FireStone

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 winning car just because of that access. There's also a very popular YouTube video where a former NASA engineer builds a lightning-fast car with simple hand-tools, minimal time, and weight duct-taped on top. It's definitely not about the tools or access to materials to make a work of art. Whether we're talking about PWD cars or water bottles, to me the issue is the same. Lawnmower parents make the choice to solve the problem instead of teaching how to do it. It's the old "give a man a fish" thing. And it's all about choice. For some reason, the trend these days is to choose to do the work instead of choosing to teach kids how to do it. I think we did kind of pioneer the "choose to do it yourself instead of teaching your kid how to do it" thing with the PWD. That goes back decades, long before any modern parenting trend. But I think it has always been about parents choosing to do instead of teach, and not at all about access to tools.

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 not welcoming of LGBTQ folks, etc? Why would they choose that? Why would they prefer to live like that, even if the Internet hypothetically validates something that isn't truly what they are? I just don't buy the "the Internet said it's ok so I'll be LGBTQ" thing. Think about what that really means for the people who are LGBTQ for life. Who marry LGBTQ. I don't know about anyone else, but I know that my feelings about my own gender and sexual orientation could not be swayed at all what-so-ever by any amount of Internet browsing. If someone can marry someone of the same sex, in my mind that's not a whim, a trend, anything even remotely like that.

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 in the 7 or 8 year old age range for example) can still exhibit transgender behaviors. I'm sure I “exhibited an increase in social media/internet use" prior to diagnosis of my hernia a couple months ago, because that's what people do these days when something is happening to their body. They research it and use social media to ask questions. That doesn't mean my hernia was a "fad". Blaming the Internet for this stuff seems really thin. And as mentioned, it doesn't explain how kids not using the Internet still come out as transgender.

Pure speculation. And yet this is exactly the kind of thing that people are hanging their hats on when saying that some "majority" thinks one thing or another. Can we at least stop with the idea that any one of us knows what the majority believes?

This. All day. Yes. 👍🏼

That's just not true. It's a popular opinion that girls should be in Scouting. How popular? I don't know. But it's not some small fringe group.

Again, where's the data to support that? You're calling someone a liar based on what? Your gut feeling that the numbers aren't there?

Certainly. I'm not happy with the survey and how it was conducted either. But a bad survey doesn't mean there's no support for girls in Scouting. The idea that it's "all lies" is simply not true.

What minority? What data says that either opinion was the minority opinion?

Agreed. I keep reading that no one wanted this. I guess when local scouters (myself included) were writing letters and making phone calls to advocate for this years ago, we just imagined doing all of that. When my committee sat around a table and did an informal "show of hands" poll of who was in favor of this and 7 out of 8 of us raised our hands, I guess that was just my imagination. The apparent notion that people wanting this simply don't exist is baffling. I don't have any data to show that it was the majority opinion, but I also don't see how anyone can believe that it being a popular opinion is "all lies".

If they did one book with combined photos of boys and girls, the complaints here would be the same. I'm honestly surprised that there isn't more support for separate books from the single-gender-scouting crowd. This supports the idea of separate troops entirely, doesn't it? A single merged book looks more like co-ed scouting.

This kind of is the big story right now. Not sure why anyone would expect any different coverage. In fact I think it would be weird if it were done any differently.

We're among the group of adults in kids' lives who might know something about kids before their own parents do. Coaches, teachers, similarly are in these same positions. We see kids outside of their homes, away from their parents where they might do and say things that they wouldn't disclose in front of their parents. The bottom line for me is that I'm not going to put myself in a position of possibly disclosing something to a parent that a scout hasn't already disclosed. It doesn't help the kid if I do that, and it might even harm the kid. Such was the case here, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/gay-student-outed-coaches-invasion-of-privacy_n_3398368.html where a student's relationship with her mother severely deteriorated after coaches informed the mother that the girl was gay, and she even attempted suicide. Apparently the consensus here seems to be to immediately go to the parents. I'm opposed to that. I'll go to the parents at the appropriate time, but not before I've discussed the matter with the scout, and not if if I feel the circumstances would possibly be worsened if I did. At the end of the day, everyone is going to do what they feel is right until the BSA gives us clear guidance on these matters.

No one said you have to explain anything. I've been referencing the public school model (local to me anyway) and how they handle it, and I think it's a good approach. Respect the wishes of the kid, if questions come up, refer said questions appropriately to counselors, staff, parents, etc. If you feel compelled to dive into such a broad discussion on gender when asked to simply refer to a Scout by a different name, I guess that's your choice. But I wouldn't recommend it. Certainly wouldn't be what I would do.

I'm not picking and choosing anything. There is nothing dishonest about coming to grips with telling their parents about their sexual orientation or gender identity and doing so at a time that they are comfortable with. There is no violation of the Scout Law in that.

Why then was there no concern about Cub books being co-ed in terms of photos and representations? Those packs/dens are also supposed to be separate, right? It's such a weird thing to bother with. Either it's a problem or it's not. And yet we get this seemingly split perspective on it from National. Or maybe that makes total sense considering the source. 😅

Not to their parents necessarily. From what my wife has told me, kids are far more likely to openly discuss their sexual orientation or gender identity among friends and even teachers than they are parents. There's a lot of baggage that goes with coming out to their parents. That's a big life-changing event. Come out to a friend or teacher and if it doesn't go well, that's a relationship that you don't have to live with forever. Come out to your parents and not get the reaction you hoped for, and that's entirely different.