zippie2223

HI my Name Is "Zippie" - I have been free of the evil nicotine MONSTER for- Five Months, Eleven Days, 1 Hour and 4 Minutes, while extending my life and time with my children 22 Days and 15 Hours, by avoiding the use of 6522 cigarettes, while saving $869.95 toward my retirement. Scouting Helped me quit... got tired of running off in the woods at night, and from getting ugle looks from other parents.

Scoutnut, Last year we lost 50% of our tigers, with one of the two dens never forming (this is when I joined as tiger Den Leader/coach). This year because of Hurricane Ivan and other unforeseen event we did not get into the schools till October. We recruited 12 tigers from two schools. School 1 had 7 tigers, school 2 had 5 tigers boys. The Den leader from school 1 quit by the end of November. I tried to get a leader out of what was left of the den, but the only thing I got was a promise to take over after Christmas. Well after Christmas, the guy that said he would take over said he did not have the time. Den two is still meeting with 4 scouts (one left do to religion Classes). Den Leader 1 said he quit because lack of help from other parents. I know that our program is in need of help. I am taking over as CM in May. From now till May I am getting in contact with other CM's in our district and asking if I can go visit thier pack meetings. All of them are doing B&G this month. Two pack have responded to my e-mail and said I/we could come and visit. Onehour, All I can say is "WOW" I hope to have a program like that soon. We need more parent help...(This message has been edited by zippie2223)(This message has been edited by zippie2223)

I know we have covered this topic before, but here goes... Tiger Cubs, last year we lost 50% this year we lost a little more then that. I have heard that that was the national average. Ok I want to know what other have done to increase their retention of tigers. Our ideas are as followed: 1. Recruit in May before the kids can start filling up their lives with other activities. 2. In May instead of school night recruitment, we are going to have a picnic at the CO. The CO is on a small canal that has a lot of pan fish for the kids to catch. It also has a SIMI-wooded area for the kids to play capture the flag, It, and other outdoor games. 3. Keeping the kids real busy in the summer. We have district or council events every 4 weeks or so. I was going to do a pack event every 4 week are so. This way we keep the kids busy every other week with an activity. 4. Requiring every parent to be trained (Im not too crazy about this one but someone add the idea) and co-run one event a year. Also requiring that two people in each den be on the committee. Let me know what you think about our ideas and add more that we may not have thought of.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of recruiting Tiger Cubs in May rather then in September? I know of another pack that recruits in May. The CM told that its helps them to retain more Tigers.

I have come to realize that I am just a bad judge of people. A couple years ago when I registered as a den leader for my sons tiger den, I looked around and tried to size up the parents at a glance. We had started with six cubs. I looked at the other five parents and said to my self "Self, I would be surprised if parent 'A' is still here in a month but the others look like a go." Well parent 'A' is still with us, while 3 of the other 4 had quit by January of last year. At round-up we picked up 4 new leaders. I looked over the new leaders and said to my self, "Self, I would be surprised if leader 'B' will be here by Christmas, but I really think leader 'C' is a lot like me and may be around for quite awhile." Well leader 'B' is going strong and has even picked up a kid, while leader C dropped at Thanksgiving. New lesson to self, "SELF DON'T JUDGE OTHERS"

I'm having the same problem with our Tiger den, as cubmaster73, it's a little different situation. Our pack is a small pack also (30 after school night). 12 of the boys in our pack are Tigers. We made two tiger dens. "Den 1" had 7 boys, 2 never showed up at any meetings, 1 boy has never showed up at den meetings but shows up at pack meetings. It seems that 2 boys (and PARENTS) have quit but never called the den leader and won't answer the phone or call him back when he leaves messages. This leaves 2 boys, his and 1 other boy who has been to every meeting until last night, the boy who has always showed up missed last nights meeting without a phone call. I got a phone call about 8:30 last night from the den leader say that he is "Hanging it up". That he is tired of trying with little to no response from the parents. I really had nothing to say to him as I too was in the same situation just a year ago, but I had two boys (parents) show up for everything.

The 10$ pants at Wal-Mart looks exactly like the "official Uniform" pants. Why spend the extra 20$ on pant from the scout shop? I don't agree wearing blue jeans and calling yourself in uniform. Blue jeans are too much of an everyday type thing. Wearing the uniform should be special.

