ozemu

Hey Bob White slow down. It seems that there are two Aussie posters (imposters?) here. I personally respect your countries wish to be different. My only input on this thread is to refute misconceptions to keep the discussion balanced. "Vive le difference" say I. Graham

Scout Pox. Finally an explanation that my dear wife will understand. Trouble is that I think she's coming down with it too. Apparently women in the outdoors often feel that they are second best or in a man's domain. Some ignorant men also assume this to be true. There are some good research papers on the subject. My advice is to take your time. Accept only jobs with which you are confidant in your abilities. Get to know the boys on their terms. Have fun. The other leaders will need to take your measure and maybe train you as well. Take the long view - the pox is incurable.

That's it Bob White. Eaglebackwhen and Supermom are right also in that you may need to have irrefutable evidence and documentation later. People like this can be vindictive or even worse something really bad might happen and you could use the fanny covering. Scouting might need it to as well as your Troop so don't think that it is over-reacting. By the way, if it all gets too bad I need a woman SM with drive in my Troop over here as I have seven girls and 12 boys. You couldn't get further away!

Hmmmm. The Dining in is not a bad plan. As regards the military I gather that you have uniform, flags to be brought in, toasts to the Queen (joke - read President or something), ranks and appointments that require people to play certain roles - therefor a military script is probably a good beginning. It sounds like an excellant time to publicly recognise people for their contributions etc. Our Army doesn't have the repartee that Rooster 7 describes (our Air Force does but it always seemed contrived to me). Alternatively several people make speeches and hopefully they are good ones (amusing etc). We also spread our guests about the dining hall so that everyone at the same table can enjoy their company and help with hosting. To keep the Scouts working on the manners you might similarly position experts (SM's etc) at each table so that they can: be a role model, keep the proceedings civil, correct manners quietly and without fuss. Just my preference to Rooster 7's method.

Little Dove this is not meant to be helpful advice but meerly expresses my feelings on the matter....You should throw Picky Eater at his mum until they both explode.(This message has been edited by ozemu)

I think Laura has it worked out. There is a difference between communication responsibilities and un-needed communication (which takes the boys focus away from camp etc). There is a difference between games and information storage and retrieval. If I had the spare cash a palm pilot would be highly useful for its ability to store all of those personal details, electronic policy documents, etc. The lap top does the same thing ina more bulky fashion. Laura may disagree here but I would even think that such a device could be used for boys to write home about what they are doing (email) and the letter will get there before the boy gets home from camp (if it is uplaoded somewhere - cell phone perhaps). This doesn't have to be done live. The up and down load can be done remotely (camp office, public phone) once a day - better than snail mail. And they still don't get to talk (verbally) with mum thus avoiding the homesickness attack. At the last Jamboree here I saw the internet cafe being used like this quite regularly.

Laura the boys will work out a good solution - possibly better than any adults will come up with but YOU must force the need to do so. You must deliberately get the issue in the open with all the boys able to speak without fear of repercussions. Not easy to do hence I recommended facilitation skills. If the issue is not obvious, immediate and needing to be fixed then the boys are unlikely to act - why would they? I may be wrong but I think they are unlikely to study any published material that you might provide. Such material is mostly for adults. As for where are these games /problem solving scenario's? - try the American Camping Assoc site and look for facilitation titles. Your nearest professional camp staff should have some also. I've done a quick web search but it seems that you will have to buy/borrow a book as I couldn't find any for download.

