I have a question about how to deal with a dificult mother (D.M.). Her son is a good scout, and really seems to enjoy the den program.
Some history:
I am a lifelong Scout. Did the whole program as a youth, Cubs, Troop, Explorere Post. Made Eagle.
Joined the Pack last year as the Tiger Den Leader when my oldest boy joined. We are now into our second year. I fully admit, and was upfront with the parents, that I am not the most organized person in the world, but am making great improvment. Tigers was easy in that the poster available from BSA tracks each step of each requirement as they do them. I planned to use the Cub poster this year. No go on that. It only tracks completed requirements, not the individual parts of them. This left me feeling like I was on a liferaft in the middle of a hurricane without a paddle. Thus the Den was a little disorganized the first couple meetings. Then, last week, I found the Scout Trax excel spreadsheets. Talk about a life saver. I now have all the things the boys have completed marked down and it is easy to see what we need to work on.
Between Join Scouting Nights, Pack Halloween Party, and closed schools, we have only had 4 den meetings so far this year.
At the first meeting, I needed to talk to the parents for about 5 minutes to do some planning for the Pack camping trip. During those 5 minutes, since the boys were hyper, and I was still waiting on 1 family, I allowed the boys to play TAG in the gym where we meet. After that, I was done with the parents, and the boys were calmed down, and we had a successful meeting. Since it was the last den meeting before Halloween, I had the craft be painting pumpkins, and we did that first to allow the paint to dry before the end of the meeting. After that, we did some rank requirements (talked about safety I believe). Talked about the camping trip, and what they wanted to do on it. Then the hour was gone, and we ended the meeting.
D.M. told me "If I had known all he was going to do was run around, we wouldn't have come. He can do that at home."
They ran around for 5 minutes of an hour meeting.
I missed the next meeting due to prior commitments, but the A.D.L. ran the meeting, and I heard it was a great meeting. Turns out the D.M. and her son missed that meeting.
Between that meeting and the next, I lost my A.D.L., she became Committee Chairwoman, and thus can't give full attention to the den.
I asked the difficult mother to be A.D.L. since she had expressed a desire to take a more active role before the new "year" started. She agreed.
At the next meeting, I brought the state and U.S. flags and a packet of information for the boys with the intention of doing the flag requirements. I needed to look over the boys books, so as soon as the D.M. (now A.D.L.) got to the meeting, I asked her to do a quick presentation on the state flag to the boys. I showed her what to tell them (it was in the packet), and told her I just needed her to cover 5 minutes of meeting so I could look over the books. She did it, I took less than 5 min. to do the books, and then I took over, and finished the rest of the meeting. We finished the flag requirements, the safety requirements, and worked on the environmental requirements.
Last week, she said she would do the word search from the program guide, and bring in some geneology info and do most of the meeting. I told her that'd be great. Just in case though, I got together activities and packets on the Heritages beltloop/pin. I also had my ex-A.D.L. (who is still helping out, just not on an "official" basis) find some sort of Thanksgiving craft for the boys to do. She put together an entire packet of coloring, word search, item matching acitivities for them.
Boy was it a good thing we did, the D.M. did not show. Everybody knows that I leave my house no later than 6:30 for our 7:00 meetings (which are less than 5 minutes from home) so that I can set up. They all have my cell number, and it is on 24/7. Instead of calling me and letting me know she wouldn't be there, she emailed me. At 6:50. I do not have access to email at the meetings.
Meeting was a huge success. They boys were entertained and active the entire time. Did all the requirements for Heritages, only need to do the poster to get the pin. I also showed them the spreadsheet with all their accomplishements filled in, and what they still needed to do. They got a kick out of that.
This past Saturday was Pow Wow. When I asked the D.M. to be the A.D.L., I told her about it, and asked her to attend. Told her I would register her if she wanted to go. She agreed. I had her on the phone with me when I registered her. I paid for her to go ($27.00). This was 3 weeks ago. She emailed me Wed. to let me know she wouldn't be going. Said it was because she couldn't get anybody to watch her son. She knew he woulda been more than welcome to hang out with my son while we were in training. So now, unless I can get a refund, I am out the registration fee. She also still owes me for the food for the camping trip ($15.00).
Between Thursday and Friday, she emailed me about 6 different reasons why her son wanted to drop out of the den. They were all bogus. One was "I don't want to go if all we are going to do is run around the gym" (how many active 7 y.o. boys do you know that don't like to play tag? And it was only 5 minutes and he had a blast doing it). Another was "I don't want to go because I don't like everybody yelling at me." NOBODY has EVER yelled at him at a scouting function that I am aware of. If I was aware, I would have nipped that in the bud and made sure it NEVER happened again. Thus, I can only assume that SHE is the one yelling at him, and I guess doing it in the car on the way home from meetings. I told her that I was not aware of any yelling at the boys, but if there was, I would put a stop to it in the future.
Yesterday (Sunday) evening she emailed me saying that she needed to get his handbook from me (I asked to take them home with me 2 meetings ago so I could record everything, and returned them at the meeting last week, which she was not at), and asked that I mail it, so she could take him to a different Pack tomorrow night (tuesday). I emailed her back that I would not mail it, it would not get to her in time. I would drive it to her house tonight after work. She lives the same distance from me as the post office, if not closer. She then emailed me back "never mind, I will get it from you at some point." I still plan to take it to her tonight.
Anyway, the reason for this long, long post is to ask, is there anything anybody thinks I could have done, or do in the future, differently to handle this situation better? I am hoping that she will change her mind and come back to us.
Thanks,
Steve