"1. Organized the Bear, Wolf, and Tiger Dens. 2. Solicited volunteers to be leaders. 3. Passed out papers for popcorn sells. 4. Collected popcorn orders. 5. Distributed popcorn. 6. Began work on Bobcat badge. 7. Christmas parade. 8. Distributed papers for another fund raiser." Sounds Like a good start for only being active for a month. "So I was pleasantly surprised when he asked me not to come inside the meeting so that he could work on things himself instead of me getting involved and helping him with everything (we work on the scouting stuff at home). Also, he wanted to get involved with the leadership of the den." You have to remember that this is a Pack not a Troop. While Boy Scouting is more of a boy activity, Cub Scouting is a family activity. The leadership roles are left to the leaders and PARENTS. "I approached the Committee Chairperson to inquire why parents must be present during meetings and was told: 1. "I'm not a baby sitter." 2. The Cubs run around unsupervised. 3. The school principal has required that parents be present because the Cubs have been seen running around unruly during the meetings. " 3. Tigers are the only one that needs to have a parent at the meetings, but each den leader can make a rule requiring a parent to be at the meetings. In your case "The school principal has required that parents be present". 1. Den meeting are not a place to dump your child off for an hour a week, this is not directed at you, but a lot of people will do this and never offer to lend a hand. 2. If the parents are there and the kids are still running around unsupervised, there is a parent problem not a pack problem. ...responded to her that maybe they were running around unruly because, based on my observations, that there were no activities for them to do and they were bored." Your probaly right, so jump in and lead a hand. You don't have to be a leader or any thing to run an activity. Bring a box with hole cut in it and some bean bags and play bean bag toss. "...the reasoning for no activities was because they started late in the year and could not do anything else until they completed the Bobcat badge" I though you said that they worked on that already. And yes this is partly true; from my understanding, you can work on things but can't get credit till you complete you Bobcat. "...no outdoor activities during the winter because the Cubs might get sick (temperatures for the last few days has been in the 70s)" When you plan these things a week in advance you don't know what the weather will be at the time of the meeting. I plan all my outdoor activities for when it gets warmer (November is always still warm here). "...if I had such good ideas did I not step up and become a leader. I told her my reasons, but of course they werent good enough." Why not be a leader? I don't know what your reasons are, and they might be very good, but we all have things in our lives. We have one leader who flies all over the country for his job. Once a month he has to leave on about a 24 hour notice to fly out. Thats why he has an assistant den leader. (BTW he is also in the reserves so one weekend a month he is at training.) We also have one leader whose wife just had a baby (two weeks ago) and he works 12-14 hour a day (a UPS driver) during December. I work evenings and nights as a baker, and during Christmas and Mardi Gras (I'm in New Orleans) I will be working 12-14 hour shifts. Last year I had a parent that complained about everything I did. I could do nothing right. So I asked her to run and event, the fire station go-see-it the night before the go-see-it she called me all up-set saying she had not had a chance to set it up. All I'm saying if you see thing not being run right "Jump In" and fix it or stop complaining. Give these people a break they have busy lives too. I have been free from the EVIL NICO-DEMON for 2 Months, 2 Weeks, 1 Day, 23 hours, 52 minutes and 8 seconds or since 9/8/04 (76 days). I have saved $408.06 toward my retirement. I now have 1 Week, 3 Days, 16 hours and 35 minutes left with my children that I would not have if I had smoked 3,079 cigarettes (This message has been edited by zippie2223)

We have never had the problem of kids not weearing the blue pants. It helps that the kid uniform for schools requiers blue pants that match the blue Cub Scout shirts. I would never buy those 30$ pants at the scout shop. You can always buy a pair at Wal-Mart for 10$.

I'm looking for free (legel) downloadable kid songs. Perferable without words, just the music. If you have any site please post them.

Yes use it.

After we get the new leaders trained and the new committee members trained and appointed to thier new positions I will feel a lot better. In May I move up to CM as the webelos den leader moves up to Boy Scouts. He now has 8 Cubbies to try to start a new troop at our CO. I'm looking forward to having only two roles in our pack, CM and Web master. I'm even thinking about given up as den leader so that I can be a better CM.(but I have not found anyone to take it yet)