LauraT7 I deal with these issues almost on a daily basis because I am an outdoor education instructor. What we do is a sequence of team challenges that build teamwork and reinforce positive behaviour - no big deal I guess except you have to be tough sometimes. I might (for your Troop) plan a very hard challenge that exposes negative or unhelpful behaviour in the first of several sessions. This gets it in the open. Be prepared for an emotional and long debrief after. (We debrief (also called facilitation) after every morning or afternoon session). The debriefing will need to build from "what is stuffing things up?" to "How do we use these lessons when we get back home?" or "How do I implement these lessons in my daily life?" This will take about 3-7 days given what you have described. Can't predict any closer by this medium. If you don't have the skill I expect that there are trained camp staff at these big summer camps that I read about. Mind you 'trained' is essential. Debrifing is a skill and can go very wrong if not handled well. On the other hand I see it working every day. If you don't have this length of time then try one such activity, even 'micro' challenges, each Troop night and take the long view. This allows you to prepare and recover from each debreif - don't expect quick results though by this method. In short: team challenges that illustrate good and bad behaviour are needed, debreifing to allow the Scouts to solve problems themselves are essential, leaders need some knowledge to conduct these sessions, the Scouts will take the issues to heart if they discover the solution - not if they are told even though this is agonising for adults, tackle issues head on and be prepared for lots of emotion.

Probably the summation so far is on the money however it might be worth checking if the dad is trying to spend time with his son for particular reasons. ie is the family split and dad only available on weekends? Does dad spend a lot of time away, is there an emotional issue for the boy that dad is dealing with? If so his reasons may be good but still he needs to be an ASM rather than a dad. Soemone needs to check. He will still get time together - just differently to what he might think is the best right now. For the above reasons that might be real hard for him.

Just an update on a previous topic of several weeks ago by the same name. My Troop had 9 Scouts 2 leaders and my wife as parent helper go to Vanuatu for seven days. 5 in accomodation and 2 under tents with the local Scouts. My original post was about a Scout who was fighting the establishement on may different fronts and is going through a negative adolescent period. He was so unpleasent that I was concerned that he would disrupt our trip and that he was not going to return to the Troop after the trip (would have been a blessing really). Following advice from this forum I talked to him and his mother, without pulling any punches, on several occassions prior to departure. While there we held a meeting each night discussing the day, what we learned, how we felt about it all and how we were getting on. The result is that he settled down on day 2 and was reasonable for the remainder of the trip. He has also returned to the Troop ready to take up a soon to be vacant PL slot. Factors that helped: he got on well with an older respected Scout who previously described the problem Scout as an idiot etc he got on well with the ASM who started with us about the time of my original post he was in a very strange place where his only friends were us he was not ridiculed by peers or adults (he never is at Scouts but he may be elsewhere and reacts to any criticism as if we are trying to make him look a fool) he accepted some leadership roles (unpredictable normally) I suspect that being away from mum and dad allowed him to finally bond with us Anyway here's hoping the change is permanent. If so it will be one of very few times that I can say the Scouting ALONE has definately had a significant positive effect. Normally it is not as clear cut. Thanks to all who offered advice to my previous topic - it helped a lot.(This message has been edited by ozemu)

Just got back from week-long overseas camp. Got two homesickness cases. One for about 1 and half days and the other several days later for about 2 days. Interesting as I expected the first but number 2 was an experienced and motivated Scout who is invariably cheerful. Both have smothering mothers - in the nicest and most non-malicious way I might add. Both had older siblings on the camp too (not sure if this worked for or against). Regardless the following will be the trigger if not the cause The stranger the Scouts situation the more likely and longer lasting the episode. For example: does the Scout know the other campers? are the activities very different? are the leaders different? ...the food/tentage/gear? ...the weather? ...the natural/man made environment? ...the culture? and in our case language. The more yes answers the more likely the problem. Some you can prepare for and others just need running solutions. I explained why they were feeling awful, that it is normal, that everyone feels down at some point during camp, that the solution is: get busy, and laugh Homesickness seems to happen on later camps if it was not handled well (by the Scout) on the first occassion. (This message has been edited by ozemu)

Good list Mike. Maybe your local Fire Dept could illustrate the consequences of aerosols blowing up.

Chippewa29 you seem to have a problem with your adults. You refer to your previous SM (part time it would seem) and mention that the boys regress when adults are around. Is there a legacy here in the adult perception of what is happening? ie is there a self fulfilling prophecy of "the boys will stuff up breakfast again just watch" and then otherwise unimportant mistakes become "proof"? If so ASM7's adult patrol example may help. You may also need to explain the principles and OUR collective experience in the issue. There seems to be a concensus here that your boys are pretty normal in their progression and that the mistakes mean that they are learning. It has been said on other threads recently that the problems most of have are more with the parents than with the boys. Scouting methods work - self reliance is the aim not fluffy pancakes and a perfect timetable. But we all have parents hanging around who can't stand back and let the learning progress at boy speed (I like that phrase eisely).

