MattR

Thank you, @qwazse. Actually, I've been lurking for some time and just decided to help out.

@TEP, welcome to the forum. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that your son should have or get what's called a blue card (and it's blue!) that has a record of what your son did complete at summer camp. When he gives that to the next counselor that counselor will continue marking requirements as done. He should have received one from summer camp but many camps don't fill these out. In that case he'll need to go to his scoutmaster to get it. And while he's there he can ask about finding the next counselor. The intent of the merit badges is that the scout does the bulk of finding and contacting the counselors. The best thing you can do is help him learn the process and encourage him to do it. And making phone calls to someone a scout doesn't know is really hard, but a great skill for them to learn. Good luck!

That always sucks when you can't go out happy. However, it's much better to go out discouraged rather than burning bridges and absolutely angry. Enjoy the break. You'll find other things to help with.

I've used that exact same phrase. I've even told my SPL it was his decision on whether I drove a scout home. Nobody took me up on it but everyone knew who made the decisions after that. But when I was a new SM I wouldn't have done that. It took some time to be comfortable being the disciplinarian. This is a hard situation to deal with and a rude one for a new SM. I understand what you're saying, asking about where this problem came from, but for a new SM I can also see it being read wrong. Unfortunately, I've also noticed that setting the bar to some scouts has the added caveat "when adults are around." There's a certain Machiavellian mindset for some scouts that the scout oath and law just doesn't penetrate. When someone is teasing a kid to the point of crying then that's a red flag. One scout told me that an older scout told him that swearing was okay when adults weren't around. In another thread I mentioned the scouts that had to be disqualified for cheating at the camporee. Two of them have been a thorn since they joined the troop (and one of them was the source of the adult dependent swearing). I'd like to believe that the adults and I kept them in check but I suspect it's just a game for them. None of the other older scouts have anything to do with them and what that usually means is these other scouts have enough confidence in their own character that it's just simpler to stay away. But back to this situation. My assumption is that the SPL is the real problem and the rest of the PLC are watching and learning. There might be another one or two that provide an echo. I don't know the history of the SPL. It could be he saw someone at school do this and he's just trying it out or he's been a turd in the troop for a long time and he plays by his own rules. Another question I'd ask is how often do scouts deal with behavior problems? That has always been a problem in my troop. Nobody wants to rock the boat and there's no doubt that's the source of the "only when the adults are around" caveat. I would really like to know how to develop that. Given the peer pressure these scouts are suffering at this age I don't know how to encourage the scouts to stand up to problems like this.

It seems to me you're making some assumptions. It could also be that this is a first incident of this magnitude. The PLC is just 12-13 years old. It could be that the previous SM was the only one that would be the disciplinarian. It certainly was when I was SM. Nobody else wanted to be the bad guy. So when I left guess what happened. "The new guy won't mind."

Welcome to the forum @Bside. Sorry it has to be under such circumstances. I would not have the SPL talk in front of the troop. In fact, I'm not sure I'd start with a list of punishments. The real issue is whether the scouts understand they did something (many things) wrong and not just that they got caught. For any scout that just thinks he got caught I'd fire him. But I would give him a chance to figure that out. I'd start with sitting down with all the scouts that were there except for the one scout that took the brunt of the bad character. I'd start by reviewing exactly what happened in as much detail as possible. They'd likely really feel the pain as an adult asked them why a scout rubbed his crotch on the boy's neck. Once that was all out we'd talk about each point of the scout law and ask them how what they did represents that. Then I'd ask them if they think they need to make things right. If, and I really would hope this doesn't happen, they said it was all in good fun, I'd fire the lot of them. If, however, they show some remorse, I'd ask them how they're going to make it right. Then I'd keep my mouth shut and listen. Maybe I'd encourage them to think more and talk about it. Anyway, let them come up with a plan. If you think it's a bit light then sure, add some time or whatever. It would be great if they volunteer to talk to the rest of the troop but I wouldn't make them. Public punishment is frowned on and your making them do that is really nothing more than punishment. @Jameson76's idea is also an option. The fact that these scouts think they're above it all is a red flag to me. One other thing to think about is that some of the scouts were likely just following along. As guilty as they are for not standing up to the SPL, they might see what they did as wrong.

