How Much is Too Much

[SR540Beaver 116]

When my son and I left Cubs and moved to Scouts, it was just a forgone conclusion for me that Boy Scouts have monthly outings. No, I don't always want to go on every single campout, but as an ASM I feel an obligation to fulfill my role and do it anyway. My son was a PL last election cycle and the SPL this election cycle and accepts the responsibility that he has to be at each outing also. Actually, we both always want to be there. I'm in scouting for my son. If we were not it scouting, I'd be perfectly content to putter around my comfortable house as opposed to sweating, swatting flys, sitting in a tent thru downpours or freezing my big patootie off. But this is what we chose and we do have a lot of fun at it.

 

Lately, I've had tow seperate conversations with scouters who think that monthly outing is a little over the top. In fact, one will be leaving scouting shortly because his son has lost all interest in scouting. One of his son's biggest complaints is having outings EVERY month. The other scouter is the current Cubmaster of the Pack we came from. He was a Boy Scout as a youth. I was hoping to get he and his son this coming February when they cross over. No such luck. We are a new and young troop. He wants a large troop because he feels they have more to offer and he wants a troop for his son that has older leadership. I can understand that. But them he proceeded to tell me that he thought monthly outing were detremetal and burned the boys out. He said that he and his family had too many other irons in the fire to commit to an outing every month. Both of these guys would rather camp in the Spring and Fall and skip the hot Summer and cold Winter. Well, who wouldn't!?

 

Last summer I was running a fundraising campaign for Jamboree. I was working thru my fellow contingent leaders to get the materials into the hands of the Jambo youth. One of my fellow Jambo ASM's told me it was going to be difficult for him to get the stuff to the boys as they take the rest of the summer off after returning from summer camp. I'd never heard of a troop that takes the summer off.

 

My son had his best buddy join scouts and he was active for about 3 or 4 months before quitting. He is a sports animal and he is used to seasonal activities. His big beef with scouts was that it was a year round program without a break.

 

So, my question is how much is too much? Part of the charter agreement between the BSA and the charter organization is that they will provide 10 nights of camping per year. That would amount to a one nighter per month for 10 months or a two nighter every other month with no camping either during the cold or hot season. I've read about some units that do two activities a month. Do we all do a two nighter 11 months a year with a six night summer camp just because that is what everyone else does? Does too many campouts run some boys off? Would not having so many also run some boys off? How much is too much?

[EagleBeaver 10]

I think of the scouting program like my dogs' water dish. Growing up, my job was to keep the dish full. The dogs would come and drink what they needed as often as they needed - I just made sure it was never empty.

 

I feel that scouting is an optional adventure and the only boys asked to make a participation commitmet are those that take on leadership roles for a six month duration. The rest can 'drink' as much as they need.

 

Paul

 

[szekany 10]

There's no easy answer to the question "how much is too much." So much depends on the circumstances of your troop and the kids involved.

 

My advice is that you listen to the advice of the scouts - hopefully through their elected members of the PLC, who then reflect the opinions of the troop in the planning of the calendar. Of course, this process may need some help along the way; you might consider holding an occasional "open feedback" session for the troop as part of a meeting, maybe once every 6 months or so. Give all the scouts the opportunity to give their feedback on troop operations with their Patrol Leader, and then take it all to the PLC and evaluate.

 

For my troop, in general we would never cut back on program because of scouter commitments. We'd recruit new adults or work hard to resolve scheduling conflicts, but to cut down because of adult concerns does a disservice to the scouts. Your mileage may vary... we have the advantage of having a number of committed adults and alumni who are willing to help out.

[Eamonn 61]

One way to lose a Leader or burn out a Leader, is by having him do too many things that he doesn't want to do or feels that he has to do.

I love to camp, love spending time with Scouts and given the chance would be doing something every weekend.

In fact for a while I just didn't know how to say No. I was busy doing something every weekend and attending some sort of meeting or whatever four or five nights a week.

I was having a blast and enjoying myself. But my home life was suffering. I had to cut back and had to learn how to say no. At times it hurt, there were things that I liked doing with people I liked being with and they were doing things that I missed out on.

