Eagledad

This is quite and interesting post. When I listen to someone with little experience describe to folks with scars of experience of the perfect world, I think of the idealistic progressives of the seventies describing Utopia. Your post bleeds of comparisons for your Utopia with (or more fairly against) my 20 or so years of actual experience. And not just my experience, but the experiences of several forum contributors with real boy run experiences. I just don't want to have brag to make a point with your Utopian ideals. If you need the details of my experience, we can do that in private, but I'm going to try and respond with generalizations I learned from my experiences if you don't mind. No theories here. I think it's great that you imagine the ideal troop program and consider the details of your machine, I wish other scouters would. But when your perfect vision leads you to imply that the experiences of other scouters isn't a match to your lofty idealist visions, maybe you should at least consider being more reserved with your opinions of the opinions of adults with real experiences until you can compare and balance experiences. Apples to apples so to speak. Thanks for your time. Barry

You have been struggling with this for a long time Blw2. I can see it is really important for you, but I don't understand why it is important that those of us who have successful programs with mixed age patrols agree with you. I have no desire to change your mind because if mixed age patrols isn't in your heart, you aren't going to do it. I can't agree that same age patrols work as well as mixed age patrols. I've tried both and mixed age is just better. But, I want to help you through your struggle. What can we do to help you? Barry

I enjoy discussions like this because there is a lot to learn from the different experiences. But some of the contributors aren't being honest in describing there experiences. Beaver and I have been on this forum for a long time, so we have some memories of what many members have posted here over the years. Is it possible to ask for an honest discussion with being disrespectful to posters who who push to be the smartest scouters in the room? I don't know, but it is a bit frustrating. Barry

The accusation is that councils are making up their own rules. Is that correct? Barry

They can't get away with it. What councils are accused of doing this? Barry

Shaking my head. Barry

Boy, I'm not sure anyone has clear political opinions today. I would guess what you want is for the adults to be respectful. Much of the time that means just listening quietly. All our adults expect from each other is that we be the proper roll models. Typically the adults campsite is too far away on troop campouts to hear much. But I try not to let the scouts know what I've heard the night before when the tents are stacked next to each other on wilderness camping like boundary Waters and backpacking. I remember having some very personal conversations with my tent mate when I was in scouts. I try to allow them that privacy. Barry

Funny, we see this happen a lot. Once it was another troop. Very annoying. They also left a lot of garbage spread over their site. Ugly boy scouts I guess. Barry

So very sorry. Prayers for peace and healing. Barry

I've had more than one new scout urinate near or on their tent in the middle of the night because they were scared in the dark. Typically the Patrol Leaders take care of it and the adults don't over react. Actions need to be understood in context. Peeing in defiance would require a different response. Your issue Grubdad has some history and part of the complication is the adults, or adult, are still learning the right responses. All troops and adults go through the same growth, and it never really stops. What you learn from this situation will better prepare you for the next. Our troop policies are the results of a series of situations in the past and how we handled them, or maybe more often mishandled them. What's really hard about dealing with misbehavior is most new adults instinctively want to react with a compassionate response because we truly want scouts to grow from their experiences. The problem is that human nature combines our past experience with our self-serving desires and misplaced compassion gives the wrong self-serving expectations. In other words if you give a scout a yard, he will want a mile and repeat his behavior to see if he can get it. And for those adults who use the "Three strikes your out" approach; Please! What I learned from my experiences over the years is to not take a scouts behavior of any type personally. And practice holding the scout accountable for his behavior, whether it's good behavior or bad. And hold them accountable as soon as you can so that they can process their the right and wrong of their decisions. Holding a scout accountable is as easy as asking what parts of the law they used or abused in their decision. Our goals as adults is to help scouts develop habits of making right decisions. So, if we can just get them to reflect on the consequences (not being friendly, courteous or kind.....) of wrong decisions, hopefully they eventually want to initiate the habit of making right decisions. Truth of the matter is that the more wrong decisions as person of this age makes and are held accountible, the faster they learn to change. I learned that from a youth counselor long before I was a scout leader. I just didn't really respect what he said until it was applied in the troop. Up to a limit, we want scouts to make bad decisions so they learn the habit of making good decisions. What gets in the way are those few scouts who don't want to be there in the first place and actually enjoy the stress they create. I just hand those guys off to the parents and let them deal with it. In a boy run troop or patrol, the objective is to get the group thinking of right decisions so that they as a group hold individuals accountable for their choices. They may not mention the scout law, but they all know right from wrong because they continually hold each other accountable. As the scouts develop a maturity of holding each other accountable for their behavior (good and bad), the adults learn less and less about misbehavior because the scouts have learned how to deal with it or really nip it in the bud. One example off the top of my head is when I walked over to watch the scouts play Capture the Flag. I was far enough in the woods that the scouts didn't know I was there. As one of the new scouts ran by at full speed, he said a few four letter words. An older scout running near him said, "hey we don't talk like that here". The new scout said "got-it". All that happened in just a few seconds and without much thought. But the group as a whole excepted that the language was wrong and as a whole nipped it in the bud before the behavior become a problem. Sounds easy, but that kind of culture takes some time to develop. It starts with adult expectations and how to deal with good and bad behavior. You will eventually get it, we all do with a little practice. Barry