I joined Cub Scouts last year at round up. I got home and read everything that I could get my hands on. I got trained and started having meetings. I don't know what I expected when we went to our first pack meeting, but the pack was really small. We only had three dens at the pack meeting with a total of 15-20 boys. The meeting was boring for the boy and no one did skits or anything. The next month I showed up at the committee meeting and ask a hundred questions. One of the committee member seemed to get annoyed whenever the subject of money came up (I found out later that the pack had had money trouble the year before). I found out that we were the only den that started meeting after round up. The other three dens that were recruited never started meeting. So we started calling on these guys but by this time it had been two months since they had heard anything from cub scouts. No one was interested in meeting by this time. Well by January I had started to lose scouts. I lose three and when we showed up at the pack meeting I found out that one of the three den that we had had dissolved, the one that the CM ran. So now the pack was without a CM and was down two dens, with a total of 3 boys in my Tigers den and 5 in the Webelo 1s. I talked with the new CM, the leader of the Webelos, and talked about giving up. He said that he would be willing to give it his best and ask me to do the same for one year, and if things did not work out then I could leave with no regrets (this is about the time I joined this board). Then things started to turn around. I started taking every training that came down (expect wood badge, that was out of my price range at the time). We developed a summertime program and I picked up three new scouts during the summer. We had a great round up this October (it was scheduled for September but Hurricane Ivan ruined that, then the public schools had testing the week after they came back to school). The new CM and I basically spoon feed the new dens. We did the first meeting for them then handed them a program book. We offered to show up to the next few meetings and to go with the new leader to training. Our pack has grown from a low of about 8 cubbies to now over 30 cubbies. Last week I found out that the year before I joined the pack, the pack had a big falling out. The old CM was accused of miss using pack funds and the person accusing her quit scouting. The old CM then got mad and quit the pack. All the pack stuff was at the CM house, and then the old CM moved to Florida over the summer. From my understanding we had tents, a pine wood derby track, and a bunch of other stuff. Now wonder that guy on the committee got annoyed when I showed up asking all kinds of questions. He probably though "Here we go again." Well I just wanted to say thanks to this Forum. Without you guys I would have given up, or at least moved to some other pack. This pack has been a labor of love and to see it starting to flourish feels great. Thank you guys/girls again.

I've had to start having meeting at the church that charters us. Last year we had the den meetings at my home, but this year my DSW, Dear Sweet Wife, is working graveyard shift (so we dont have to put our little one in daycare) and it would be imposable for her to sleep in the evenings with a bunch of second grades have a blast in the house (can't ask them to whisper, they would never listen to that foolishness). As for the parents being at the meeting, it's all I ever knew. I pick up my nephew before each den meeting but al my other parents show up to all my meetings and to all our events. We just got a new crop of Wolves that just joined from school night, and tonight is our first TRUE den meeting (why so late? thats a whole other story that starts with Hurricane Ivan). I think that these guys will stay because the Church is on the outs skirts of town. By the time the parents drop them off it and get back home it will be time to come pick them up. One thing I notice, I am reluctant to discipline a kid (take his marble away) while his parent is there. I guess I think that they should be the one doing the correcting, and I don't want to play favorites with the boys so some time I believe I am harder on my son. He is not a bad kid but always loses his marble first (he is always going to his room to get something to show the other boys), but now that we are going to be meeting at the church he won't be able to do this.

Well we can't really start camping till September-October because of the heat. We like camping from September-November and late February-Early June. Never heard of any rule that says you can only camp at certain times of the year.

BW The event is a council level event but I will be leading our pack, as the CM is not going to able to attain. FScouter Yea the not nice person just called and asked if I could cover for him at work so he could go to concert with his girlfriend. When I ask him about the campout he blew me off. I'm so angry at my little brother I could spit Fire. (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

My nephew is in my den. He is a little slower then other kids his age, and sometime has crying fits where he will refuse to listen. He has been held back a year in school (he is in first grade again) but since his cousin is a wolf we aloud him to join our den. His mom and dad are going though a divorce and this may add to his crying fits. Our Fall Encampment is coming up in three weeks. His mother and father (my brother) are to busy to make it to the campout (although my brother is not to busy to attend and all day concert this weekend). Needless to say this is the kind of kid that scouting can really help. I was thinking about asking his mother if he could go with me, but was afraid of the crying fits that he has. I will have a lot of reasonability that weekend with leading the pack at the campout, my scout, and my three year old son tagging along. I know this kid would really love going camping and he really needs it, even if it is just to get away for a little while because of all the stress the STUPID ADULTS in his life are putting on this boy.

We registered 23 new scouts and 4 Leader. We still have 6 boy registrations still out there, I expect 4 of those back. We also have one leader registration that will be turned in tomorrow. That triples the scout that we have in our pack, now we just have to hang on to them.

