qwazse

Tact and discretion are learned behaviors. Scouting does little to instruct people on these specific behaviors. That said ... The best you could do is to tell parents how their behavior affected the other children and teach the other children how accept the fact that by definition not everyone can be everyone else's BFF. By the way, this affects boys as well, but not nearly to the degree it seems to bother young girls.

Bears and rattlesnakes, I can make my peace with. Filing just gives me the shivers ....

Sounds like you'd make a great counselor. Keep up with the trainings, and respect the troop rules. Generally our troop frowns on a boy getting lots of required MBs from a parent. Our district advancement chair told me he starts looking more dubiously at Eagle applications where the same counselor was used for more than three MBs. It's not that they won't approve the application if the board of review is convinced that the candidate knows his stuff, but they will ask more questions. Kinda like taxes: sure you can put down certain write-offs, but you might not want to because they could als

BD, no surprise there. Some crews are formed just to serve the needs of the council. Most of us are a far cry from giving our young adults real authority. SR540, thanks for the window into the syllabus. This is where we fall short. Our VOA had become mega-event planners with little leadership/management responsibility. Calling around for venturers to come out and present their program to WBers would have been far less kludgy than watching our staff "go through the motions" of swearing in as a new crew.

Use very simple rules. A short list that a co-teacher helped my 3-4th grade Sunday School class come up with many years ago: 1. Respect others, 1.a. Talk in turn, 1.b Show kindness. 2. Stay on task. 3. Have fun. Have them on the wall to point to if a child is disruptive. (E.g., if he's complaining about a snack, point to rule #3. Scouting is about being comfortable in your own skin. So, you must learn the discipline of finding joy even when you would prefer things to be different.) Use very simple consequences. The kids need to know that you are there to "help" them succeed with

Yeah, NAE. BD and I aren't all that bothered about the young women who are out hunting and fishing with their families, or the ones in girl scout troops where the mom steps it up and provides a serious outdoor program. I do have a few of those, I'm sure BD wishes he had a few more. We're looking to serve the young women who as girls kept watching their brothers go on outings while they were "shut out" between ages 11-13, and now need to challenge their "comfort level" before they can even relax enough to enjoy the outdoors. They've become "mall girls", and for a number of reasons it's in

Two things you have to ask yourself: 1. Who pays for the testing? 2. Will it be reliable? It's one thing to screen folks for routine 1-on-1 contact. But there should be no 1-on-1 contact in the BSA! Is there a test that will find the guy/gal who will violate the 1-on-1 principle? Can you identify the person who will assault their colleague before the do it?

NAE, Please define staff? At the course which I attended we had some boy scouts teach a few segments (e.g., they demonstrated model campsites). Was that what you were talking about? Or, were these kids also guides and instructors? I find 14 y.o. WB-ers a little discouraging, not because it hurts the course, but kids only have so much time, and we need ambitious youth like that investing in youth programs like Kodiak treks.

My two favorites: 1. Two altoids tins: one for partial blue cards, one for completed blue cards. Store in the box where he keeps his MB sash. 2. 3-ring binder + baseball card sleeves. A divider for completed cards, partials of required badges, partials of elective badges. Either way, make sure he records the names of completed MB's in his handbook. From the incomplete ones -- especially electives, I would have him pick one that he will work on immediately, and only focus on the requirements for that. If there's a roadblock, he can switch to another badge. But, when I ask my scouts a

If it can be done without being a distraction to the boys, you should do it. TT, I know some places "in visual range of others" in your neck of the woods that at certain times (e.g. Spring Break) would pose a serious distraction.

Troop policy. I'd wager there's some history behind it. Maybe packs weren't giving feedback when a DC wasn't measuring up to expectations, and the boys were starting to use the position (maybe not in that pack, but others) as a way to do little but get credit for rank advancement. Maybe there was a time when every so many boys were DC's and none of them were free to be PL or QM. Anyway, you would do well to talk to the SM and ask why that's the troop policy.

Not sure what kind of smoke-and-mirrors my council will take. Generally speaking our council presidents have not countenanced attempts to ad any more BS (other than boy scouts) to the BSA. What should you do? Well, a scout is trustworthy. I would not countenance any advertising on my unit's behalf that did not disclose that additional costs of participation will include unit fees which may partly be offset by fundraising or scholarships. For example, our crew's current registration fee is $1.50/ month remaining in the year. That ensures everyone will have contributed to the unit charter fee.

A scout is helpful: he learns to function independently of adults. KDD, for a lot of us the restriction smacks against the very core of the Oath and Law. Blindly following it deprives the nations youth of the pinnacle scouting experience. (Many scouts cherish their patrol camping memories above Jambo and all of the HAs.) Worse, it could potentially deprive the nation's highway and byways of youth who could potentially rescue someone in harms way. That, at its core, is a paradigm of disloyalty. Our duty to country mandates that we reply by encouraging capable youth to camp overnight in

Wow, Stosh! Lesser deities miht be insulted by your proclamation!

Not necessarily a violation, but certainly a YPT failure

And that's why registration fees keep climbing. We all are getting more pathetically dependent on pros for everything. Way to go entitlement generation!

Those of us in PA are willing to bet a divinsion I college football program that a 2nd adult does nothing to prevent lawers from tearing you apart for thinking that somehow that will prevent a skilled predator from grooming. Get your head out of the sand and think about safety. Real safety. Boys are safer with a buddy.

Oh, for the love of Akela .... Don't anybody dare call national and ask them for a rule! Like BD said, it's a pin that gets swept off the floor at a pack meeting if it's not stashed in a box in the kid's sock drawer! The JTE metrics make no mention of pins. It doesn't even mention summertime activities. Give the Webelos Tiger Pins and the Wolfs Webelos pins and see how it changes the color of the ribbon on the pack flag or the knot on their uniform 10 years from now ... IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. What matters is that the kids have active summers and feel proud about it.

I'm not too bothered about data mining. Anyone who thinks that's not happening with shared google documents or Facebook events is Internet naive.

Another evil twin! Thanks for coming out of the woodwork.

I would love to know how to catch a runaway horse!

Why? Because the likelihood of any further risk minimization with that second adult is very very small, possibly to the point of being unproven. One can imagine scenarios where risk increases with that 2nd adult. This is offset against program being denied to otherwise competent junior high and high school boys. One vital aspect of that program is teaching a boy how to safely interact with adult resources. Teaching a boy that he and a buddy cannot contact an adult in the absence of another adult undermines that aspect of the program. I'm in favor of keeping monsters at bay. I'm not in

Sorry, I've found some of the program issues, like hashing out the difference between teach a topic and counseling an MB to be more engaging and relevant to the time of year. If I think of something that someone may take with them to the next campfire, I'll chime in. But until then, like Pack said .... Ding dong diddly um day.

I'd call him a bear from the beginning of summer. Your erstwhile tigers would get the wolf STA. I'm sure some folks here would say the opposite.

Those frames are above the boy's pay grade! But, talk your budget over with your parents, and discuss what their goals are wih their boys. They might just be up for the challenge. Our daughter was cub age when my wife and I took up stain glass as a hobby. That drained our wallet, but my wife made some spectacular pieces, and Son #1 and my daughter did some really nice work as well. I made one piece that proudly hung in a coffe shop for a while until I gave it to a friend. It could have turned into a real occupation for us if we needed it to. So $80 for supplies, and my family gets a chance