Eagledad

Probably right, my apologies to all. Barry

I never have cared much for the game because my observation is about 1 out of 10 people really get much from it. From my perspective, it's the really competitive people who get sucked in and drive others to win it all. And they are usually the ones who are defensive when they figure out they got dooped, or so they think at first. It takes them a while to settle down enough to move on. Our council is pretty smart in that we have team who leads this game for all the Wood Badges. They are pretty good at administering the game properly and explaining the meaning after. I can't remember the details (because I'm old), but the old Wood Badge course had something like this where an adult had to move to another Patrol for some reason. The intent was teaching the participants what it is like for a new scout to join a patrol. It had the same kind of controversy and resistance. Barry

It is also for the boys and sometimes our passion for the program and to do our best gets in the way of what is best for the boys. Those of us who have worked with a lot of volunteers very much appreciate the time and effort you are giving to the program. However, doing your best also means living the Scout Oath and Law. You do a disservice to yourself lashing out at those on the forum who have many many years experience working with both adults and scouts. If you don't like the answers to your question, you only need to respond with a thank you for your time. Of course there is so much here we can't know because we aren't personal to the situation, but based on your words, the irony here is that your personality and the den leader's personality appear much the same. I teach in our adult leader courses that adults have to be humble to become good scout leaders. I've never met a scout leader who was never wrong. I hope your situation works out for the best of everyone. Keep us informed. YIS Barry

Litigation risk aside, outdoor adventure when I was a kid is different than now. "It's a lot riskier". When I was a scout, there weren't climbing walls or repelling towers. The most risky activity I ever did in a troop was back packing. I don't ever remember being scared on a scouting activity until I tried repelling as a Scout Leader. Back packing in my scouting youth is pretty tamed compared with many of today's activities. Oh there where scouts who did climbing and repelling and stuff, but they were in Explorer Posts. I even belong in a Scuba Explorer Post at age 16. I was talking to our Summer Camp Director several years ago. He was brought in to help reverse the trend of troops going to other counsels for summer camp. He said that most camps they are competing with have horses and mountain bikes. He said, "Barry, the insurance the counsel has to get for mountain biking alone is triple the cost of any other activity in our camp including shooting sports". It's not just the helicopter parenting culture that the BSA is competing with, it is also the higher expectation of riskier adventure. Compared to some YMCA summer camp activities, BSA camps are pretty low energy. Barry

I agree with Stosh. I've watched it over and over through the years. But there is other contributions to the problem along with the obvious conflicting programs that stosh is talking about. Most troops start a Crew to compensate for a weak older scout program and the irony is that the adults who lack the ability to develop a quality older scout troop program also lack the ability to develop a successful Crew program. That is why 7 out of 10 Crews fail in there first five years. As a district committee member, I was approached by several troops to help them start a crew so they could hold on to their older scouts. I never told them not to start one, but I always first started by working on their older scout program. I told them the success of a scout troop is measured by the quality of the older scouts. I also blame National on this because they are encouraging counsels to create Crews to help improve older youth numbers and the easiest place to start are troops. Our troop was approached because we had the largest group of 14 and older scouts in the state at the time. The DE told me that it was only natural for us to create a crew because we knew how to work with older scouts. I told him that the reason our older scout program was so successful is because of the troop program and splitting the scouts would defeat the intent and purpose of our program. And that is not to say our scouts didn't also belong with other Crews, a few of them did because we do have some pretty cool crews in our area. But that is not the same as creating a new program within your program. Barry

Typically when these types of adults get in a troop, they either shape up, or are shipped out. Most troops don't put up with it. I know of one such den leader that was in three different troops in three years before she finally just quit the BSA (our troop was her first). Barry

Well as they say, you don't know what you don't know. Big tent or little tents? Coleman stove or single burner? Or even fire. Back packs or duffle bags? Camp boxes or Tupperware tubs? Trailer of trunks? Lanterns or moon light? Borrow as much gear as you can and test it out. There some fun adventure in that and it will give the troop the experience to make informed decisions. Barry