I grew up with an external frame pack. Bought an internal when they first came out. Bought a second one years later. Finally went back to an external pack. I like the external packs better. The internal frame packs are mostly a duffel bag with nice straps. The result, looking down, is a round cross section. An external pack is more rectangular. On the whole the center of mass is closer to my back and much less tiresome to carry all day. They're also easier to pack. There are more pockets so everything has it's place. A bear canister they can take up the entire inside of an internal pack. I can lash it to my frame, under the pack. I'm not saying they're perfect but I wish there were more companies making them. They are cheaper than internal packs. I also think both styles are starting to merge. As the frames get a bit more sturdy on the internals then some of the issues I have with them might go away. A carbon fiber frame that was built for my back would be the ticket.

I have a shirt with no position patch. If people have to look at my uniform to see what I do then they can just as easily ask me. Usually I'm right there.

I took WB. It was neither great nor a complete waste. More like a disappointment after all the hype. In hindsight I'd say WB is about how to implement a vision. If you know where you want to be then WB provides tools to get there. That's fine but it's not really specific to scouting. Plenty of people have said they've seen this material elsewhere. The two weekend training I'd rather see is the vision of running a pack, troop, or crew, and how to solve the typical problems you run into. If the trainers were seeing how their training was helping units then they'd be much less likely to see WB as the goal. Training should never be a goal, the goal should be people that successfully use the training. If WB was much better than anything else then there would be feedback on how units were doing better. JTE is supposed to be that feedback. Originally the metrics used in JTE were going to get harder as units got better. I haven't really seen that so I assume that units are not generally getting better. The bottom line is good units are figuring it out on their own.

Nope. It's my understanding that expiration doesn't mean unhealthy for anything the food bank will accept.

Welcome to the forum, @danw.

Google "Hebrew National hot dog commercial" The punch line is "We answer to a higher authority" than the FDA

I'm a push mower parent. Not nearly as loud or obnoxious as a lawnmower parent and I can also cut the lawn at 7am on a Sunday and not bother the neighbors.

@scotteg83, you have an opportunity to start fresh and not fight old baggage and old/wrong perceptions. This has nothing to do with girls. So first of all, this could be a lot of fun. I think the challenge is coming up with a small, tight, easily understood list of guidelines that everyone, scouts and adults, will respect. That will make the communication and training of all these new scouts and adults much simpler. Ideas these guidelines might cover, in no particular order: The separation of what the adults and scouts are responsible for. What the adults should and should not do. Same for scouts. How problems are solved. The process for defining/changing the calendar. Types and rough amounts of events? Challenging, fun, silly, advancement, service, fundraising ... The process for handling failure, both for the adults and scouts. (and what failure is, how to identify, review in general) The aim of scouting, in much clearer words than the BSA's (it better include fun) How you handle the situation where adults want to step in and scouts want to step back. How you handle the situation where the older scouts just don't want to do anything challenging.

You could easily use the forum titled "Girl Scouting"

Rather amusing that the one form of communication that's a huge no-no, is making a phone call (it's one-one). And yet we all managed to deal with those as kids.

