WisconsinMomma

Maybe I am over reacting, these are the worksheets our den leader is planning to use: Here is one for cast iron chef: https://meritbadge.org/wiki/images/a/a2/Cast_Iron_Chef.pdf They are like the merit badge worksheets. What do you think? https://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Cub_Scout_Worksheets

We had an adult leader who nearly said -- I'm not doing jack for your kid, it's not my problem, and basically said no to every suggestion we made to try to help our kid. He ultimately decided that he would just not be around our kid at all because he didn't like our kid's challenges and was very critical of my son's (minor) behavior concerns. (Sounded great to us based on the attitude we were getting! Other leaders in the troop were easier to work with.) I understand that not every request can be made, but adult leaders should try to be kind and helpful as much as possible, especially when working with kids who have struggles.

Back to this Scout and how things are going in the troop. @GSleaderSG is your son new to the troop? How old is he? I'll share my son's early experiences in Scouting. My son has ADHD and social skills challenges. After his first summer camp, the committee chair called us and arranged a meeting to discuss our son not fitting in, and it felt like pressure on us to leave, except, we had no intention of leaving. Unfortunately our CC was not very sympathetic to working with a scout with special needs. That CC, who was overbearing himself, ultimately left Scouting. He suggested that my husband be on top of my son at all times, but my husband is an ASM and already attends every meeting and every outing and is there, but my husband was not going to nanny our son. But, what we also did that I feel was important, was do some work on our side to help our son with his social skills issues. For us, that meant finding and working with a psychologist with a social skills group class for early teen boys. Our son attended this class weekly for 2.5 years and is now in individual counseling. I felt that helped a lot, and I think that growing up a little has helped our son a lot. He has learned strategies like slowing down and thinking, he learned breathing exercises, he learned how to visualize what might happen in the future based on what he's experienced in the past and he's learned how to notice people's facial expressions, tone of voice, and other social clues that can help him react more appropriately. They played games with challenges and had homework every week. So if your son is young and new to the troop, I would not worry about a minor delay in advancement. But I would absolutely demand (courteously) that the bullying and teasing be stopped. That is as unacceptable as your son hitting someone. The troop adults cannot condone teasing and bullying. The Boy Scouts cannot teach your son social skills, but they should provide a safe environment for him to learn in, and also they should partner with you to find some strategies that allow your son to do his best. You need to work with the leadership to make sure they are not isolating and shunning your kid. Don't worry about advancement so much unless he is in danger of losing an opportunity to make Eagle by 18. If he is being purposefully held back, that's no good. But as you said, I think a break from advancement for violence is OK. Your son needs to restore relationships. You should ask your son about the positions and how the elections went and try not to be a helicopter parent. If you have any tips or tricks that can help, then share that info with the Troop. If you can get your son into counseling to help him manage his emotions and possibly work with a specialist on the speech too, that can help him a lot. There may be options at your school, or talk to other parents with kids with similar social skills concerns about if they have gotten help and who is good in your area. We drive a bit to get to a very good psychologist, (and pay out of pocket) and it's worth it. I think of it as an investment in our kid's future. Best wishes. P.S. Super-cool that your son is Bugler, our 10 year old might be a future Bugler too! P.P.S. Volunteer for things and get involved with the committee. It's harder to kick out a boy whose parent is contributing. You also need to get to know as many adults in the Troop as you can, make some friends. P.P.P.S. You need to suck up a little to the leaders and be kind to them too. Treat them like they are the experts in Scouting and helpful (unless they are particularly antagonistic) but they are your partners and team mates, so be very respectful and appreciative to the people working with your son. Be careful not to be the angry parent because it gets you nowhere.

