help me i'm confused

[scottteng 11]

" Yah, yah, let's all jump all over da poor SM who clearly is an evil, wicked, awful human being because one boy's parent is upset."

 

Please note these are not my words. The scoutmaster is a sincere hardworking man who really tries hard but is too owerworked to obtain a lot of training and who has the added challenge of two sons in the troop who are as mouthy or more so than my son. The boys apparently enjoy pushing all the adults buttons to the breaking point. And I will own up to the fact that several times his sons have pushed my buttons to the yelling point. Admittadly if the approach you descibed had been used that the rank was to be withheld for a set time period I may well have gone along with nothing said. Again I was not presant due to having a class on scout night so I missed several meetings. It is quite possible that my son was taunting the other boys about how much more rank he had than they did he is prone to some bragging but if the other boys would get on the ball finish their partials and do some merit badges they would get their too. Also the troop is really too small to have specifically designated committee member only people who do board of reviews most of them are leaders in the associated cub pack and most of their committee members are the scout leaders. Son does not care he likes both troops had fun with the boys when he went to summer camp with them last year as the current troop did not attend summer camp.

[Beavah 205]

Yah, scotteng, so I'd suggest you grab coffee with the SM and hear his side, support him, etc. And I expect your son will get his rank badge in fairly short order. If a SM conference to discuss "Scout Spirit" is in the cards, as Acco suggests, great. Even if a BOR is in the cards to discuss "Scout Spirit," great! BOR's aren't just for rank advancement, eh?

 

Best way to go, IMNSHO. Both your son and the troop will be better for it than debating Advancement Method guidelines and techniques with everyone who will listen.

 

 

[mk9750 11]

May I try to address this issue from a slightly different angle?

 

One of the questions, followed by more than a couple answers, talked about switching Troops. Although that must remain an option, in my VERY humble opinion, it should be as a last resort.

 

We have now had 4 boys transfer into our Troop from other Troops. In three cases, the reason was that the other Troop didn't do anything fun or interesting. In the fourth, both the boy and his father could not see eye to eye with the Scoutmaster on numerous issues.

 

In our experience, limited to four examples, switching units has been a disaster for the boy. Now, we strongly believe we have a great program, and while trying to be humble, I think it is generally better than most Troops in our area. But each of these four boys left Scouting after transfering to our Troop, one in less than 6 months, and the longest lasted a bit over a year.

 

Why? We've never really been sure. Although our existing Scouts never treated the newcomer poorly, I'm sure there is some of the "insider / outsider" mentality. I believe that we are tougher regarding advancements than other Troops, and that could be hard to get used to. We do more high venture stuff, and the training for such takes more time spent outside Troop meetings than I believe most of the other Troops in our area spend. But whatever the reason, transfers have not faired well in our Troop.

 

This is so true, that we now have an unofficial policy regarding requests to transfer into our unit. When we receive an inquiry, we try to get our SM, our CC, and the parents together to determine what the real issues are. In most cases, we will then make contact with the SM of the other Troop, and attempt to get everyone to sit down and discuss the situation and how it could be remedied. We did this the last time we got a request. The boy wanted to get into rapelling, but his unit had no one trained to supervise an event, no gear, and not inclination to try. We sat down with the boy and his SM, offered to have our boys run a rapelling event to which we would invite his Troop, do a climbing instructor program for a couple of their adults (our SM was the Council Climbing Director. He has since passed the reigns to one of our ASMs). When we became convinced that the Troop truly did not want to put that much effort into a climbing and rapelling program, we invited the boy to participate with us while remaining in his own Troop. He's been on two or three events with us since then (over about a year). He is flourishing in our climbing program, but, more importantly, he is flourishing in his own Troop. My son tells me that his Troop just elected him SPL, and that he is going to try to get their PLC to schedule a rapelling trip with our Troop this coming year.

 

I don't know this as fact, but I believe he is taking back to his Troop some of the good parts of our program. This means that instead of a good Troop (us, in our opinion) simply getting a good Scout, and another Troop losing a good Scout, our Troop is helping another Troop improve itself through this young man.

 

My point is that by leaving your current Troop, you lose any chance of helping a Troop who might be doing things "wrong" (I wish I could use a better word than that). The Troop left behind never sees the better way, and loses a valuable resource to help it improve.

 

If your son has been wronged, it should be remedied (although I think Beavah makes some points to be considered). But please consider staying and having both you and your son be part of the solution. As a society (here comes the political soapbox!), I think we've become too accepting of the idea of just walking away from problems without any effort to fix them first. Whether Beavah is right or not, his point about this being an opportunity to teach your son some very important leassons starts, in my mind, with teaching him to pitch in to be a part of the solution. Both of you, and his Troop, could benefit greatly.

 

Best of luck to you.

 

Mark