If you don't make headway with the current Troop then you will have to travel. It is worth doing so for accessing a troop that fits your ideal. It is very important - we are all different and the local Troop may just not 'fit'. I have just had three refugees from another Troop join us and they travel about 70km in the round trip. It's so far that the parents stay simply because they wouldn't make it home again anyway.

Another one! I never cater centrally. It's always Patrol cooking with us however maybe it's time you had a busy camp and get this mother to do the cooking so that her son will get the food he wants. I'll bet she finds an excuse and can't make it to camp.

Here's another couple of options. Next time camp further from home so that the pizza is cold and the hamburger soggy when it arrives or maybe the mother won't drive all that way anyway. Or on the other hand try cooking his favourite food out there but over a fire.

Personally I am concerned about hatchets as the fingers of the opposite hand look to be in danger. I train my Scouts quite rigorously in the use of axes and have several different weights in head size but all with the same length handle. The hatchet has, in the past, connected with enough fingers. We use bush saws instead ...sorry, don't know your term for them. Now if you could put boots on hands then maybe the risk is less! A full length handle can gather more speed etc than a hatchet but seems to connect with feet less often.

LauraT7, I did the Word to www site thing that dan describes for our site at http://www.lis.net.au/~emu/ and it is my first effort. The ftp upload had me foxed but my ISP put me right by phone. So no need for any special program (the ftp program was the free one recommended by my ISP people).

I haven't done this personally but many of our Troops run "bring a friend night" each year and do well out of it. Our Cubs (ages 8-11) do this with great success. Obviously you need a brilliant program for the evening and a terrific medium term program for them to take home and look forward to returning for. I'm not a marketer either but my reading of that field indictaes that you should get all of the ideas generated here and run a campaign over a short but intense time to get the message out loud and clear. Use media where available, school newsletters, visits, etc; everything at the same time.

Great OGE, trying to visualise you blokes is difficult as BSA is very different to ours. Pictures are worth lots of words. Which is you? Are you the dude in the water?

OGE pls put me down for a down mummy for winter. I've already voted for a rectangle synthetic for summer.

Mike Long, will you send your proposal to BSA by snail? I suspect they don't read this or at least will not act on a discussion only. You know my thoughts - your SM handbook has been my spare time reading for several weeks.

Laura, I work at an outdoor education camp (tents etc) and I am an SM. I see a lot of what you describe outside Scouts but not much inside Scouts. (We are co-ed). I suppose it is due to the type of people who are attracted to Scouts. Maybe after several mornings of looking at the pillow-shaped hair, crankiness of midday camp pack up and the unwillingness to do chores etc reality hits. Schools and other non-scout organisations rarely have the ammount of camping that we have and I suspect that the novelty value wears off quickly - then kids are kids.

OGE, when there is too much noise at night after an agreed 'quiet' time I do a bit of a walk around and listen in a bit. I then make a comment about the conversation in the tent, from about 6 inches from the side of the tent in a whisper. The Scouts are usually so stunned by the voice from outside that they shut up straight away. They then expect me to walk away - but I don't and quite happily chip in when they next incriminate themselves. They fall asleep while waiting for me to go. A few short conversations in the harsh light of the next day seem to be fully understood. No punishements - just a bit of straight talking. (and a lot of patience - 1-45am before I got away from one tent and 4-45am for some firm direction for going to bed on the last regional camp-they woke me up!) Sorry about the eavesdropping but if they are silly enough to forget the thickness of tent walls then their comments are public property.

Bob White, Do you people have mandatory reporting laws? ie no client privelage exists and any knowledge of child abuse must be reported to the police. There is no room for judgement on this one over here. Reporting to your council is not an option at all in Aus. Just curious to know how we compare.