Stosh already stated that he tells his scouts to use his preference for selecting leaders because he doesn't want adult politics to get in the way. Who knows what he means by adult politics, but this whole discussion has made a bizarre turn because one Scoutmaster believes he is smarter than everyone else. Bless his heart, Stosh has an agenda going on here, so he isn't listening to any other opinions. He is so deep into the theory of stosh scouts that he can't see the big picture. In a mature patrol method Troop, "Election cycles have very little influence on the performance of the overall program". It keeps getting pointing out that if a scout is taking care of his boys as a Patrol leader (or even an Assistant Patrol Leader and Quarter Master), he isn't going to stop taking of his boys as the SPL. Take two identical scouts with the same experiences and ambitions; put one scout in a BSA Patrol Method troop and the other in stosh scouts and the career path of those scouts will be close to the same. How a scout gets into a position of responsibility doesn't change how he will take care of his boys. But stosh hasn't figured that out yet. I think because he hasn't been Scoutmaster in one troop long enough to see and understand the dynamics of scout growth during program growth and maturity. The forum had this very same discussion with Kudu. For stosh and Kudu, how a scout gets a position of responsibility is a make or break in the success of stosh and Kudu scouts. That's why they dictate how their scouts select their leaders. We just need to be patient. For me it is a test. Barry

It's the same. I used to be amazed at the assumptions parent had of scout leaders' skills and abilities for dealing with medical and special needs. I can't count the number of parents who later admitted they took their kids of medication on weekends without telling anyone in the troop. Barry

