Stosh

So, let me get this straight. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. That's what the background checks are for. Small town suspicious? Naw, we all are. So, my brother is 7 years younger than I am. I got back into scouting when my boy was Tiger aged. His boy was way too young yet, but he wanted to get involved with scouting anyway. I told him to go down to the council office in his area and just volunteer. They're always looking for volunteers. He went down filled out the application and was basically told, "don't call us, we'll call you." They horsed around for about 3-4 months with that one. This was the days before background checks. He put me as a reference and I got a call about 4 months after he applied. I guess they figured it was okay after calling his boss where he worked. The word of a Warden from the Federal Bureau of Prisons must carry some weight. He confirmed my brother was above board and a good Correctional Officer for the prison. Seriously people! The only person I have ever been involved with that didn't pass a background check was the parent of one of my boys. With that track record, maybe I don't want parents involved and should always recruit from the outside. Even with 40+ years working with kids, when a troop was struggling and I volunteered to take the SM position and get them back on their feet, they said no and let the troop fold. That's when I went out and started a new troop in virtually the same neighborhood. I see it as a good thing, I didn't need the baggage that the leaders of the other troop would have carried along with them.

Or... let the kid foot the bill and have a little skin in the game. I paid for my college education as did my kids. It's a wonderful thing turning 18, you become and adult and you answer to no one and you make your own way in the world. Otherwise you end up being 45 years old and still living in your parent's basement. Maturity and personal pride go a long way in making that determination.

I too, have been around since the days of key-punch cards and chain printers thinking that word processors that allowed one to /bold enter neat codes for effect /b was a major step forward. I have spent far too many hours in tech support to suit my disposition as well. But I did find it helpful that one does find an undocumented feature it was good to know. It added to the mental library of the things to remember when helping others. Troubleshooting requires a little guessing along the way, "Try this...", "Okay, then try this...", etc. until one finds a work around. Most things nowadays are not the end of the world and might be an inconvenience, but dropping your stack of 500+ key-punch cards was rather inconvenient too. I was skeptical at first with the new software. It's just me. I don't buy cars the first year they come out on the market either. I wait until everyone has the bugs worked out. With this new software, it just appeared. Didn't have a choice. End of discussion, either it works or I find a work-around. Yeah, I'm using two different browsers. So what, it works.

And when you're not using vinegar to sanitize your dishes, 2:1 ratio of vinegar to water in a spray bottle works pretty well in keeping them at bay and won't hurt the boys unless you spray in their eyes. Keep it in mind these little guys are more dangerous than spiders and snakes. Maybe lions, and tigers and bears, too.... Oh my!

I know a lot of people don't like clutter and aren't hoarders, but when it comes to the digital age and YPT/CYA, sometimes one has to make changes in the way they do things. For those who don't hoard emails, cc:'s work just fine for 99% of the cases out there. For that 1% I prefer my digital record. For me it's just easier to drag and drop than look up a bunch of email addresses and if I forget,...? well that's another story.

Once again I bring the dynamic of self protection into the fray. Everyone's all in a tizzy about this whole system of digital cyber YPT. Okay. not a problem. Every email I send goes into my sent email box. Every email I get goes into my inbox. Open a sub-directory on a major server and save everything you get related to scouting into it. I have one for my troop and one for district/council emails. I also have historical emails from my two prior troops I served in.. Police show up saying I have been cyber bullying some scout. No problem. Give them your email name and password and let them compare what you have to anything the boy has on his computer that he doesn't have to what you have meticulously documented since day one. I worked at a company for 13 years and documented and saved every email I ever received. More than once, a he said, she said argument was settled in just a few key strokes. I don't have to cc: people and bother them, nor do I get junk mail from the boys. If any boy is going to falsely accuse me of anything he has to show it on his computer and a sent/received email from my email address. Whereas everyone needs YPT, I'm still place a higher priority in CYA training.

It kinda sounds like what I do but I can't call in FERPA reinforcements. The first day of our new troop in order to set a precedent, I showed up extra early and found a place at a table in the church basement. All the boys and parents came and sat down at the table with me. As soon as 7:00 pm rolled around they all got nice and quiet and I let the silence ripen. Finally the parent who would be my biggest opponent would speak up. The longer it took, the less aggressive they would be. No problem. Finally a parent took the initiative and said, "Well, does any one have any questions?" I looked up and smiled and said,"Yes, I do. If this troop is going to be boy led, why are all the boys sitting at the adult's table?" The boys were a bit sheepish, but they collected up their stuff and began to move off to the other end of the room. I said, "If you need any help, with your new troop, just invite me to your table." We now have a tradition. Occasionally I get invited to the boy's table for instruction and discussion, but only at their invitation. It seems to be working well. They came up with the PL on their own and they've been doing quite nicely ever since. Yes, they were all at that time, Webelos cross-overs. The best compliment I have gotten from them was when one of them said to me, "You really meant it when you said boy-led, didn't you?" Yep.

