FireStone

We had a good turnout at our recruitment night, but still a lot of siblings in attendance who aren't joining. I spoke to a family of 4 kids, all scouting age, and only the 1 boy was joining, his 3 older sisters were not. One of our Den Leaders with a daughter told me she doesn't want to join. We did have a lot of interest among girls for the Lions program, and a few Tigers. But it doesn't look like families who already had boys in the Pack are getting their daughters to sign up so easily. So while I'm encouraged by the overall numbers, I suspect it's still a lot of mixed reac

Reading this thread up to this point and not knowing whether your sone would be staying with this troop, I was kind of wondering how that would work out. In all unfortunate likelihood this SM would have made life more difficult for him going forward. Sad that it came to this but in these kinds of situations there often is no other way forward. Glad to hear your son is happy to continue scouting elsewhere.

That sounds about right to me. Girls are in Cub Scouts now. Troops can't invite Packs/Dens that are open to girls to Troop functions and then say "No girls allowed."

We charge $85, which covers the usual stuff and we give each scout Boys' Life, a neckerchief, and handbook. We do charge for activities and trips throughout the year. Usually $15 per person for camping trips, B&G, $10 or less for other activities. End of year picnic is free for all scouts and families.

College is meaningless if you go just for the sake of getting a degree. What I don't get is the mentality that college is just about the degree. Every high school kid gets it drilled into them that if they want to get into a good college they need to do more than just show up in class throughout high school. And yet when they get to college, all they do is show up for class and work towards graduation, and then wonder why they end up feeling like it was a waste. I don't think college is a waste of time or money, as long as you go there intent on doing something to better yourself an

Exactly what programs are now being tailored specifically to the needs of girls? I've only been seeing an increased promotion of the availability of traditionally boy-favored programs aimed at bringing in more girls. Like inviting more girls to participate in STEM programs, for example. But they're not changing those programs to focus on girls. Is something different happening in your neck of the woods?

I came up in the generation that was tasked similarly to today's cub scout, having to change neckerchiefs and hats every year. And I have none of them in my box of old Scouting stuff, because I think at some point they held little sentimental meaning to me. Change stuff this often and it holds little value to those who wear it. It's just a throw-away item that kids burn through in a year and move on to the next thing.

I was told at my council Scout Shop (Northern NJ) that they have 50,000 yellow Wolf neckerchiefs in stock. Now I don't know if that means 50,000 for our council (hard to believe), for the regional area, state, etc. But I guess the point was that there are still a lot of yellow ones around.

My gut feeling on this so far has been that we're moving to something that more closely resembles UK scouting. So going fully coed is part of that, and I suspect it has always been the BSA plan. But to make the move a bit easier to swallow, they are doing this transitional separated troops/packs/dens thing. I don't have a crystal ball, but my expectation of the future of the BSA is we're fully coed within a decade.

We just had our sign-up night and got 14 new Scouts, of which I believe 4 were girls. 2 Lions, 1 Wolf, and 1 Webelos. I expect we'll get a few more in the coming weeks (people take home the information and sometimes sign up later). Last year we signed up 5 new Scouts total, so definitely a nice increase over last year.

If exhausting the existing supply of yellow neckerchiefs is the criteria for rolling out the red ones, current Wolf scouts could possibly be Eagle Scouts by the time the red ones are made available.

I've discovered the value of a truly good Den Chief recently. Like I had no idea I had a really good one and only found out when I heard about how little some of the other Den Chiefs contribute to the other Dens in my Pack. A good Den Chief (or two) can be a lifesaver, I'd imagine even more so in a struggling Den where the adults need a lot of help.

It's very unfortunate that his response was to hold firm on his unreasonable policy. And his policy, while having only good intentions, is indeed unreasonable. You mentioned that your son was at camp for a week, where there would be plenty of opportunity to have a conference. And your son attended Ordeal weekend recently, where as someone mentioned would be tough to hold a SM conference at but still it shows your son is active and attends events beyond the weekly troop meeting. He's doing what the SM wants, to have older scouts active on trips. It just happens that the one opportunity the SM i

Correcting the records with documented evidence doesn't mean the evidence is the record. Like it or not, if National says Scoutbook is the official record, that's what it is.

I thought the exact same thing. As soon as I read that definition of "lawnmower parent" my first thought was, "Dear God we made this happen..." I agree with the association of PWD to lawnmower parenting, but I also think it's not quite for the reason you describe. It has nothing to do with the tools available to a Scout or the artistic qualities of the car. We've all seen plenty of beautiful adult-crafted cars flop on the track come race day. And likewise I know Scouts with access to workshops that pro craftsmen would be jealous of, and they certainly aren't guaranteed to have a winnin

The handbook is documentation. The official record (a scout's National office record) is going to be their Scoutbook record. Or so I'm told.

I could be wrong about this, but the word in my council is that we are going to be required to use Scoutbook. It is supposed to become the official record for all scouts. So if we wanted to hypothetically use something else on our own, we'd still have to port that data over to Scoutbook for official records.

Kind of makes sense, right? If ScoutBook is supposed to be come the official record for every scout, units shouldn't be paying to use it.

I'm impressed that so many units even know how many girls they're getting already. I have no idea. I know of 2 girls joining because they're daughters of other leaders. Beyond that, I have no clue. And I'm the Pack Recruitment Chair, so I hope I'd be one of those in-the-know folks. We haven't done our recruitment night yet. We're promoting it, been doing so all summer, but until next month I won't have any clue if we'll have just those 2 girls or if we'll have 20.

My understanding is that Scout Spirit discussions are supposed to happen in the SM conference or the BoR. Meaning it's a conversation with adults, and adults making the determination that the Scout adequately shows Scout Spirit. By this unit's method, other Scouts make that determination. Seems contradictory to the intent of the BSA advancement method.

Were those people ever really trans/gay/bi? What about the people who are LGBTQ their entire lives? That's a long time to stick with a so-called "trend". What about the people who are gay and want to be straight but can't be? They seek encouragement and normalization of heterosexuality but can't make it work. They try therapy, and it fails. How is it possible that someone can be convinced to become gay but then not be able to go back to being straight? What about the people who suffer severely for being LGBTQ? Socially, in their family, regionally living in a place that is no

Could be true. I had a poor Cub experience as a kid (lame Pack, never camped, hardly any activities, poor leadership) vs. my Boy Scout experience which was phenomenal. Super active, camped monthly, exceptional leadership, lots of trips and activities. Maybe when I move up to a troop with my son I'll feel differently about this.

I personally don't think youth experience is all that helpful as an adult leader. Another Den Leader made the comment to me once that my Eagle rank must be useful now as a DL. I told him the only advantage it gave me was not needing to memorize the oath and law. Other than that, there was nothing that gave me an edge when it comes to wrangling scouts and trying to run a Pack program. If there had been a Cat Herding merit badge, then maybe... 😁

I've been trying the same thing with excessive Internet research on six-pack abs but so far, no luck. 😁

Ignoring the original source (Fox News is a little too biased for my liking), and struggling to find a neutral source, I'm inclined to lean on the Brown official statement and take a wait-and-see approach to this one. They're saying that the study was pulled because there are questions about study’s research methodology and analyses. Hard to form any real conclusions until/unless the research is validated. That said, I'm immediately dubious of anything that blames social media for transgender feelings in youth when kids who aren't exposed to social media and the same peer pressures (kids