When it comes to youth members, we need to remember that they have a life outside of Scouting. Some Scouter's have a real hard time with this. But yes, Scouts do have families, do have other commitments outside of the troop. Also I have noticed with my son he will pick and choose what activities he wants to participate in. When he was younger he went because the troop was going, now if the program isn't something that he wants he doesn't go.

The troop does offer a year round program, with a week at summer camp and a big trip each summer to someplace like Washington DC or Gettysburg, this year they were going some place that he had been to before, the price tag was $150 and he didn't want to part with $75 of his hard earned cash (I pay half.)

We need to offer our Scouts a year round program and aim for a outing each month, if there is the leadership. This needs to be looked at before the annual planning meeting.

We have a Troop in the District that hasn't done anything in a coons age, because none of the Scouts want to do what is planned, but the PLC is not meeting and the plans are coming from the adults. The Scouts don't have any ownership in their program.

Very often a leader will lean on a Lad to get him to attend or give him a hard time for not attending. I think this is wrong. We need to use all the skills of leadership to make the event as inviting as possible and invite our Scouts to participate. If the event turns out to be a dud we need to look at the reason why.

We had a District Camporee a few years back with only about half the normal amount of Scouts, it was the same weekend as the High School band competition a lot of the Scouts were involved in that and when the Scouts found that their pals weren't going they stayed away as well. Had we done a better job of planing and done a better job of communicating and listened to the Scouts we would have known and changed the date.

Eamonn.

[CA_Scouter 11]

We have a year round program as well, and we have pretty good attendence. What works well for us, is that we plan the calendar a full year in advance, so that families can plan accordingly ( should they wish to do so ).

 

We always encourage participation on every outing, but we don't lean on those who won't or can't attend. In fact, we have several who are heavily involved in sports, and sometimes they will skip a sporting event, or even show up on Saturday afternoon after the game if the event is not too far away.

 

We also try to present a variety of activities to hold the scouts ( and adults ) interest. i.e.. snow camping, backpack, beach trip, aircraft carrier, rock climb, boating, all of which are overnighters...

 

During the month of December, we typically ask the scouts and adults to make presentations on outings for the next year. This way, everyone feels they have input into the program, and we think this contributes to our good attendance ( and we've had no complaints about 'too much' ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SR540Beaver 116]

Good comments all. For the record, even though I said I'm content to putter around the house, I do support a year round program. I have only missed one campout since joining on the troop side and it was due to work. It killed me not to go. Our boys are at summer camp this week and I can't go since I'm using the vast majority of my time to serve as a contingent leader for Jamboree. It sure was hard to drive away from camp Sunday afternoon after delivering a truck load of scouts.

 

I agree with the dog dish approach. I also agree that many scouters have trouble with that concept. We have two active threads that play into this. One is one FCFY and the other is about summer ccamp attendance. Many leaders get heart burn if the scouts are not attending enough to meet requirements to get that 1st class rank in a year or if only half the troop attends summer camp. We volunteer our precious free time to the program and we like to see 100% participation. But the truth is much like Eamonn noted, people have a life outside of scouting and not everyone can be at everything all the time. In fact, the scouter I mentioned who is leaving because his son has lost interest is not the whole story. He got so involved at one point being a unit commissioner, assisting with district training, serving on Wood Badge and IOLS staff in addition to being an ASM that his wife was beginning to get a little jealous of scouting. I believe in a year round program, but have to accept that boys will pick and choose what they want to do and when they want to do it. Our boys chose their outings. But just like a menu, 6 boys may be gung ho for a certain meal while another 2 want nothing to do with it. The majority wins. You can decide if the outing or menu isn't for you and act accordingly. You can't please everyone all the time.

[evmori 11]

We go to summer camp the 2nd week of July. Then we take the rest of July & all August off. We start up again right after Labor Day.

 

How much is too much? That can be different for all people! One outing per month is definitely not too much.

 

It seems kids today need a day-timer or PDA to not miss anything. Kids are over scheduled and don't have time to be kids!

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[SemperParatus 1]

The great thing about scouting is that each scout can determine 'how much' is enough for them.