@Zebra132, not sure if grumpy is the right word, but I'm certainly old. There are lots of discussions on this forum about what an Eagle scout should be. It's mostly about character. There are also lots of discussions about not adding requirements. Unfortunately, these two ideas create a lot of tension because what we think an eagle scout should be has little to do with the requirements. The requirements are very concrete whereas character is not. Courteous and kind and putting the needs of others is very subjective whereas 20 nights camping only brings up conflict when the idea of sleeping in a cabin or a lock in is brought up. I once said a scout had to be active in my troop to advance. There was a very clear description of what active meant. One scout didn't care for it and mom took it to council. I was, after all, adding requirements. They gave him his eagle. They said he only needed to be active for 6 months. So, in your case, has this boy's girl friend not been pregnant for 6 months while he was a life scout? I know, it sounds insanely stupid to phrase it that way but that's what eagle is. It certainly sounds a lot better to say a scoutmaster conference can not include retesting a scout on skills but it's essentially the same thing. It's a simple algorithm with little room for interpretation. And I kind of get it. I see stories where others were unreasonable about how they interpreted the rules. I was always reasonable . Rules rarely leave room for interpretation and character is rarely black and white. A recent example I've run into is where I had to disqualify a "patrol" for cheating on a competition at the camporee. The 2 previous SPL's along with the current one and a couple of other older scouts took the place of one of the regular patrols at the final competition (where the overall wining patrol was decided). That alone would be nothing but an opportunity to teach some scouts about playing fair. What bothered me was that when 4 adults talked to them they just didn't see how what they did could be considered cheating. For a half hour we tried to explain this and they didn't get it. They said all the troops did this. So I went and talked to the other troops and, in fact, none of them cheated. They still didn't accept it. I have never run into this type of situation where a group of scouts, all of which will soon be eagle, just couldn't grasp what most cub scouts understand. So I really have to ask myself what eagle is worth. If your scout does right by his baby and is otherwise a good scout in the troop then I'd take him over the scouts in my troop. We won't know for some time, though. A friend of mine kept reminding me that we're playing a long game. We hope they get it figured out in 10 or 20 years from now. Will the scouts in my troop come back in 1, 5, or 10 years from now and realize they were cheating? If so, I won. If not, I wasted my time. Either way, it has little to do with that patch with the bird on it.

Here's another view of @Eagledad's observation of failure. All of the YPT reporting rules are dependent on what the offender did. I think you also have to look at how the target of that offense took it. Back to the girl being picked on by the cub, if the girl was upset but an adult noticed it soon enough to talk to her and validate her concerns that what the boy said was wrong, then this doesn't need to escalate to involving the council. The girl learns some kids should be ignored. Hopefully the boy learns that he's wrong, or at least that's his last warning. Problems should be opportunities to show scouts how to solve them. I think this is what Eagledad means. As soon as the council is brought in there's not much room for anyone to learn. There won't be scouts shaking hands, apologizing, accepting that apology, and moving on. Rather, everyone learns that any infraction is a huge deal that the scouts can't be trusted to handle.

Hi @shortridge. I was a scoutmaster for 12 years. The real question here, if I may be so bold, is will your wife be okay with all the hours? Scoutmaster conferences, eagle projects, packing for said trips, going to blue and golds, training, just spending time figuring out how to crack some nut. Those are some of the things you've forgotten. I'm sure there are more. Some of this has to do with the size of your troop as well as how many adults will actually help. We estimated 1 hour per month per scout in the troop is what all of the adults put in together. How much of that will people help with? How good are you at convincing others to help out. I didn't do so well at that but a bunch of adults did step up. However, there seem to be fewer helping out. And yet, I am really glad I did it. BTW, I didn't answer your question. I didn't really want to know.

Absolutely, @RennyTompson! You're still going to have to talk to someone about this and I think you're really worried about this. It's going to be fine. We all make mistakes. Life is not so much about not having problems but how you deal with those problems. You're trying hard to make this right. That's a great way to deal with the problem.

Re news 1) Is it the filling out the work sheet or that it's a bunch of things to check off? If the former, start off by just doing it for him. Oh, and add a fun sticker. In fact take him to the sticker store and have him pick the stickers. If you can get him to the point where he just gets the stickers on and you fill in the rest then you're good. Tell him when he does fill in the rest you'll give him a second sticker, from the super cool sticker set, to put anywhere he wants (forehead, mirror, door, ...) And if he only does the whole line some of the time then so what. Re news 2) I was under the impression that for webelos a parent had to be there anyway. When the G2SS says "in most cases" this is one of them. Or is this in scouts? This scout just needs to hang in there until he matures. Developing a relationship with him when he's in a good mood will likely shorten the times when he's frustrated.

Welcome @Podscouter. The only happy thing I can think of is having a sit down with the council exec, president, etc. It's time to make connections and relationships.

A lot of people don't realize this but if you read the original Hebrew, when Moses received the tablets that God had written the commandments on, there were 11. After Moses broke and then rewrote the commandments he dropped one. First of all, this illustrates that man wrote the 10 commandments and not God. Also, the one that was dropped was "Thou shalt not argue about religion, it just pisseth me off when you get so angry about what should be about love."

