scoutmomma

Talk about the timely appearance of a thread...

I just got a packet yesterday. Felt completely out of the blue to me, though I guess I must have made some sort of positive impression on my DE, who I've spoken to on multiple occasions in the past year.

I actually find myself intrigued by it, but I definitely will ask if anyone else among the troop's adult leaders received it. I was looking at the various topics, and some look quite interesting. It would be a bonus if I could scrape the $ together so my son could go to NAYLE as well (he went to NYLT last fall).

Any suggestions on conference topics to check out for a committee chair?

I thought it was four's a crowd...I just read "ilklings" as "inklings." How about that?

Regarding California's SB777, here is the actual language of the bill:

http://tinyurl.com/yv8vse

Also, here is a blog with a more balanced view (from either side):

http://tinyurl.com/yqe9qf

To hear the left tell it, it just protects kids from discrimination so they can learn. To hear the right tell it, it should be bill number 666 and mandates that kindergardeners be indoctrinated with the homosexual agenda. Most likely the truth lies somewhere in between...I only skimmed over the bill, but it doesn't look like it says teachers must teach what it means to be homosexual, transgender, bisexual, etc. Or that they must teach that it is good. It just says you can't discriminate based on these things.

My goodness, I had no idea I was such an evil person.

Again, this goes far beyond simply "agreeing to disagree."

A fascinating column indeed, and I appreciate Aquila's bringing it to our attention. My internal debate was similar when my son first asked to join Cub Scouts, and later when he decided he wanted to go on to Boy Scouts (though of course I was coming from a slightly different neighborhood, that of Girl Scouting). My ultimate decision to let him do so was based on the fact that I knew he would learn camping and outdoor skills that he would carry throughout his life, if he stuck with it, and I was not prepared to have a discussion with him when he was 6 about my issues with BSA's policies toward gays, atheists and agnostics. I have since learned that I am not alone in my reservations -- there are plenty of other parents in my son's troop who feel like I do. Other than our sons' annual dues, we do not choose to support national financially to pursue these policies, but have chosen instead to support our sons in their troop -- our own version of the "local option." I have had discussions with various council staff members who feel similarly but are constrained in stating so in public for fear of reprisal, and who tell me that being involved at a local level is the best way to effect change. (Not that Council never asks us what we think of the policies.)

Whenever I read or hear or experience anti-atheist or homophobic attitudes from others in Scouting, it is tempting sometimes to just quit -- to remove myself from such toxic attitudes. But I look at my 13-year-old Star Scout son -- two merit badges away from Life -- and see what he's achieved, and I know Scouting is doing him good, and so I stay. And of course now I know and see that he is not only learning camping and outdoor skills, but leadership and self-reliance, and that is a good thing too. As long as he is learning and growing, I will stick with it, and hope that my small contribution of time and energy to his troop will continue to help him and the other boys in the troop learn and grow.

OGE, thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it.

I had said I was done with this thread, but the email system alerted me that there was a response to the thread, so I had read it...and cannot let go unchallenged Nessmuk's implication that I am in agreement with the organization he had mentioned earlier. Nessmuk, my statements regarding homosexuality as not being a mental illness do not mean I am in agreement with that organization, and I am completely disgusted that you would imply any such thing. That's quite a lot more than agreeing to disagree.

I do think it very interesting that a person who holds views contrary to anothers can be accused of holding similar views with the antithesis of the scouting movement

OGE, I don't know what you mean by this, but it's oblique enough to sound like you agree with Nessmuk. Is that the case?

He further states that most of the boys don't care if they waste food because their parents, not them, are paying for the cost of the camp outs (which includes an allotted food budget per person in the patrol).

If this were happening in our troop, this is something that we would bring to the attention of the PLC to ask them to brainstorm solutions to this kind of waste, along with a reminder that a Scout is thrifty. Once they figure out how to deal with the situation, it would be communicated to the entire troop, parents and scouts alike, through our troop mailing list. Good luck -- that would drive me batty, too. My son just came back from a destination campout with a box full of dirty pots and pans (his assigned duty since he didn't cook this trip), and his own bowl half-full of pudding from last night that he decided he didn't like...not as wasteful as what you're describing, but definitely yucky.