I agree with those who said that the most troublesome scouts are the ones who don't want to be there. And looking back at those scouts, they come in two categories; One, the scout isn't interested in scouting at all, but is forced to be there. Two, the scout's situation at home is the issue, not the troop program. But the scout is so distracted that they still don't want to participate. These discussions tend to go off in generalities that would suggest are the solutions to all mishavior situations. But our troop has experiences dangerous aggression from scouts in both categories above. Several times the behavior rose above the expectations of Patrol Leader's ability to control and parents had to be ask to help solve the escalating problem. In one situation, the scout had just turned into an out and out bully at home and school and was attacking scouts (in other troops at summer camp) for sport. Yes really, for sport. Something was going on at home, I don't know what, but the mother was hoping the troop would change her son's behavior. In another situation, the scout was so desperate for attention from his parents that he threatened a scout with his knife on a campout until the victim broke down from the fear. The threat went farther than it should have because the youth leaders tried to take care of the situation. But it quickly became obvious that it was above their ability. That scout, by the way, earned Eagle two years later (different troop in a different state) after considerable family therapy. So I think we have to be careful how we answer specific situations on the forum. We can certainly give generalities in how we approach misbehavior, but we shouldn't imply that all troops have the same ability to deal with all situations. I think it is naive to suggest that troops even pretend they can deal with all situations. Troop programs are not homes away from homes. The program may be the most stable and positive influence in a boy s life, but that doesn't mean it will fix the scouts struggle because he still spends most of his life away from the troop. Midnight calls from the police have taught me that. The abuse of one scouts parents was so bad that the family literally packed their car and left town in the middle of the night in fear of intervention by the authorities. My wife and often question what happened to the sad situation. I advised the Scoutmaster who replaced me to never hold secrets about a scouts behavior from the parents unless he thought harm would come from it. He admitted I was right when a parent brought a lawyer to threaten litigation. The Scoutmaster was only trying to be a nice guy and protect the scout from the parents discipline. He thought he could change the scout's behavior by himself. But these weren't abusive parents and they were upset that their sons misbehavior had gone on for several months. It took a threat with a knife by their son to bring everything to light and the parents weren't happy. I tell leaders at training to imagine that a mother approaches the troop holding a box of puzzle pieces on her son's first day in the troop. The picture on the puzzle is her dream of her future son as an adult. Under each puzzle piece is the name of one person she hand picked to help contribute in developing her son into the ideal adult pictured on the puzzle. On the back of one puzzle piece is his soccer coach, another is his piano teacher, another is her son's sunday school teacher and on the back of another piece is the Scoutmaster. See, we are not the total solution to building the mothers dream, we are just one part, one puzzle piece. We are a small part of her whole team that mom is using to build the kind of man she dreams about for her son every night. When we leaders start to think of ourselves as more than that (and many scouters do), then we set up ourselves and the scouts for trouble. The best way for a troop to handle misbehavior is to develop a culture where all the scouts few free and responsible to proactively point out boundaries of behavior before a scout pushes past the boundary. A culture of of nipping it in the bud. But there will always be that one scout who even leaves the adults scratching their head and learning from that experience for the next time. Be prepared for that one unknown. One last thing, these questions come up often and don't surprise me. The two most difficult discussions I have watched debated in my Scoutmaster Specific CLasses are Uniforms and dealing with misbehavior. Misbehavior is tough for all of us. Barry

Does one need to say more? Barry

I find the parents are more forward than the scouts. Scouts don't like these kinds of discussions. Parents know and don't mind explaining the truth. Barry

Are they cotton shirts? Barry

I have never had to ask a scout to quit as a result of his behavior, and very few leaders here have examples of bad behavior that would top ours. But families who join our troop learn that we don't hide anything from the parents and we expect the parents to work as a team with the troop leaders to help change bad behavior. The parents are informed about all their son's behavior, both good and bad (Typically 90% good). I like to think of myself as the boys biggest cheerleader. But when the parents get a report of bad behavior, they are expected to help with the behavior unless they are told the troop leaders (adults and scouts) have a plan to work with their son and don't really need their help. In extreme situations, the behavior reaches a level where it is made clear to the parents that they either participate with their son in patrol and troop activities, or their son is not allowed to participate with the other scouts. The families make the choice if junior continues with the troop. I would guess our record is about 50 percent of families decide not to come back back. Those are extreme situations and rare. However, it's not just dealing with the bad Scout behavior; a few adults were told they were no longer welcome to participate with the scouts because of their behavior. Of the three I can remember off the top of my head, only one pulled her son from the troop. Let me also add that our policy was learned from hard experiences. I think all units (cubs, troops, and Venturing) have to learn and develop from their experiences. Barry