An answering machine is nice. Leave a message so I know what's going on. End of discussion.Basically the only person that ever tries to contact me electronically is my SPL. His grandmother is my ASM. End of discussion. If the troop is boy-led, patrol-method, why is there a huge need to have everyone talk with the adults????? They work it out and leave the SM a message. It's not all that hard.+

OR...! The leaders do NOT see eye to eye on how to run a troop. The first troop I was with was very frustrating. The SM was iron fisted, adult-led, troop method. Patrols were in name only. SPL was designated by the SM, etc. I was totally opposite. But I kinda toned him down and he let me experiment with the patrol method. Did this for 13 years until one summer camp experience.We went out to Wyoming for summer camp. It ended up to be the SM's summer vacation with a bunch of boys tagging along. Once we got out there he signed up all the older boys for high adventure, out of camp experience and left me with all the younger boys and no youth leadership. I quit after that and got involved as SM of my own troop. Needless to say, within 6 months the SM was removed from his position. It wasn't ideal but we both had sons in the program back when we started together. At the point where we went our separate ways, neither of us had sons in the program.

Wouldn't that hold true for any two leaders regardless of whether they had kids or not?

Don't they have Klondike sled harnesses that they could adapt?

To a certain degree, you are correct, but from my perspective of having spent my adult life working with kids (45 years), sometimes I am more "in the game" than a lot of parents. I have seen the changes over the years, I see a variety of different kids, I know kids in general in a somewhat object manner because I DON'T have skin the game, so to speak. I don't have an agenda that favors my kid. I'm not myopic when it comes to comparisons to "other people's kids." Let me tell you one thing, kids of Scouting age hide a lot of stuff from their parents that they don't get away with when dealing with people who don't think this kid is the greatest thing in the world. In certain respects my goals for the boy is far different. Parents tend to not want their kids to really grow up and "move on" with their lives. They tend to be a bit selfish on this point, but I constantly develop boys that do grow up, take on skills to meet the challenges they are going to face once they move out of the house. One of my Eagle scouts is deep into his college career, nice girlfriend, delayed entry into US Air Force, but active in Air National Guard, Fully trained SM, and WB. He's 23 years old and when he was 15, he was the biggest brat in the troop and his father was the SM. I took over and I didn't have any skin in the game. Did I help this boy turn his life around and grow up? Well his parents think so and have on numerous occasions thanked me for it even well after he left home. There's pros and cons on both sides of the table here. I think it just depends on the boy and how he reacts that will influence his scouting career with the different adult leaders. As a matter of fact, Ideally both kinds of leaders in a troop would be an excellent combination in my opinion.

What, no tangled mess with a kid inside under a capsized canoe? What, no mumbly peg? Oops, scratch that one.

Dutch oven s'mores? Pie iron s'mores? Okay, I gotta know more, let's hear it!

I still like the old ranking of a solid FC and forget the rest of the fluff because that's all it is.

Good quote by LB-P, but I like mine better, "Never underestimate what a kid can do if he wants to (or has to)." I don't expect miracles out of my boys, I rely on them.

What's really bad is when you cook better than your mom.... I love to cook so one would think I would be having problems with my weight. Nope I weigh in at a mean 172 this morning, 7# more than I weighed when I graduated college. Put it this way. People put on more weight with good tasting high calorie crap food than they do eating good tasting well prepared and thought out good-for-you food. The best thing Micky D's serves is a mean glass of water..... KFC? Well let me tell you, their water ranks right up there with the best there is.

Leaders with kids in the program have to be there. Leaders with no kids in the program are there because they want to be. Kids pick up on that. It's a statistically proven fact that kids who have parents that aren't interested in religion sometimes become religious on their own. If just the mom is religious about half the kids tend to remain religious whereas with just dads that percentage jumps up to a bit over 75% and those kids who have both parents active in religion tend to be religious most of the time. The point being is the comparison between the dynamics of moms and dads. Moms are expected by society to get the kids into religion, where dads aren't, so when dads do get involved it carries more weight.

Kinda reminds me of Hans Brinker..... Maybe one could build them as a troop and sell them as a fundraiser to other troops as Gateway Trailers....

