MattR

As is scout spirit and boy led.

Great idea, @MikeS72

Agreed ... ... but getting fewer. Partly because nobody sees the benefit. I tried to get one of our extra camps to set up as patrol based and I was told in no uncertain terms that "everyone" wants more MBs and that's it. Still trying to not be grumpy. Our neighboring council has a really good one and it is all about patrol method. Everything was by patrol. I heard great things about it and even talked to the staff. I was seriously impressed. I tried to get my troop interested and the only response I got was the scouts cook on their own on all other campouts so give them a break. That was about the time I decided my time as SM had come to an end. The 2 hour version is an intro that any parent could find time for. Are you talking about something at summer camp? That's a really great idea. A couple of hours every day would be impressive. Yeah, skip the T21 for the scouts and run it for the adults! I realize that's what IOLS is but it's really a lot more than the skill check marks. Oh well, it was a nice idea. BTW, I did send something to the JTE email address. I even got a response that they got it, and that they meet once a year to review. Again, that was fun while it lasted. As for the back, I haven't done this in a few years. I need to work on a physically fit core. And maybe start acting my age. Anyway, thanks.

@xj-boonie, welcome to the forum. Thanks for starting the thread and participating. I do hope you stick around. Some of the responses here sound a bit harsh but there are some gems of wisdom there. While I don't go in for absolute rules there are guidelines that, if understood, will make your decisions more effective in developing the scouts. I'm not going to get into them but suffice it to say that you can take everything here with a grain of salt and you'll be good. There are always exceptions. If there weren't then everyone would know the rule. Case in point: step in before a scout gets seriously hurt. So, in this case the scouts need to develop independence and at the same time it should be the older scouts that teach it. But some scouts need more guidance. Good luck. @Eagledad, a week or so ago there was a thread about training and patrol method. You had said it was all there, people just had to dig for it. Well, this is the perfect example of how that isn't going to work. Volunteers do have limited time. Training needs to be effective and succinct. I really do like your description about scout growth. I use it all the time now. Unfortunately, you're the only one that really talks about it. It's a constant battle to convince parents that older scout growth is the key to a good program. They just look at me stupid and go back to where they were. Both a two hour (for parents) and a full day training (for scouters) of patrol method/boy led/fun with a purpose would prevent all these confusing threads. Just imagine if the BSA put on such a training. Every time someone new came here and started asking about adult/scout interactions we could just say "we strongly suggest any adult take this training. It will really help. There are scenarios. You can roll play. It's fun. You'll finally get past all the mystery and know when to step in and when to step back." But no, we'll never see it. Instead we now have this vague phrase, family camping, that's really going to make things worse. Sorry if I sound grumpy. I tore up my back yesterday and now I just have to wait, horizontally, until it heals.

Really good point, @ItsBrian. In fact I offered them the option of deciding their own reward and I'd get the committee to pay for it. I even gave them some ideas to choose from. Adults would cook them something good for a campout. Pizza party. A campout without any adults around. I think they saw the check boxes and stopped right there.

Liar liar pants on fire! People that say that nonsense should just go away. ... Oh, wait a minute. Sorry, my bad. I seriously did try to get it started. The scouts weren't too interested. And a few months later I stepped down as SM. This really is a good point. If it's not motivational then it's just busy work. One thing I've realized over the past year is that I've never been externally motivated. Grades, salary, those things never did much for me. To be honest, I also ignored JTE until about a week before we had to turn it in. So I had to ask myself why I should expect any different from the scouts. But things that I found a challenge - internally motivating - that's a completely different thing. I think a lot of scouts are the same way. They get so much external motivation that they probably become numb to it. What I have read is that if scouts have some say on the goals then they're much more likely to work towards them. So how about this: Each patrol, with respect to size, camping, advancement, training, service, meetings, teamwork, and budget, make goals, present them to the troop, and score yourself. Troop JTE is just some combination of the scores for each patrol. In essence, this is a step back towards the old days of set your own goals. But this implies that all of scout JTE is based on districts and troops supporting each patrol's ideas. I like it but I'm not sure how that would go over.

I've had several challenging scouts. Some are challenging because they're wired differently and don't know how they come across. Some are challenging because they don't want to be there. And a few are just growing up. Don't let this one scout get you down. You try and whether or not you made a mistake it doesn't matter. You're a volunteer. If you can learn something and do better next time then great. If not, it doesn't always work out. Talk to some other adults about what happened. My guess is it will help. My suspicion is, based on what the parent said, that this is above your pay grade. Good luck. BTW, I hope you come back.

I'm not sure I believe the 51% number. This takes away nothing from the rest of what you said but it sounds orders of magnitude worse than what I see. So I poked around. The US census bureau's quick facts page for OK said 24% of 3.9M people in OK, or close to 1M, are under the age of 18. I found a USNews article that said 88k households in Oklahoma are grandparents raising grandchildren. (There are 1.3M households in OK). In order for 88k grandparents to raise 50% of 1M children each grandparent must be raising around 5.7 kids. That's average. According to grandfamilies.org, in Oklahoma, 5% of children live with a relative with no parent present and 10% live in a home where the householder is a grandparent or other relative. Could it be that the 51% are homes where both children and grandparents also live?