Beavah wrote:

Yah, scoutmomma, you're really confusin' this old flat-tailed critter, eh? Lisabob described a common middle school girls phenomenon where a girl is singled out for deliberate, mean-spirited exclusion (often includin' spreading nasty rumors about the girl). And yeh say that's what was goin' on in your unit. Yet yeh also said:

"They [the perpetrators] weren't actively excluding him so much as they were just being oblivious and not noticing his distress (he had a tendency to just get quieter and quieter)..."

Yes, you're right, I did say that. And, on reflection, I guess I was trying to make it sound less our "fault" that this went on so long without our recognizing and doing anything about it. The boy's mother was emphatic that he was being bullied, and we were all pretty defensive about it, and I guess we still are, for my having characterized the situation in a softer way. I wasn't present at the meeting where the ASM sat down with these boys, so I only have his version to go on when I say they expressed remorse -- that, and the conversation with the scout who had his Life BoR this past month, who said he felt bad that he wasn't able to make it right. The 16-year-old, for instance, hasn't shown his face since all this happened and wasn't involved with writing the letter of apology, so I really shouldn't have implied that he felt remorse. (He's a story in himself, that I'm not going to get into.) After all this discussion of the subject, I am feeling more inclined to feel that we were the ones who were oblivious, not the boys. There are more details to the story that I haven't shared, but suffice to say, the bottom line was that we had a boy in emotional distress and we failed him. And again, I say, I have no problem with broadening the definition of bullying if that means our consciousness is raised to the point that we adults recognize and help our kids work through their distress, whether it's "true" bullying or not.

I know it isn't supposed to be this way, but sometimes there is a bit of rivalry between units in the same town, and in that case having the CC for one unit also serve as the UC for the other unit is asking for it.

I guess that's at the root of my wariness. Our troop and this CC's troop have some recruiting overlap in the sense that the boys in our geographic "territory" and theirs both attend the same middle school, and we have some scouts that he thinks should be in his troop, but they chose to join ours. So, yeah, there's a bit of rivalry going there, seeing that we have 36 scouts to their 6. But I guess I will give him the benefit of the doubt for the time being, and see how things go.

To an adult it may be petty, but for the child it is REAL!

Exactly. These experiences in our troop really opened my eyes, and made me realize that the important thing is not to quibble with the scout or parent whether we agree that the problem is bullying or not -- the important thing is to recognize when we have a child in emotional distress, and to figure out a way to help. If that means broadening the definition of bullying, then I can deal with that.

We don't use a bridge, but we do have a large, stepped candleholder, with one candle for each rank from Tenderfoot up to Eagle, with 12 candles lined up in front for the points of the Scout Law. As part of our Courts of Honor, designated scouts light the candles for the Scout Law, as well as the candles for each rank being presented that evening.

Lisabob, that's a pretty good description of what was happening in both situations. And because it involved boys instead of girls, they weren't inclined to talk to adults about it, but were both quietly suffering because they were afraid of being seen as "soft." Once brought to our attention in the first case, it was difficult for some adults to get past the "buck up, get over it" mind-set, until it was too late.

I'm piggybacking on this older thread because I was doing a bit of searching for threads about Unit Commissioners, and this one seemed apropos...

In the three years I've been involved with this troop, including the past year and a half as committee chair, we've never had a Unit Commissioner. Not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing...

We've experienced a great deal of growth in that time -- doubling once and then doubling again. Currently we have about 36 active scouts, and anticipate 4-5 Webelos crossovers next month. We have a pretty even spread of Life, Star, First Class, Second Class and Tenderfoot scouts, and anticipate 2 to 4 advancing to Eagle in the next year. We've successfully transitioned the troop from adult-led to boy-led with an active PLC. We're sending a crew to Philmont for the first time in four years. Our summer camp roster has grown from 6 to 27 in the past four years. We camp once a month, and do our own version of a high adventure trip every year after school lets out. In short, we feel we are doing pretty well.

So a few days ago, we're having a joint meeting with another troop in the area, and their committee chair introduces himself to me, and when he learns I'm the committee chair, starts asking me if I need any help with our troop recharter. I thank him, tell him no, and ask why he wants to know. "Oh," he says, "I'm your unit commissioner."

