like that, put it on them -- not church, nor troop committee -- to find the woman (and possibly a second) of integrity and dedication who will train as their SM/ASM. It's old school (with just a little more paperwork): form your patrol first, find your leaders second.

If the kid is a bully, then the parent is probably at wits end. He may not have the skills to deal with the situation his son put him in. (Yes it may be more complicated than that. The parents may have done things to frame the kids character, so they're reaping what they've sown. That doesn't change the mess that they're in.) The parent needs your pity, not your wrath. And, pity is really hard to do from a position of leadership. This could be a situation where your son stood up for himself and it didn't go well for the other kid - detention being the tip of the iceberg. I've seen plenty of those as well. If so, unless the two of them figure out how to reconcile differences peacefully, it will not be easy for your son going forward. Teaching a boy to be steadfast through fire requires a lot of attention from parents. Taking a stand while keeping a soft heart takes only comes with lots of guidance. You don't want to be obligated to adult leadership in a troop in those situations. The other adults can be there to help your son, but you need the freedom to hand him off to them, and be ready to touch base on the car rides home.

@TazDevil22, welcome to the forums. It's the CC's and COR's signature on the applications. You could try winning them over, but unless the SM is going around flying off the handle causing you all to be upset one another, they'll take his word about who is or is not assisting him. Take this for the opportunity that it is. Block out time in your schedule to read a little. Or master a scouting skill like a real adult. (For example, now that the young backs have completed IOLS, I'm spending more Sunday afternoons with the local orienteering club.) Also, you might need to sort out what it is about your son that's getting a parent all fired up to the point he doesn't want your boy around. This might mean asking other parent's of your boy's friends to give you a frank assessment. All that takes time, and ASM -- if done well -- drains on that time.

Yes, I know that more than half of our nation's college grads get a job that requires a degree within a year of graduation. Daughter was in the other half, took a year for the oil slump to rebound for her to get a job with the company she targeted.

@ParkMan this is a situation where the troop leaders don't have the stones to call a spade a spade. I've been painfully clear to parents that BSA requires me to have 5 female youth and one female ASM. Without that, no troop. Some CO's may skirt the boundaries on this, I'm pretty sure ours wont. If I were a pro, this would definitely be a situation where I would call GS/USA for their best troop and connect this girl there. I guess that's why I'm not a pro.

LoL! One of our Eagle scouts completed Merchant Marine academy and got his captain's license. Not sure about income, but he's driving some pretty big toys along some very scenic waterways. The path there led through theater. So I agree that trades should not be neglected, but ... I'm not Ivy league in the least. But in general their syllabi for comparable classes cover far more than material. Plus, connections ... I'm sorry, but no High School or trade school in the US would let me splice genes, frequency modulate synthesizers, read the language of my grandparents, and bring a computer system crashing to its knees (unintended hazard of iterative processing). The wife, the kids, and I went through stone cold sober. But, yes, alcohol dependence is a serious issue ... with higher prevalence among college students. It makes for great drama. But most students would resent their time in school being characterized as such.