I agree with with the quote @Thunderbird found. Anything can scale up to the point of requiring leadership. Planting 6 flowers is easy. Planting 600 requires leadership. I suppose it's difficult to measure leadership. At least one way is to ask what would happen if the leader wasn't there. In this case a Webelos scout could have decided the flag pole needed flowers, asked mom to buy a pack of 6, and planted them. So what did the scout in your example provide? All he did was make a task list that was completely unnecessary. Another way of looking at a project is asking how much preparation went into it. We just rejected a project that involved painting stain onto a wood shack. The stain and brushes were provided. All the scout had to do was get the labor to show up. We asked the scout to ask the benefactor if there weren't more things that needed to be done in the area around the shack. It turns out they have drainage issues. That requires figuring out possible solutions, talking to the city about the best way to solve the problem, working with the benefactor, asking for donations. It's substantial. And the shack will get stained. There's also vision. The vision is typically solving some problem. The plan fills in the details of how to solve the problem. In the flower planting case there really aren't any details to fill in. If the vision is to plant flowers than I'd ask why? If the vision is to make the landscaping look nicer than it's easy to show that the plan, adding some flowers, isn't going to have much impact. But doing a landscape design of the entire area around the flagpole is much more substantial. We have run into many project proposals that just didn't have much to them. In every case we've been able to work with the scout to expand the vision to be something they were proud of. The too simple proposals are usually just a case of a scout not caring and wanting to be done with it. And that's a good description of a project that has no leadership.

It was fun! We ended up using two 8' 2x3's along with two 4' round fence poles (about 2" diameter) we found at camp. Turns out lashing rectangular lumber together is really hard so we suggested making a pointy ladder instead. 2 scouts pull and one rides. All of the 2x3's had nice rounded ends by the end of the day. A lot of scouts also learned the difference between tight lashings and not. Some learned that a diagonal lashing without fraps is close to worthless. Only one scout that was riding got run over by his own pullers (the lashes fell apart). We ran 4 patrols at a time and there were about 4 more stations to do after the travois. We had 15 out of 29 patrols do the race. Given how busy they were until that point that was fairly good. (At 6:50 this morning there was nobody awake.) In the morning there were 10 different events that each patrol could do to collect points. Archery, tomahawk, fry bread, first aid, even climbing for scouts with higher ranks (we have real rocks to climb on and we ended up finding a handful of climbers to resurrect our council climbing committee). Anyway, the points they collected in the morning was used to deduct time in the race. The competitiveness was really great. I took some nice photos of the travois jockeys. The only down side was the competitiveness was overwhelming for some older scouts in my troop. They gamed the system, picked the younger patrol that got the most points in the morning and then volunteered to win the race for them. I figured that one out and had a talk with them, the SM, and the other ASM's. Unfortunately the scouts never figured out that this might not be scout like. It was amazing. Four adults trying to explain how rearranging patrols to win for the troop was not ethical and the scouts just not getting it. They said all the troops did this so I went and talked to SM's of patrols in the order they ranked to find 3 that didn't cheat. Turns out I just had to talk to the first 3. That was the good news. Now I understand why I was so burned out as SM. Two of the four adults had scouts involved in this. It's really a case of one self centered, outgoing scout that created this. This kid is about to age out but he's been a pain for a long time. I honestly feel sorry for his dad. He was frustrated. There was another patrol that was fairly sure they got a bad deal with the scoring. But they were very polite and asked me. So at 10pm last night I was waking up adults to get to the bottom of the story. Turns out there was a misunderstanding in some numbers this patrol saw. They were disappointed but respectful. I'm thinking of making them an extra award ribbon just for being very scout like in a tough situation. I told them they showed a lot more character than the scouts in my troop that whined and complained and argued with the adults over what was fair and what wasn't. Some adults warned me about having patrol vs patrol competition and the ugly stuff that would come up. It certainly was a headache for me (look at how long this story is!) but it was also a teachable moment and a lot of fun for the scouts that didn't worry so much about the award. All in all, we'll keep doing it.