TryingToMom

This is an interesting discussion thread, and one where many commenters have no concept of what Girl Scouting is/does. I get very tired of the argument that "girls already have Girl Scouts, it's just as good!" NO, it's not. Take it from a former scout, a leader, and a mother of a Girl Scout - their program has been utter garbage since their last overhaul about 6 years ago, and that's the way their HQ likes it. Girls spend up to 9 months of their year doing nothing but fixating on selling products for the Girl Scout machine (who makes billions off of the girls labor, then acts like they

Excellent information, thank you all! I found out recently that our local Venturing Crew is called "dead" by the person who runs it, but my understanding is that they've done nothing to market the group towards any girls (and I know mine is not the only one who wants a more active Scouting experience!).

I have a young lady who enjoys Girl Scouts, but who is disappointed with how little the girls physically do (too much arts and crafts when she wants to do more camping and rock climbing type things), and she's looking forward to being a Venture Scout in a few years. The info I can find is sparse on girls in the program, but I've read girls can join Venture, Varsity, or Sea Scouting at age 14. Does anyone have experience working with girls in these groups that might be able to give me the scoop? Are girls welcomed at any Crew, even if there are no other girls? Are you able to join mor

Thank you for all of the input. I'm seeing a lot of the other side of the issues now, so some of them make a lot more sense. I believe our plan is to wait it out for one more CoH then move on if my scout isn't happy with how things are going at that point. Like many of you said, it's more like "Mr. Smith's Scouts" instead of "Boy Scouts," and I don't want to discourage a highly motivated scout by keeping him in a troop that's a bad fit and makes him lose interest in scouting.

All the issues he's hit have been from the adults. His ASM told him the blue card didn't need turned in. The PLs can sign on rank reuirements? We've been told only the ASMs can do it. If the PLs could I imagine he'd be a lot farther along. My son's goal was to get 1st class around the year mark so that he could do the jamboree next summer, and I think he's realizing it's not happening. But we had a CoH in February, May,June, and just this week. I'm not sure their reasoning and I have no idea when they're next is. We often get told on Tuesday that we're having a CoH or other event later

That may be the issue with the camp fulfilled requirements then. It was a first-year program that didn't sign the books, but the transcript says "scouts completed the following requirements," so that made us believe they were done and ready to be signed off on. My scout likes the other kids in his patrol but he's getting really discouraged with the leadership. He joined about 9 months ago, just this past week he finally got his scout rank, and that was only because we had to step in as parents and chase down the scoutmaster to sign off on the conference after he'd scheduled and not shown up

I'm used to cub scouts, so I'm trying to get a consensus on whether my issues are typical in boy scouts or if I should talk to my son about finding a different troop. Talking to leadership has gotten me nowhere but frustrated, and yes, my family volunteers already to try and help or fix any issues we can, but we mostly get blown off and told this is how they do things. 1) No one explains how to do anything. If the scout asks, he's often given bad information that later makes the situation worse. For example, when he asked he was told his blue card didn't matter because the troop already h