Huh. I had no idea when this came about. We've never asked for a Unit Commissioner, and I'm not sure what this guy can do for us. I know his troop has been shrinking. And his reputation has preceded him -- I've been told stories about this guy from other adult leaders in our troop, and none of them are very flattering.

Last time I spoke to our District Exec a few months back, he told me he thought we were doing very well, based on our growth and advancement. Granted, I'm wary based on the scuttlebutt I've heard about this guy, but do we really need a Unit Commissioner? So, I guess my question is: what can I expect may happen? I gather that he may want to visit us and so forth, but it's not like we're looking for help.

The second scout I mentioned responded to the taunting by punching, and it only got him ostracized at school and in his patrol.

Yah, IMO this is an example of behavior that isn't bullying, it's a reaction to being pestered and annoyed for attention, by a lad who isn't reading the social cues being communicated by other boys. Like skeptic describes, this is fairly common. Perhaps the classic is the annoying younger sibling who doesn't accept the message "hey, I want some space right now" and keeps pestering his older brother. So the older brother naturally "ups" the strength of the message... and keeps upping it until the message gets across.

A lad who repeatedly pesters or annoys others for attention and doesn't "read" the negative response well or ignores it (or enjoys it) gets others to "up" the strength of the message into personal criticism. If then he responds physically to the criticism it will get him ostrasized. This happens sometimes with ADHD and Asperger's kids, eh?

And where do you get the idea that this scout was being taunted because he wasn't reading social cues? You really are whistling in the wind here. Believe me, the taunting was not due to one scout misreading social cues. Considering it had been going on since October before we found out about it, it was bullying.

I'm not looking for suggestions on how to deal with these particular situations. We didn't handle the first situation well, but I'm satisfied that we are addressing the second situation in an appropriate manner.

Beavah, perhaps your comments might be helpful to someone else, but they really don't apply to either situation in this troop. You are lacking in information to truly understand what was going on in either case, and I'm not interested in spelling out more details until you know the entire situation. I only brought these situations up in the first place to explain why I was glad to have BSA add these rank requirements -- because they helped us in dealing with the latter incident, and offered us a platform on which to speak to our scouts about bullying without pointing any fingers at boys who have the typical adolescent reticence about having unwanted attention paid to them.

I understand that not everyone agrees that these requirements have been added. That's fine -- we're all entitled to our opinions. But I'm glad to have them added, and I'm tired of having others here tell me that we're not dealing with the situation properly within our troop because it's not bullying.

Here's a part of the story you didn't include:

Mr. Brockman says that all of his scouting activities are made possible because he receives administrative support and help with recruitment from the of the Cradle of Liberty headquarters. Take away the scout building and Mr. Brockman loses the professional staff he relies on.

This opinion piece makes it sound like all Scouting in the Philadelphia area will fold without this building, which is just plain wrong. Cradle of Liberty Council conducts most of its business from its Valley Forge headquarters.

And the Wall Street Journal's headline uses that word "war" again, which is completely over-the-top. And if the city was serious about wanting to evict CoL, they would have done so long ago.

Ignoring someone or not doing something because someone is being bullied by another is not bullying! This is the kind of stuff that happens when we go through these fads! Terminology gets skewed & the meaning is whatever someone wants to have it fit for them! Little Billy is being bullied by his friends! How? They are ignoring him! Give me a break!

Ed, that's how we felt about it for awhile, too. And that attitude cost us a scout and a troop committee member -- shamefully we were too caught up in an attitude of "they're over-reacting" rather than "how can we help?" My point is that it does no good to tell a scout "you're not being bullied" and sending him away. His feelings were his feelings, and his pain was real. We failed him by not figuring out a way to help him resolve the situation other than by quitting Scouts. I can't say that I agree with how his mother dealt with the situation but I also can't discount her feelings and her son's feelings simply because we disagreed about what constitutes bullying. One of the scouts involved in that situation came up for his Life BOR last month, and we talked with him about the situation. He was still feeling bad about it, and told us that one of the reasons he still felt bad was that he never got the chance to make it right. He actually has been involved to an extent in defusing the second situation, and has been keeping an eye on the boys involved in that. So I think we have made progress in getting some of our scouts to be a little more sensitive to how they are treating each other.