We believe that "ALL" positions from the least responsible like the Cheer Master to highest perceived responsibility of the SPL should have understood expectations that the scout can easily quote. The positions also have a hierarchical order to show their expectation of maturity for the position so the scout understands the difficulty of the position and can plan how to grow in maturity with each position. If a scouts plans to be an SPL one day, he can look at the order of responsibilities toward reaching the position. Of course nothing is in stone and some scouts are smarter than others, but those understandings give the adults and scouts a general idea of where are in the order and where they can go for continued maturity and growth. If your troop doesn't have expectations for positions, create them so scouts understand what is expected of them and how to plan for their future. Barry

Interesting. Our experience of a unit without preconceived expectations is that scouts earn self recognition awards later in their scouting career rather than earlier because they are busy with the more gratifying activities of maturing with the team (the team being the Patrol, troop, PLC, Crew, Leadership Training, OA, and so forth). In other words, when a boy knows he can earn the Eagle for himself anytime, he spends less time on activities that are less gratifying like the Eagle requirements and more time working to build the team to a maximum efficiency. As a result those scouts tend to get awarded with self recognition honors (like Eagle) toward the end of their troop career, not the beginning. As has been said, what boys of this age enjoy the most in their life is proving themselves in the challenges of higher maturity. The challenge for the adults are recognizing each boys need for more challenge and providing challenges for him everyday as long as he is in the troop. But part of growing in maturity is practicing the traits of the scout law in the decisions during their scouting activities. The more decisions a scout makes during activities, the more he will grow from reflecting on the results of those decisions. That is how continued character maturity that is so highly praised of Eagles is developed. Typically scouts who are not bound by outside expectations, as stosh points out, are more mature Eagles because they have a well rounded maturity that was gained over a longer time from a broader range of scouting activities than the minimum activities required for earning the Eagle. Those are the scouts who are typically leaders in the PLC, OA, crew development and young scout development. Those are the guys the young scouts trust and idolize because they are always seen moving the program forward and treating everyone with respect. But I caution that even the outside expectation of young scouts performing equal to older scouts can shackle a boys experience in the program. Very very rarely will you meet an 11 year old SPL who has the maturity and skills of a well rounded 16 year old SPL. A troop program trying to prove otherwise is typically a very limited program and is equivalent to an Eagle mill. Barry

I'm trying not to be disrespectful, but your older scouts are turned off because the program has not matured to their level of level of maturity. If the adults in the troop can't raise the troop program's maturity, why would they think they can build a successful Venture program? Same goes with Venture patrols. Three out of five new Venture Crews dissolve in four years due to low interest. I found there are two types of adults who talk about starting new Venture Crews. One is the leader who wants to keep the older boys in the program. I can helps those leaders fix their older scout problem. The other is the adult's bored with troop program and used the bored older scout as an excuse to move on. they are harder to change. Program quality is measured from the oldest scouts. If that part of the program struggles, then the whole program is struggling. Barry

It was, but it went away along with the age matrix. Except where the age matrix is required, which for us was only Philmont. Barry

I agree, how is leadership measured? Of course it is obvious for some people. One of the dads in our troop was and Air Force General. You knew he was a leader when he entered the room. On the other hand I had scouts who were shy or slightly introverted and leader might not come to mind at first glance. But while these scouts are reluctant to step up when others in the group are capable, they always seem to be in the right place when the situation required it. Sometimes we forget that "Being Prepared" is also a leadership quality. Barry

Its interesting situation. Someone mentioned the other day in a different thread that even the best troops go through cycles because different waves of adult and scout leaderships can change the dynamics. It sounds like you are in the low of one of those waves. But your program sounds fun and boy run. I think you hit the nail on the head with patience. Lets see how they work this. Still, it might not hurt to ask the SM about how they balance their younger scout program with the adventure and management of the rest of the troop. Maybe he needs a reminder the program needs some tuning. I was given a reminder once from a new scout who happen to also be a local bicycle racing team member. The older scouts were organizing a multiday bike trek in the state and weren't even considering younger scouts. This young scout had more miles and experience on bikes than all the scouts in the troop added together. As a result, we changed our activities qualifications policy to only consider maturity and physical ability for each specific activity. Age and rank were removed. Barry