You'd think. Or at least hope they'd think about it, whoever they are that might be writing the document you'd like. Hillcourt is dripping with enthusiasm. But as you say, it's spread out and you have to dig for it. But if you don't know what you're digging for .... A lot of what I've seen talks about what the scouts are responsible for. As Eagledad said, the SPL and PL handbook are good for that. What isn't covered so well is how to do it. I think there are some issues that are particular to today's youth that need more focus. Teamwork, delegation, and planning seem to really hang up scouts. I'm sure we all were bad at planning at that age but the others seem to be worse now. So there are scouts that don't understand teamwork and a leader that doesn't want to delegate. The result is ad-hoc. While it works it's really slow. It all gets down to many scouts really don't feel comfortable making decisions, especially if it involves other people. Some guidance for adults on how to overcome these problems would help. We started something that really helps with planning. The issue with planning seems to be the scouts don't understand how much detail is needed or that things don't always go as planned. So we just ask them to make a presentation about their plan and all we do is ask them lots of questions along the lines of who, what, where, when. As long as the basic idea is scout appropriate we go with it. The scouts were a bit intimidated at first but now they walk out with a lot more confidence.

Good jokes, clear to the end.

I'm in England at the moment. I visited @Cambridgeskip's troop and really liked what I had a brief view of (thanks for the tour, Skip!). However, if the BSA plan is to emulate the UK plan then we're in trouble. This is nothing against UK scouts. Their program is great for them. Our program should be great for us. There are cultural differences that won't translate. We are hung up on eagle. I've read their forum and have never seen the types of arguments we have. They don't have summer camps like we do. I'd much rather see a return to GBB. Fun with a purpose. I ran a camporee based on that and the response was great. My DE said he loved it and he wants more and bigger. We need our own vision that our people can get behind. If it turns out to be similar to UK scouts, or Latvia, or Argentina, fine, but we need to figure it out for ourselves.

More likely they have their hands full with lousy units.

Most got too into the game. Some got upset that the others couldn't figure it out. That created a lot of tension, at which point I sort of checked out. There's a point where one just can't make it better. This was many years ago.

I was surprised at how many people got sucked up in the moment, given that it was a scout training event. It took me a while to figure out that was the point. In a way it was good because we were doing, rather than talking about it. Still, I would have preferred coming up with fun games teaching outdoor skills.

I talked to a guy in town that took wb from Hillcourt. Each patrol made and led games that taught outdoor skills. That was the program - fun with a purpose. That would have been a great course.

I agree. It's about smiles. The things that bother me are those that get in the way of those smiles. To be honest, requirement creep and lack of patrol support at summer camp bothers me a lot more than any of the membership changes.

I don't understand. The boys enjoy scouts. The parents enjoy scouts. The boys want to get eagle. The parents want the boys to get eagle. There was a discussion about whether non LDS troops would respect your beliefs. Why not just run your own troop? Like you already are doing? The loss of LDS scouts is fine by me, assuming the ones that enjoy it stay and the ones that don't enjoy it leave. Scouts making decisions and adults supporting them.

We replaced 'dodge ball' with 'red white and blue ball'

I have one very important question. @Cambridgeskip, did you win the bet or did I? I think you got one wrong and one right.

I'll take that bet. Let's face it, your proposal is reasonable.

It would be. However, if, in the process of tying that knot incorrectly he could slice his hand open, or that of a scout nearby, then maybe not so silly. Cutting a corner off does involve a bit of pain but a little pain is a well known way of learning and a lot better than stitches. All of the complaints on this forum about helicopter parents is really about not letting the scout learn from his own pain or not to have pain. The real question is how much pain is the right amount. It's different for different people and a good lesson for the scouts is to understand that difference. Nobody can learn that if no pain is allowed. It's bad when it becomes a power or dominance thing. That's when it becomes humiliating. Cutting a corner off a card is not that. It's no different than failing a test. If that's considered humiliating then we've identified a different problem.

"What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul."

"We don't see things the way they are, we see things the way we are."

When I became SM I told my son he didn't have to stick around because I was SM or that he should get Eagle because of me. He enjoyed scouts until 6 months before he graduated and then sort of faded away. He was looking forward. I was fine with that and I kept at it. You feel bad about stepping down and that's understandable. Don't deny it. But don't beat yourself up over it. This job requires passion. That said, you can find an outlet for that passion and I encourage you to look for it. It will take time. It has taken me a year. It sort of sucked at first. Now I think it is working out better for the troop and therefore me as well. Rather than have just one adult with a lot of passion for the troop there are now two. I did take about 3 months off, mainly because there were a bunch of things going on and I was okay with skipping some things. I was unhappy with one thing the new SM was doing but I did bite my tongue. When I started as SM everyone was telling me what to do and it just didn't help. So I wasn't going to do this to the new SM. Especially since my opinions carry a lot more weight than those of others. But we were both after the same goal so I decided to let it play out. In the process of doing that I found a couple of things to work on that were orthogonal to what the new SM was working on and at the same time complementary (so what really bothers me about his new approach will solve itself). I now have a purpose. We're working together. And I don't have to worry about all the little details anymore. I'm happier. Whereas before the buck did stop with me, so it was all my problem if nobody else was going to step up, I can now say nope, I'm not going to worry about that. I can now focus on the things I wanted to do before but didn't have time for. Of course, the district has sucked me in but that's another story. Anyway, if you have a passion for this then honoring it is not such a bad thing. You still have to balance it with your family but how often do people get to find something they really enjoy? Good luck!

Our SPLs pick their ASPLs. Our current SPL is not real happy with his choice. He may be encouraging the ASPL to step aside. I was surprised when he made that choice. Since the SPL has to make it all work, I think he should get his own choice. If the ASPL is good then when it comes time to voting he's going to get it. If he's not good then he won't get it. It works. I've also seen scouts that, after having been ASPL, decided SPL was not for them. BTW, we do have the patrols pick the SPL. Those wanting it give a speech. The patrols talk. The PLs vote. We're back to voting on a schedule but I did like it when the patrol leaders made their own schedule. Getting them out of sync helped the transition. I think a good idea would be 6 months, plus or minus 2. There are different reasons why scouts would like to change the schedule. Basically you have to have an election every so often but if you want to do it earlier then go for it. They can make that decision.