One more thing... I recently quit smoking>>> I have been free from the EVIL NICO-DEMON for 3 Weeks, 6 Days, 22 hours, 14 minutes and 50 seconds or since 9/8/04 (27 days). I have saved $148.00 toward my retirement. I now have 3 Days, 21 hours and 5 minutes left with my children that I would not have if I had smoked 1,117 cigarettes

Last weekend we had new cub over nighter. The camp sites were right next to each other separated only by a piece of twine. Our pack setup so that we would have a sitting area toward the front left side of the camping area. The pack next to us decided to have there sitting area to the front right area of there camp site (In short, we were next to each other). The tent we had right behind our sitting area was for a new wolf family. The family had a four year old sibling on the campout and I had my three year old son (they are cousins, my brother kids). We let the little kids play in my brother tent (the tent was open at all times). One of the people from the pack in the next camp site came over and was complaining very rudely that the kids were going to rip up the tent and that two kids in the tent was against BSA regulations if they are not siblings. Being unsure of the regulations I told the kids to stop playing in the tent and go run around somewhere else (a play area near by). Now this is the kicker, ten minutes later, the lady who came over and was very rude about the way she said things, light up a cigarette (not only her but three other from that pack). I wanted to be a bigger man about things, so I did not mention that smoking cigarettes on outings is against BSA regulation, but I was a little loud while telling my sister-in-law about the rule. I felt it was the right thing to do at the time but I later felt that I should have said something more. What should I do when I see a regulation being broken? Was I right for not going tick-for-tack with this lady? What about kids who are not sibling being in the same tent, and does that mean that cubbies can't overnight in the same tent?

We had ours schedule for the 15&16 of September but Hurricane Ivan ruin that. Now we have to reschedule. It might be in the first part of October till we can get another opening. Wish us luck.

September 31 is our school cut off date. My son is six and a wolf cub. He turns 7 on the 25th of September.

Eamonn "While I agree with the way you are managing the situation." Thank you. That was the main reason for the post, to see if I was doing right because this could get a little sticky. Especially if the parents are the ones feeding him the JUNK. I do think that saying that someone is filling his head with junk is not very wise." Is racism junk? Is stereotyping junk? "We see someone who looks Chinese or Japanese (Asian) and we want them to be an expert in the martial arts." No not all of us... "We want Englishmen to wear bowler hats and carry rolled umbrellas. The English want Americans to wear ten gallon hats and talk like John Wayne." Again, No not all of us... "Could it be that the "Junk" that this little fellow has in his head, is similar to the "Junk" that I had in my head?" Yes it seems to be the case. Is it JUNK if we tell our kids that they are smarter then kids of other races? Is it JUNK if we tell our kids that they are more athletic then kids of other races? Is it JUNK if we tell our kids that they are less then kids of other races? Is it JUNK if we tell our kids that they are better then kids of other races? I say YES I have been quit for 4 Days, 23 hours, 29 minutes and 12 seconds (4 days). I have saved $23.89 by not smoking 199 cigarettes. I have saved 16 hours and 35 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 9/8/04 Give me "Her Who Must Be Obeyed" e-mail an I will make sure that this DON'T get to her... :-)

We have the same problem with one boy who is our den. I don't have any question about, let him go to bears with his buddies. I always take the age requierment as to where they start. BTW Welcome pull up a sit and stay for awhile. WISH ME LUCK: I have been quit for 4 Days, 46 minutes and 59 seconds (4 days). I have saved $19.35 by not smoking 161 cigarettes. I have saved 13 hours and 25 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 9/8/04(This message has been edited by zippie2223)

(GREEN, BLUE = races) We have a little boy in our den that seems to blame or emphasize his race for everything. If he loses a game it is because of his race. If he wins it is because of his race. I have talked to his mother about the problem, but every meeting its "I won because all GREEN kids can beat you BLUE kids." or "We are using BLUE construction paper because all you guys are BLUE." or "You let him go first because you are BLUE and so is he." Hopeful we will get more GREEN kids at round up so he doesnt feel like and outsider, but what if we don't? I not sure how to deal with the problem. It can be a very touchy subject. Today, after one of his comments, I pulled him aside and told him that god made everyone equal both BLUE and GREEN. And that, that kind of talk is not allowed in cub scouts. Soon after our talk he was crying because he loss at marbles and said that it was BLUE kids game. I gave him a look and he looked embarrass for a moment. I think they pick a lot of this stuff up at home. I think someone is filling this kids head with junk. Am I handling this correctly? I just figure that every time I hear a negative comment I will correct it. BTW they are second grades, wolf cubs. WISH ME LUCK: I have been quit for 3 Days, 15 hours, 15 minutes and 54 seconds (3 days). I have saved $17.44 by not smoking 145 cigarettes. I have saved 12 hours and 5 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 9/8/04(This message has been edited by zippie2223)