I learned that my son's den leader (Webelos) has decided to have the boys do worksheets this year (apparently they are online?) My son came home with a binder with some worksheets for personal fitness and stomped into the house and threw it down. Note that he gets overwhelmed when he's asked to do too many activities and he saw the work of logging fitness as a big drain on his time. But at our committee meeting the den leader said, I found these worksheets and I think the boys are old enough to do them. So now, I fear -- let's not have classroom style den meetings. This is the den with rowdy kids and some parents who just. sit. there. In other news, we have a kid who was rough at camp last year. The kid got sent home after he had ben in poison oak. Think of kid not behaving, running off into the weeds, and later feeling itchy. The night before he had a very hard time sleeping and being away from home. The parents have said they are not going to camp. (Mom posted on FB she was upset that their night with kid away was spoiled last year when it happened.) Can we um, insist that a parent comes with the kid? He is actually a nice, decent kid when things are going well, but when he gets upset and out of control, its rough. Think of kid picking up and hurling logs around when he was frustrated. We had to make sure that no one got hurt and also that no other parent would rough up the kid in an attempt to gain control (a parent told me he was tempted to grab and discipline this kiddo, but thankfully he didn't, and that's not how things work). Thanks for any help!

Wow, this is getting off topic, but we used plastic/popsicle sticks and soap and it puts a lot of peace of mind in a den leader working with multiple boys at once. It also lets the kids work a little faster for their first time carving. Now, soap is just for the first time.

I think it's very important that issues be addressed on the FRONT end of the projects. So, encourage the scouts to think big. At the same time, Eagle projects are not necessarily gigantic projects. One Scout builds 3 picnic tables. That's OK. Another Scout raises $10k to place a professionally made electronic sign in front of the fire department. Another scout gets a handful of guys to pull out invasive species weeds in a large park area for a work day of invasive species removal. It's up to the adults to make sure that the project is meaty enough, and at the same time, make sure they are not forcing a scout to jump throrugh too many hoops to make him unsuccessful. I was recently frustrated when a person in our Troop delayed a Scout's project to build a gardening structure, because he wanted to make sure that the gardening structure would be used effectively by the beneficiary, but that was a large scope add, to bascially create the gardening club to support the structure. I think they ended up compromising, and the beneficiary is going to handle the future use, the Scout was planning and managing the construction. And that is OK. You have to imagine it like it's your kid's project. Are they going to learn things? It has to be at the right level where they are learning but it doesn't have to be award-winning, just helpful to the community and meaningful for the beneficiary.

Um, it's not the DE's job to dictate to the Pack, as I'm sure you know. Can you have your COR call the DE and put them back in their place? If a DE is being a PITA, then let the Scout Executive know that they've got a professional that's hurting the program. You will have to be aggressive to change things and protect your unit. Now, of course you should be polite and kind and encouraging to the girls and their families and let them know there is a misunderstanding and that your Pack is not working with girls yet. Send them back to the DE to start a new unit.

We have two girls in our Pack now! They are sisters, a 1st grader and a 2nd grader. I asked if we might pull in a few more girls, but was told that every other 2nd grade girl is already in Girl Scouts, and that these two girls are not "Girl Scouty". I like them already. Their mom is volunteering in the Pack as an assistant Den leader and we'll make the whole thing work.

I would just read the requirements to make sure he's qualified to become an AOL scout and cross over. I like the idea of challenging him to complete the Webelos requirements before a promotion. The kid can work for it. Talk to your committee, this isn't just your decision as it affects two of your den leaders. What do they want? It's not just all about this scout and what the scout wants. It's also about being part of the Pack community and following BSA advancement guidelines. This web page may be helpful. A 4th grade student is a Webelos, but if they complete Webelos they may begin work on AOL. https://www.scouting.org/programs/cub-scouts/what-cub-scouts-earn/the-advancement-trail/ https://www.scouting.org/discover/faq/question1/ I would guess that this family wants their child to join Boy Scouts next year at age 10 with an AOL award qualifier, and then will go for Eagle at a young age. But that isn't our business. Just follow the advancement guidelines.

When the daughter is 30 will the mom call the supervisor at work and ask why the daughter did not get a pay increase? Sometimes this happens in real life!! It's crazy. You just have to hold firm with the way that things work in Scouts. You can't bend the rules for a complainer.

SSF, their performance as CEOs of public companies has been stellar. I don't think you'll find much argument with the results. You can also look at CEO Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix. She founded the company, no one had to hire her! But at Harvard Business School, her idea was flogged as unworkable, and the venture capitalists mostly rejected her company. This ultimately made her build company stronger in the face of those challenges. She has some very talented men working with her, and she has stopped working with a board member that made her uncomfortable. Good for her!