People trust their kids to day care providers no matter who they are as long as they are available, but... People trust their kids to babysitters who are neighborhood kids and are handy, but... People trust their kids to teachers in the schools because they will be arrested for truancy if they don't, but ... People trust their kids to church workers because they have a higher calling to morality, but... People trust their kids to sport coaches because it helps build teamwork and leadership, but... But those d__m SM's well, there's a different story altogether. No buts about it... Who get's the press? All do, but it doesn't make any difference. People aren't paranoid, they are selectively paranoid. I teach my boys about abuse in a different fashion. I simply put it, "If for any reason you feel FEARFUL around another person, including me as your SM, because of something we said or did, tell someone. If they don't listen tell someone else, Keep that up until someone listens. If NO ONE LISTENS then call 911, they have to listen!f"

I make my boys all wear flea and tick collars. They're relatively cheap at Walmart...... I have heard that AVON's Skin So Soft does well on mosquitoes, but I don't know how well it works on ticks. (Fleas is just an added annoyance.) Also, it would be a good idea to champion the idea that Deet does NOT go on the skin! You are supposed to put it on clothing only! I repeat, NOT ON THE SKIN. READ THE LABEL!

I'm going to go with packsaddle on this one. Yes, there are certain requirements that one has to do to qualify for a major and minor in college. But on the other hand there are some basic core requirements that ALL students needed to take to get a degree. All took a couple of semesters of English, history, biology, maybe a couple more sciences, foreign language, a couple of appreciation classes, a little phy ed, sociology and maybe psychology and of course my favorite Math. These were designed to give one a basic understanding separate from their chosen field to major/minor in. BP says a scout should be prepared. I'm thinking T-FC gives some of the basic instructions that all scouts should have, but if one is going to major (Eagle) then there should be a core of information that goes along with that. Otherwise a Liberal Arts degree is just fine (T-FC)

I thought about that as well, but on the same machine running the same display resolution, it's okay on Chrome and Internet Explorer, just not on Firefox. If I'm the only one with the problem, I'll just play with it on my part. I assume it's some setting somewhere that I haven't been able to resolve. I only pointed it out because to assume it is supposed to be working and it isn't is a problem. I didn't have the RTF format arrow either when I was in Firefox, but Chrome and IE had it. The problem arose when no one believed me when I said it wasn't there. When one does tech support, one has to assume that must maybe on the off chance, the user is actually correct. Everyone can tell me 20 times to just click the little arrow in the upper right hand corner and everything will be fine. But when there is no little arrow, one can tell me another 20 times and it isn't going to solve the problem. I've got a work around so I'm fine. Just store this away in case someone else comes along with a similar problem. Have them change browsers, and maybe the problem will go away.

My boy quit scouts back in the 1990's. He was surprised when I didn't. I have a long history but it isn't always with the BSA. I was a psychology minor in college and got involved with youth support groups and had a great time. NYPUM (National Youth Program Using Minibikes) was part of the YMCA and this program was for troubled youth. Then I worked in an institution for problem kids. (The first thing they told me was always sit in a chair with the back to the wall.) That was fun. I also worked one-on-one tutoring high school kids that were falling behind in their homework Went on to Seminary and worked in a BSA Council Office part time setting up Explorer posts. In my 2 year stint I organized 42 different posts. This was followed by 12 years of parish ministry and of course that involved the youth. I taught Vacation Bible School to 5th graders, the 6th, 7th and 8th graders were Confirmation and then there was the high school youth group. Following that I dropped the ministry but continued with the youth groups in the churches I was a member. Then when my boy was old enough for Tigers, he and I were both involved until he quit as a Star scout. I didn't. I still do both church youth groups as well as working as a SM of a new troop I organized last May.Along the way I also have 13 years of Venturing experience as a Crew Advisor. When it isn't fun anymore, I'll wrap it up. How do the parents react to my work? Well, they never find middle ground. Either they love it or they hate it. I have awarded the District Award of Merit and kicked out of my position as SM all in the same year. I then turned around and started a new troop at the request of the council. And so how did it go with the kids? My first three confirmation students from North Dakota rural area ... One was killed in a motorcycle accident 4 years ago and the other two are friends on Facebook that post about themselves on a regular basis. The troop that I was kicked out of, the two Eagle scouts are friends on Facebook as well. The one posted this evening about going to a neat car show down in Oklahoma City. My ASM of the new troop now is also the District Unit Commissioner. She asked to be my ASM because of my work and insistence on running a troop as boy-led, patrol-method and she wanted to learn now to do it that way. Like I said, there's no middle ground. I've been working with youth for 45+ years now and 30+ of them in Scouting. I had to give up the Venturing Crew because it was more than I could take at my age of 64. Scouting has a few more years before I hang up the beads.

We are in heavy tick country too. I discourage the use of Deet, but show the boys how to duct tape socks over pants and belts with shirts tucked in and duct tape around wrists and top button buttoned, hat and plenty of horror stories about what happens when all the blood gets sucked out of your body by ticks. I carry a Leatherman with a needle nose pliars that work really well at removing ticks. Just the thought of all that keeps my boys relatively tick free. Seriously I do know how to take a tick off with a cotton ball and hand soap, but it's not as much fun when the boys know it won't hurt.