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Builfing block sets. Giant Jenga game. Model ships. Shoe stands.

I earned them as a scout. My kids thought they were neat, but after the first four, they just weighed down your belt. Since I never did scuba, I never saw the need.

So insecure you can't even type "the facts". That seems to be the cycle I have. It even plays out on an individual level. Seen a scout sister go from being peeved at being too young to join us, to not wanting to join until her friends joined, to being caught up with cheerleading and band, to her mom dropping me a line today asking if it's too late to sign her up for our council camporee. Fortunately, it isn't, and I hope to get a moment at campfire in a couple of weeks to ask her what it would take to make venturing work for her. It's really weird. I go from weeks wondering if I even still have a crew to weeks where they come out of the woodwork in dozens with insane plans for some riotous fun! Venturing is a much different animal than two active troops (one BSA, the other GSUSA) under the same roof.

This is where the BSA scout exec earns his keep. "Mr. Speaker, regarding HR #23, we're here for you!"

Congratulations. You're now that channel!

Don't play semantics, friend. A naive prospect would immediately associate a youth movement with that name to the pre-existing movement. If someone proposed such a thing to you in the past, it surely was not to simply tape that name over existing BSA material and carry on, but to organize a youth movent on better and more nobly applied principles than the current movement, Something like "Young Naturalists" would not infringe on the trademark. Of course, it might infringe one someone else's moniker. Start-ups have to do their homework.

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 also be audit flags. But Bugling is definitely one we'd encourage a boy to learn from a capable parent. I suspect any troop you cross over to would be glad to have you as a resource!

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 the rules: 1. Warning. "Kids, sometimes you don't even realize you're breaking a rule, that's okay we'll help you by letting you know once." 2. Quiet Corner. "Sometimes it is hard to follow a rule even after being warned, especially in the middle of us doing stuff. If that's the case, you will find a corner to sit quietly until you think you can come back to follow the rules." 3. Parents. "If you can't handle the quiet corner, that's okay. We'll call your mom and dad, and they can sit with you, or maybe take you elsewhere. As soon as you think you can come back and follow the rules, we'd be glad to have you." It's really tough for kids on the Autism spectrum. The least little disturbance can push them over the edge. But, it means a lot if you will step through the discipline process efficiently so as to *help them* succeed.

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 our nation's best interest if we can "un-Disneyfy" them at least a little. If you don't have that problem in your neck of the woods, consider yourself fortunate!

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 after first class "What's the plan?", I expect them to be able to tell me the rank requirements they need, which badge are they working on right now, and which ones are "on deck."

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. Then we make it clear that this puts members on our mailing list. (I.e. - your mebership gives you "first to know" privelage.) Event fees are on a pay-per-participation basis.

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 patrols at their convenience. And we will do so with or without the BSA. I would encourage you as IH to consider doing the same. And now, if you do it without BSA, you'll save $24 per person per year.

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.