AScoutIsHonest

Thanks, yes. I have four kids in scouting too. Fwiw my oldest is an Eagle and he didn’t get distracted. He’s in college now and still involved. My oldest two are Sea Scouts.

@DuctTapeThank you for your story. That actually does help. Our son is young enough that perhaps that will be his long-term memory, too. The weird thing is that we feel a little baited and switched. Long story short, during/as a result of lockdown nonsense, packs collapsed (largely due to losing meeting space and difficulty meeting), so my youngest two kids really burned through units. It was extremely frustrating just to get them to cross over. My son finally finished cubs in the pack associated with his current troop. The contact person for this pack was the son of the associated troop’s SM.

@fred8033I thank you and everyone else for their kind, thoughtful responses. I appreciate it. I agree with you in the sense that we do not foresee the SM changing and he is apparently a difficult person to interact with. He isn’t going anywhere, either. While we don’t expect any scouter to be a perfect person, that person should nevertheless be approachable, supportive, and respectful. S/he should also follow BSA rules. For us, those are minimum standards of behavior. We also see some other fairly glaring problems with the troop which when added up and contextualized, don’t look good for the f

@MattRYes, I definitely understand that. Have been through similar stuff like this before, although not anywhere near this extreme. My oldest briefly considered changing troops but elected to stay put. It wound up ok, but again, those problems were very different. The most serious aspect of the situation is that he is not approachable (putting it mildly), and yet my son will obviously have to approach him. As a scouter mom from the unit said to me today, “he (SM) does not live out the scout law. He is not kind or courteous…” I am NOT a shy person or someone who’s easily intimidated. This

@DuctTapeI agree with you. My conundrum right now is that my son likes the troop. There’s a lot to be said that’s positive—they go on monthly campouts, they are organized and they communicate well via a weekly email. I’ve been involved with units where none of those has been the case. So it will be hard. In addition, he is scheduled to go to summer camp with them. I have already paid and he is all registered. Ugghh!

PS: I found last night’s interaction so troubling, and I never want for my child to feel intimidated by the prospect of speaking with his SM. I created a document which lists some of the infractions/concerns I have at present. Submission of MB worksheets in lieu of working with counselor or any discussion (SM claimS he does 70-100 MBs. We refuse to do it this way.) Sometimes dictating to scouts which MBs they should take at camp Telling a scout he must work only with MB counselors in his council (We live on the edge of two councils and I have children in

@InquisitiveScouter 1. How many Scouts are in the Troop? There are about 40. 2. How was this SM's decision exclusively to sign all blue cards put out. Apparently he verbalized this privately to an ASM. This ASM then communicated the information to me via text. It was not a public announcement that I am aware of. 3. How many blue cards are we talking about? He needed to turn in one completed card (first aid, which he busted his butt to do bc the SM said he HAD to do it at camp, but my son did not WANT to do that one at camp). He had inadvertently forgotten

@MattRI just got off a lengthy phone call with an adult from the troop (long-time scouter) and she confirmed that ASMs are barely allowed. As of last week or so, only the SM can sign blue cards, which for a troop of around 40, seems impractical. We have a few but they don’t do anything, honestly. The woman with whom I spoke, her husband is one and she totally agrees.

@Eagle94-A1Yes I agree with you, also! I have told them the same thing, two years running.

@MattRI agree that it is over the top, but according to the Guide to Advancement, he is not allowed to deny a blue card for any reason.

Hello, My son’s troop is not meeting over the summer and he therefore wanted to complete some MBs during this time (primarily long-term type ones that are ideally suited to the summer). He presented the blue cards to the scoutmaster during the allotted time at the beginning of the meeting and was shooed away. He then presented them at the end of the meeting and he was told no. He was barely able to get the scoutmaster to accept his *completed* first aid blue card, which he worked hard to finish at the behest of same scoutmaster, who then turned around and yelled at him/us, saying he was