But now it seems not paying attention to someone because you're hanging out with your own friends is "bullying" in scoutmomma's unit.

You're mistaken in this statement, Beavah. The scout who quit was being ignored by his friends. He was also being teased by the 16-year-old, and his 14-year-old friends did nothing to intervene, but chose instead to ignore him.

And the scout who was being taunted and ostracized was being taunted by his friends who couldn't recognize when teasing crossed the line. The ostracizing began when the put-upon scout started hitting.

Me, I'd offer the following tried-and-true ways to prevent bullying:

1) Teach a kid real skills, so he is confident. Give him opportunities to use those real skills with friends so he is recognized as competent and confident, and has his own "gang." You know - Patrol Method.

Both scouts I mentioned did have their own "gangs" -- the problems were occurring within a patrol. And the second scout was confident enough to have been recommended for and attended NYLT. He missed a troop camping trip because of it, and the trouble started when his friends refused to recognize the value of what he had done, instead continually telling him how the trip he'd missed was so much better than NYLT. And since he's the only member of the troop ever to attend NYLT, there was no one else in the troop to back him up on what a great experience he'd had.

2) Develop a unit culture where the Scout Law really matters to kids and adults, so a bully stands out like a sore thumb and himself gets ostrasized. Pay particular attention to things like troop elections, where social pressure is most obvious. The strong should get recognition by how they lead and protect those who are weaker. You know - Patrol Method.

This is where we are now concentrating our efforts, as well as discussing one word of the Scout Law at each troop meeting -- emphasizing that the points of the Scout Law have real, practical meaning, and that none of them stand alone, but are interrelated. We also have been talking about the issues at PLC meetings, as well as on an individual basis with scouts at Scoutmaster Conferences and Boards of Review. Ironically, both scouts who felt bullied were members of the PLC -- one being the troop scribe, and the other an assistant patrol leader (subsequently elected patrol leader). Keep in mind that we have a very young troop, with 85% of our scouts under the age of 15, including 8 out of 9 members of the PLC -- SPL and ASPLs included.

3) Punch da bully. Hard. Repeatedly. Yeh don't have to win. Yeh just have to show that you aren't going to be an easy victim. Not patrol method, but works nonetheless.

I can't believe you would seriously suggest this as a solution. Yeah, when we were kids, this is what our parents told us. This kind of behavior these days will get a kid suspended from school and is not tolerated in my son's troop. And it doesn't work, either: the second scout I mentioned responded to the taunting by punching, and it only got him ostracized at school and in his patrol.

It's a chicken-or-egg argument how any of this even got started in the troop. It's not even important who started what. The important thing, as I see it, is to recognize the signs and address them before they escalate. I'm sure we could have dealt with the situation with the first scout and avoided his resigning if we had recognized what was going on as being bullying behavior. But we were too stuck in our own childhood definitions of bullying, and passed things off as "boys will be boys" until it was far too late to do anything about it. And we lost a fine First Class Scout, who left the troop bitter and soured on Scouting, through no fault of his own. The failure was at the adult level, as far as we're concerned.

As I've said previously, to the extent that the new requirements have given us a platform on which to address these very real issues, I am relieved, not angry, that BSA has added these new rank requirements, particularly in an age where we continue to hear about cases of school violence that are escalations of perceived bullying.

If a kid feels like he is being bullied, I may or may not understand where he's coming from, but I can't discount his pain or distress simply because I don't agree that what he's dealing with is bullying. The bottom line is finding a way to help the scout deal with the situation, whether or not I agree that he is being bullied. These 13- and 14-year-old adolescents have enough problems dealing with their changing bodies, hormonal mood swings, and shifting social sands -- if one of them is distressed enough that the situation is brought to the attention of the adult leadership, we need to deal with it on a level beyond "everyone goes through this -- you'll get over it," which far too often seems to have been what these kids have been told.