Sometimes the female candidates are the most qualified. Take a look at CEO Jayshree Ullal of Arista Networks, for example. Also note she was not educated in the US. Indira Nooyi, at Pepsi, similar background.

People are more interested in promoting women, but how many of them are tokens? I agree that the wage gap is mostly because of parenting choices, which is perfectly fine. Media and PR have a lot of women but look at the top, how many women at the top? Look at MeToo and see how many men are at the top of big media and er, taking advantage of it. Same thing with medicine, look at the top -- it's maybe more even but not woman dominated -- there are definitely more opportunities for women in industries that have a lot of female employees. It's easy to be the female owner of a housekeeping company but that's not what I'm talking about.

Easy money for student loans has definitely not helped.

Why? Her name is Christine and nickname Chris. It's her name, she can use it the way she wants to. What if someone is named Robin or Morgan or Andi? Is that deceptive?

with the average male college applicant more likely to be accepted into a college than ever before, Really? I was under the impression that colleges are becoming more female-heavy and that admissions are becoming more and more competitive. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-new-college-minority/536103/ It's hard to say, are boys rejecting college or are colleges rejecting boys? I don't know, I worried it was the latter. There is a push towards the trades and I wonder if more boys than girls are getting pushed toward the trades...

This is complicated. On the one hand, if I look at one schools National Honor Society members, there are a whole lot of girls and not many boys. On the other hand, when I look at CEOs of tech companies, or employees in a finance-related business I work with, there are a whole lot of men in the prime roles and not many women. I think it's great that some women are participating at the highest levels. Not all women want to get there, but it's still a harder road for women to get there than men. Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg's sister and the person who came up with the idea for Facebook Live) said in an interview that something you can do to help your daughter is to give her a boyish name -- people would agree to meetings with "Randy" but then be continually surprised when a female showed up.

Learning to hunt and fish for food are great life skills. Sorry PETA, this suggestion is no good.

Gender is not really any of the BSA's business. Sure, a child will need to pick a boy or girl troop. OK, that's all. It ends there. As for all of this medical intervention in teens, basic common sense would suggest that young people need to reach adulthood before making these kinds of medical moves. Yes, puberty is awkward, but it is important. Why would any doctor commit to life altering elective surgery on a healthy minor? It's irresponsible.

Do the troops around you do patch trading? I don't think this is a thing in our area, or I've not seen it yet.

Just for a little reference, I have never been backpacking in my life, and neither has my husband, an ASM. I would bet that very few of the parents in our den have ever been backpacking. For us, we don't have experience to share, although we might start to get some of that experience now that our kids are older. We started out car camping 5 years ago when our oldest was about 4 years old (and fully potty trained!) We also don't really have backpacking gear, but again, we could start learning. I think it's a great goal but not an easy goal for troops to get into backpacking.

I heard a cute story that our Troop had a French foreign exchange student at summer camp this year, and everybody liked him, and he was a good cook! He was voted assistant patrol leader for the Beavers, and they added an assistant, assistant patrol leader who's local. One of the prizes our new Cubmasters are doing (I can't remember for what) but they said they would cook a meal at camp as a prize for something or another, and so its now known that our boys like to eat. Gblotter can you baby step your troop into more camping?

I need to teach them to sew, soon. It's not that hard. I think they don't really care about all the camp patches and whatnot, so I have been putting them on these red blankets since they were cubs. All 3 boys have decent collections. I would like them to start sewing their own MBs.

We like, don't have any photos printed out, and will need to work on making a scrap book at some time for sure. The only thing I've been "helping with" is keeping a file with baseball card size slots for completed blue cards, and we keep that in the fireproof safe (and take photos of the completed blue cards and upload a copy for cloud storage.)

OK, so we have some miscellaneous patches, for example, my oldest was Scribe and now he's not. He also is First Class now, yeah! Should I sew his old Scribe patch and 2nd class patch on his patch blanket? Should I sew the old 2nd class on the back of his MB sash? I should put these things somewhere. It seems any of these options are OK, I usually don't see anything on the back of the MB sashes but it's permitted. If they get the same POR again, I'd just take it off the blanket and put it back on the uniform. Any thoughts?