 

We run 12 overnight opportunities each year plus support OA weekends, week-long summer camp and week-long high adventure trip, monthly service opportunities of 4-6 hours, daytrip/fun night every other month, assist at a half-dozen cub scout events a year, etc etc

 

I have never heard anyone complain. We have some scouts that attend just about everything (one scout in our troop has so far accumulated 132 nights in the field in 4-years) and some that attend only a few trips a year. Most fall somewhere in between. We average a little over 75% on weekend trips, which indicates to me that we have not reached the point of 'too much'. I do believe that for some new families, it can be a bit of a shock but once they hear that there is no mandatory attendance requirements their fears are alleviated. From a scouter perspective, as SM I no longer attend every activity but with a staff of 10 ASM we usually have a presence of 3-4 members of the SM staff (plus 5-6 other adults) on any given trip to provide adequate supervision of 50 or so kids and to ensure that the scouting methods are employed.

 

Varying the trip destinations and activities keeps the interest level up by not doing the same ol' thing. Too much of the same ol' stuff could be a problem.

[ASM59 10]

Our Troop generally offers a two-night outing in the months of January~June & August~November. In July we offer summer camp and in December, we typically have a day outing (last year to the zoo).

 

Of our 20 active scouts, we typically average around 14 on our regular outings. 5 of our scouts will not miss an outing unless very sick. The rest are tied up from time to time with school, sports, & family activites. If not for these activities, there would be more attending because they really do get upset about missing.

 

If you go to every other month outings those who have to miss one will have 4 months between outings. When offering monthly outings that are truely boy initiated and led, I think you'll always get a good/consistent turn out.

 

One thing that I'd like to stress, as was already mentioned, is that it should not be absolutely necessary for a SM or SPL to make every single outing. Getting enough good adult leadership (ASM's) should allow the SM to take a break from some outings. The SPL should try to make as many outings as possible, but expecting him to make every meeting may keep a good leader from accepting the position.

 

Just my thoughts,

ASM59

[EagleInKY 14]

I like the "feeding the dogs" analogy. We need to provide a program with lots of opportunities. We average 85%-90% participation, so you figure that some kids are at 100% and a few are around 50%, the rest are around 90%. That means they are probably making 10 of 12 activities a year. That seems like a reasonable amount.

 

For kids that aren't involved in the "sport of the month", scouting provides a great opportunity to lead an active lifestyle with lots of different experiences. For those heavily involved in sports, I can see where they view scouting as a distraction.

[Trevorum 24]

To directly answer the question, IMHO, "too much" is when the troop's adult leadership can not provide adequate supervision, driving, etc. for troop activities due to being stretched too thin. Few leaders will be able to (or inclined to) go on every single troop activity. Depending on the size of the troop, the number of adult leaders, and how often they "rotate" in and out, "too much" will vary considereably between troops. Our troop is lucky to have many SAs; as a result we have enough leaders to be able to camp every month, attend 2 different summer camps and 2 high adventures plus a winter camp. That's nearly 50 days & nights of program per year.

[LPC_Thumper 10]

WHAT AN INTERESTING QUESTION...

 

I've enjoyed the opinions, thanks for sharing.

 

In my case I'm the Committee Chair for my son's former troop (he aged out, and is temporarily out of the area). I had served for many years as an ASM (while my son was in the program). I was the High Adventure Leader, and arranged trips to Philmont, Northern Tier, and The Sea Base. Our older boys loved it. Now all of our ASMs didn't do the training for the Trips, we didn't do the advancement camp outs. We tried to do Camporee and activities like that. We run 3 programs, new scout, experienced scout, and older boy. While we only run one trip per month, the target is one of these three groups. If there are boys that really want to go on a trip that is for a younger group than they are, they can be an advisor, and we as adults use their expertise.

 

This means that as adults while we may back someone up because we want to go, we really are on the hook every three months. We have about 40 scouts, and about 10 adults that are trained and ready. This method works for us. When we are low on trained adults we'll take dads that have not yet been trained and then spend some time taling about how important training is.

 

Hope this helps...

 

[Hunt 11]

I agree that it really depends on the circumstances of the boys in the troop. My son's troop is basically inactive in the summer after summer camp. This is because most of the boys are away for large chunks of the summer. My son, for example, will be away for seven weeks of the summer (including camp). I'm hoping we can schedule a few "casual" events (ball game, day hike, etc.) for boys who are around, but I know only a handfull of boys will be available for any one event.

During the rest of the year, we try hard to have at least one outing a month--but we don't have very many two-night outings. These kids have lots of activities, and lots of homework. It's just something you have to work with.