BEEN THERE DONE THAT, so I'm giving an opinion based from my experience. I agree this is a DE level situation. However, I think you are too close to the 2nd Web den leader's business. Let her run her den her way and be done with her. She knows the program guidelines and rules. So unless you see some kind of risk of harm, let her run her den the way she interprets those guidelines and don't waste a second thought. As for the two new scouts, explain the options (not your personal feelings) to the parents and let them choose the direction they want to go and don't waste a second thought with them either. Trust me there are so many other aspects of the Cub program that need your attention. I know how close we get to the program when we put so much of our time and effort into it. It hurts when adults seem to pridefully defy our guidance. But you should consider that maybe you are part of the problem. Remember, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Let her go. It takes practice separating our emotions from the performance of those we think we are responsible for. But, there is a lot of leeway in how a Den leader can run the den and sometimes one of us has to set our pride aside for the good of the program and the scouts. It appears the den leader isn't going to back down. She may in fact be reacting to you with obstinance. She is not worth the sleepless nights. And remember, you can sit back with popcorn after she crosses over to the troop and how the Troop leaders react to her when she tries this with them. Barry

As a MB counselor, I won't accept any scout without first seeing a signed card so that I know that somebody knows this scout is working with me. I don't think that was the original intent of the signature, but I wouldn't be surprised if National likes having the paper trail for that purpose. The leading source of abuse complaints 20 or so years ago were merit badge counselors. That signature tells the counselor that somebody knows. Of course that is just a huge guess on my part, but I won't accept a scout with a blank card. Barry

I don't like group Merit Badge assemblies mainly because they tend to skip the BSA guidelines for the scouts that I consider important like getting the SM to sign a card and then contacting the counselor to make arrangements for meeting. I almost killed our District MB College for that very reason, but I was asked to step aside. Anyway, a friend (actually a mentor) who was put in the same situation called me. We came up with the idea to use the class for introducing the MB subject and reviewing a few requirements. Once he finished, he instructed the group that if anyone was interested to give him a call. 50% of the scouts called him and 20% earned the badge. So, if you feel inclined to meet the group, use it as an opportunity to introduce the subject and then instruct the interested scouts to call you. Barry

Boy, go away from the computer for a while and the discussion takes a left turn. I didn't see any examples of condescending examples in this discussion that I was referring to and I apologize if my tone came off that way. We old timers who have seen a lot tend to add caveats to save others the humilities of our past experiences. Barry

I remember a couple times the scout asked the question and followed with "I already know the answer, I don't know why I even asked". Sorry!". BUT, sometimes the scouts will approach you as a member of their team seeking a mature discussion. If you are changing the troop culture to where everyone is respected equally as adults, eventually over the years the scouts will expect a natural equal respect from the adults. Isn't that really our goal? There will come that time when the troop maturity has reached a level where the scouts do deal with most of their situations, but sometimes something comes up that requires additional input and the scouts expect a mature dialogue with the adults. This happens a lot dealing with difficult behavior, but it can be anything when the scouts are responsible for the most of the troop higher responsibilities. I knew when our very mature 17 year old SPL approached me with a dilemma, there was not going to be an easy obvious answer. I'm saying be careful not to be too reactionary with your responses because they can come off as condescending. Barry

Do the scouts know what is expected of them? Are they trained for their responsibilities? Do they use their resources like the Scout handbook, PL Handbook, SPL Handbook and even Merit Badge manuals? All these things gives them some confidence to move forward without the adults. Barry

That is exactly right. And by the same token, the adults have conditioned themselves to be reactionary in leading their children. That is just as hard to comprehend and change. The best Scoutmasters are salesmen of their product. Barry

