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Pack meeting start time and young kids


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Okay.  I thought I heard all the issues ... at least in our pack.  Well, the new one is the elementary school has been emphasizing how much kids should sleep and the appropriate bed time.

 

Our pack meets from 6:30pm (gathering games) to 8pm.  Well the Lion (K) and tigers (1st grade) are supposed to go to bed before our pack meeting is done.  

 

People on this forum know that I think the younger grades lower the maturity of the pack just too much.  ... but ... this is a new twist.   ... not to mention we've had several parents who say probably rightfully so that their kids are not ready for Cub Scouts in kindergarten or 1st grade.  Between bed time and maturity, it affects our getting critical mass at those ages.

 

Argh.

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Fred,

 

Our pack meets from 6:15 until about 7:30.  My son's bedtime is usually about when the pack ends, but it goes later that night.  I understand your frustration though.  The age/bedtime thing is also harder for scheduling all of these required den outings this year.  A lot of them may require later nights, or evenings and it takes some planning to get around that.

 

It's also harder from a den leader perspective.  When kids have the attention span of a bumblebee and there are younger brothers/sisters around, sometimes the older ones get distracted and want to go play with their siblings instead of participating.

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When did the schools take over bed times for the children.  I always thought that that was the decision of the parents.  

 

And if the schools are all that worried about it, they can always start school a little later.  When I was driving school bus, there were plenty of grade school kids getting on the bus at 6:30 am.  I had the shortest route at the time so I know other students got on even later than that.

 

If parents are worried about the evening times, they can pull their children out of the program until they are mature enough to handle it.  

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Ours is from 6:30-7:30 and we end it on time.

 

By the time 7:30 hits the boys are pretty tired and done.  If I had the ability to, I would move the start time of the meeting to 6:00 but we can't get in the school until 6:30 because  the after school program has it until then.

 

Heck even my 5th graders are pretty wiped by 7:30 and they usually still have more homework to complete that night.  I don't think of it as a maturity thing and they are just plain tired or tarred as my grandpa would say.

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that's why I like Friday nights for meetings

no worry about bed times

no worry about homework

no worries about me getting up for work the next day

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In our area, many of our parents have long commutes.  So our gathering starts and 7:15 and I try to end by 8:30.  Unless it is a special occasion like the Webelos bridging, we don't do snacks, as most of our Scouts go to bed right after the meeting and we don't want to hype them up.  Our den meetings generally have a similar time frame.

 

The planned start and stop times are ok with our parents, but I will hear about it if I run too much over. :confused: Many of our Scouts are in a Karate program (on different nights) with their classes usually from 7 to 8.

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Yes, but what about worries of stealing a Friday night from people?  Don't you lose people who might be traveling? 

Churches have tolerated Weekend Wanderers for years and have survived nicely without them.  It's an issue of commitment, not calendars.

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Our Pack Meetings run from 6:30-7:30pm.  It's hard to start much earlier, many adults don't get home from work until 5:30 (or later).  If we tried to move the time up, it would intrude into family meal time.  The experts say kids that age need 10-11 hours of sleep.  even assuming it takes the kids 1 hour after Scouts to wind down and fall asleep, they could still get 10.5 hours if they sleep until 7 am, 10 hours if they have to get up earlier due to parents' work schedules.

 

As for Lion Cubs... It was my understanding that Lions shouldn't be invited to all Pack Meetings, just major events (Blue & Gold, Pinewood Derby, Holiday Party, etc.).  Our Pack moved our Pinewood Derby to a weekend because it was running too late into the night, so you could do something similar for these big events that the Lions are invited to.

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Yes, but what about worries of stealing a Friday night from people?  Don't you lose people who might be traveling? 

 

We do have folks miss from time to time, but I suspect that happens any night.  Some nights are better than others for different folks....

for me as an example, I'd miss some meetings if they were on Tuesdays and Thursdays.... there seems to be so many other meetings that fall on those nights that I can rarely make because my wife works late.  We used to have some committee members that couldn't make Monday's because their troop meets then....

 

Re Friday

When my son first signed up for Tigers..... we were told the pack meets on a Friday every month.  then the mom that stepped up to be the leader set Friday for the Den meetings..... at first, I was really against it.... every friday of the month in theory would be Scouts, after all.... ugh.

I slowly started to see the advantage of Friday

and in reality we skip some Friday's for Den meetings anyway so we do have plenty of off weeks.

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My have times changed.  Back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when membership in Scouting was at it's all time peak, most packs in the Chicago suburbs met from 7:30 to 9:00 which gave people the opportunity to come home, have a relaxing dinner, make sure the kids homework got done,

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My have times changed.  Back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when membership in Scouting was at it's all time peak, most packs in the Chicago suburbs met from 7:30 to 9:00 which gave people the opportunity to come home, have a relaxing dinner, make sure the kids homework got done,

Yep, times have changed..... and not necessarily for the better.

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Our pack meets start at 6:45pm and wrap up absolutely no later than 8pm. Most of the time, however, we're walking out around 7:35pm. Now that we don't have all the belt loops to hand out, that has cut our time down significantly in a great way. More time for games, information to be dispersed, bigger awards to be recognized, special guests, etc. So far we haven't had any complaints from the first graders' parents (we have almost 100 scouts registered this year) but the year is young :) I'd LOVE to do these on Friday nights as I agree with being an issue of commitment but we already had many say they would not attend. So we settled on Mondays which work for the most of us.

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  • 1 month later...

<<Okay.  I thought I heard all the issues ... at least in our pack.  Well, the new one is the elementary school has been emphasizing how much kids should sleep and the appropriate bed time.>>

 

 

Wont be long before Child Protective Services starts investigating families that are torturing their children by sleep deprivation that contradicts what local schools recommend...

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