I saw Nessmuk's original, unexpurgated message, and found it extremely offensive, so I thank OGE for editing it. As for the rest of the message, well, knowing that Nessmuk continues to assert that homosexuality is a mental illness, I don't see any point in further discussion. I'm done with this thread.

Thanks to DanKroh and Packsaddle...

Nessmuk, you may find James Dobson an authoritative source on psychology matters; I don't. He thinks homosexuality is a preference that can be "corrected" through counseling, a view that is rejected by the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the American School Health Association, the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Education Association -- see http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/justthefacts.html

I wrote:

Our adult leadership had several lengthy meetings to discuss HOW to deal with the situation...which ultimately we were unfortunately not able to resolve and the scout and his mother (a member of our troop committee) resigned

And FireKat responded:

This is what usually happens, the kid being picked on has to stop it by leaving. Tell me, scoutmomma, what happen after the boy left? Were the instigators ever delt with or was the whole thing dropped? Why did the same thing happen again? Same bullies?

The main complaint of the 9th grade scout who left was that he was feeling excluded by four other boys (three other 9th graders and an 11th grader). They weren't actively excluding him so much as they were just being oblivious and not noticing his distress (he had a tendency to just get quieter and quieter), and by the time his mother brought it to our attention, it was too late as far as she was concerned. One of our ASMs, the father of one of the boys involved, sat all of them down to ask specifically about their behavior, at which point, the lightbulbs all went on over their heads, and they became very remorseful and wrote a group letter of apology to the other scout, which they hand-delivered it to his home. But it was too late by then; his mother had already informed us that they both were quitting the troop.

The second situation involved different scouts, three 8th grade boys who had always been close until this happened, and a fourth 8th grader who has always been in the periphery of the other three. This situation involved name-calling and intentional ostracizing, and one of the original three was pushed to the periphery in favor of the fourth. This was going on at school as well as in the troop. The school guidance counselor has met with those boys, and in the meantime within the troop, our only non-parent ASM sat them down and talked to them about how many points of the Scout Law they were violating by treating each other that way, and that he expected better of them in the future. For a couple of weeks, they just avoided one another; now the iciness seems to be thawing, and they are starting to talk to one another -- civilly -- again.

Neither situation was common knowledge throughout the troop. And we have continued to have adult meetings to discuss the fact that we need to pay closer attention to how our scouts are treating each other. Our biggest concern was how to bring our concerns to the troop without naming names and pointing fingers, and as I said the new rank requirements gave us a platform on which to bring the subject to the attention of the troop without singling anyone out.

My son attended NYLT last fall as a 13-year-old Star Scout, and I have seen a definite change in how he handles himself -- he has clearly benefited from it. But I agree that you need to make the decision based on your knowledge of the scout in question.

Ironically, right before these new requirements came out, we had a scout in our troop quit due to what his mother characterized as bullying -- and none of the adults recognized it for being what it was, as we were all laboring under our own childhood memories of what constituted bullying. Which was not what this boy was dealing with. Our adult leadership had several lengthy meetings to discuss HOW to deal with the situation...which ultimately we were unfortunately not able to resolve and the scout and his mother (a member of our troop committee) resigned.

So when the new rank requirements came out, I was not angry -- I was RELIEVED to have a platform on which we could begin addressing these issues in our troop. We have resolved that we do NOT ever want a scout quitting because of bullying issues.

Then fancy our surprise to find ourselves dealing with a similar situation within a couple of weeks of the new requirements coming out...and THIS time, felt prepared...and were able to resolve it in a much more satisfactory manner.

So count me among those who was happy to have these new requirements added. The scouts aren't confused about them either, because they've been hearing about these issues at school. It's definitely not over their heads...

The "official" answers, as far as I can tell, are here:

http://www.scouting.org/boyscouts/resources/32215/rankchanges.html

First of all, I am not "scoutmamma," I am "scoutmomma."

But don't make up some cock and bull story that homosexuals, unlike heterosexuals, somehow lose their appetite for boys, but somehow heterosexuals switch gender preferences when the subject goes below a certain age.

I'm not making up stories, I'm providing links to information and research. Homosexuality does not equal pedophilia. Homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to be pedophiles. Homosexuality is not a mental illness; pedophilia is.

(This message has been edited by scoutmomma)