Very good for you and the boys. By nature older scouts lead and younger scouts follow, so yes older scouts resist change and younger scouts will follow a vision. I'm glad you are evaluating the performance as you go along. Adults need to keep up so as not to get in the way. To help the ASMs and older scouts, keep preaching your vision of what you think the future boy run troop will look like and the benefits that come with that troop. You need everyone on board and selling them on the vision is the key. As for patrol activiities, try some patrol competitions to get the scouts used to working as a team and counting on each other. Lots of great ideas for competitions, but just something as simple as a knot tying race gets things going. And remember, time is your friend when forcing scouts to work as a team. I love agendas because they show the PLs when and where the patrol needs to be. Time builds discipline and continuity quicker than anything else I know of. Barry

Well there is that saying that you don't know what you don't know. Philmont runs 50,000 hikers through a year for how many umpteen years. It would be good to learn how many incident like this have occurred at Philmont over the years. And I'm not trying to justify one way or the other, but one of the reasons some folks don't care for outdoor youth activities is the the theoretical risk. I will say that I aged a lot of years while I was the SM because of the stress of worrying about risk. We are a very active troop and put forth a lot of effort to be safe. But, as was said, when you are a full day away from an emergency access, there is risk. Barry

We also did this with the Webelos Activity pins so scouts didn't have to wait so long. The parents got in the habit of arriving 10 minutes early before the end of the meeting so they could watch their son get awarded the pins. We still brought the scouts up front and at the pack meeting to present their cards to them in front of the whole pack. Barry

The difference between "boy run" and "boy run in the ground" are the methods adults use to help scouts move to the next stage of maturity. Experienced adults have grown over the years to develop techniques for giving scouts just enough confidence to move forward. I like to say give the scout a flashlight for venturing into the dark of their fear or ignorance. Most of the time the scouts program gets stagnant because the scouts just don't know how to move forward or they are afraid, which is the case for many of the youth leaders. The scouts don't need lectures or full instructions, they just need that little inspiring word or the one missing fact to get them moving again. We also have coaches as goto resources for the scouts. But the coaches are guided not to help the scouts without first being asked by the scout, and to try only ask the scout short questions to help him think himself forward. It's an art that takes practice. The objective is for the scout to create his solution and to learn from that decision. That is actually a difficult task for parents and as I said requires practice to master. As the scouts get older and mature, they naturally take over the coaching roles. The adults eventually get very few questions. Interestingly as our scouts have gotten use to adults only asking questions to help a scout create a solution, the older scouts use the same style for younger scouts. I often wonder how that will affect their parenting. Barry

I don't know, coaching to the point of making the BOR feel uncomfortable, is a bit much for me. I don't know about your EBOR, but ours isn't looking to make it a bad experience. If the scouts have a general idea of their skills, they are good to go. I advise all SMs observe an EBOR so they have a general idea of what to expect. My coaching was more of giving nervous scouts (and parents) enough confidence to sleep the night before. Barry

Our troop did this when I was a scout. But first each patrol had to kill the turkey (with an axe), clean and defeather it. Quite a memorable camp out for sure. Barry

We set four tubes of chicken wire standing vertical three feet apart in a square. We fill the tubes with charcoal and wrap aluminum foil around the square. Light the four tubes and set a turkey in the square, four hours later you have a nice brown turkey. It's basically like a large box reflector oven. Obviously other foods can be cooked in it, but we typcially use it for turkey. Barry

I came from a very boy led troop and I have very fond memories of our SM. The troop is usually the image of the SM and the Scouts know that. That is especially true in a boy run troop because while you don't see the SM very often, when he does visit, it has purpose and an impact. I tried to model much of my Scoutmastering after him. My scouts were lucky that he was a role model for me. Barry

Yep, I forgot. "On one campout" Thanks

There is no set answer. Let the scout do it how he wants: one meal on three camp outs, or all three on one camp out, or......... The objective of the requirement is learning the skills. Barry

This is how our troop got up to speed in high adventure and is the advice I gave to other troops over the years. You would be amazed how many adults in other troop would love to teach their skills and go along on the first trek. Call a few troops and ask for help and they will come. Also, there are a couple of Venturing Crews that love the opportunity to teach their skills and knowledge. The scouts love it. Barry