ScoutMomSD

some of these comments scare me, seriously. "A punching contest is a typical guy thing. You punch your buddy in the deltoid and he puches you back in your deltoid. One punch at a time, carefully aimed. The first to flinch or cry "Hold, enough!" loses. It has nothing to do with Scouting, it is just something that boys used to do." Can we back down a bit on the "typical guy thing" - especially as from what I see its primarily the moms who are shuttling the scouts here and there to activities and meetings,etc. If my son did this at school, he would be suspended. If he did it in a bar, he would probably be sued and/or arrested. Also I commend HighCountry. And in a lot of ways I wish we lived like that, but we are in a mid to upper middle class suburb of a large metropolitan area. And there are scouts in New York City. Is a trip to Central Park any less of a great experience for boys than a wilderness experience (having done both myself). If the boys think its fun and its safe and they are LEARNING lessons then its great.

quote: "Liz....It depends on where the boys are from economically that is.....The poor probably assume they are not married and are doing the deed and could care less. The working poor wondering if they are married. The middle class hope they are married. The upper class assume they are married and are working on babys." Well at least from the above you are avoiding the bias that states that all Blue State Liberals (like me) condone the unmarried issue. Just a note - the above is a pretty discriminatory statement. All poor people are shacking up? I have found the opposite. And many upper class folks actually wait until they have enough money to have kids. Its a concept. And marrying later means less marriages statistically, which is a better "moral compass" for kids. I cant wait to get into politics on this board!

some of these things I cant believe are actually issues in the 21st century. There are lots of people who are together for years and never marry yet have kids. Have you gone up to the friends of all your children and asked "so are you married or not". I also know married people who keep their maiden name. I would bet that there are a lot more unmarried folks at your campouts than you realize. We have parents who have multiple siblings from multiple fathers who I cant keep straight and dont care to. What if it was a married Gay couple in california? What if they have kids?

I would call the district and ask for the names and phone numbers of the Cub Master for those packs. I would say "we were a bit confused about the locations you are picking. As we had reserved them months before, we would like to find out if you would be willing to choose a later weekend. We already have the staff ready to roll and with kids and families schedules we just cant change." Also in the future I would as one person said tell the store managers about how competive these spots are. A good way is to prime their ego by saying "this is SUCH a great store, we know you will be getting more requests, so we want to make sure we secure this great spot". I would also make sure you give them a CALENDAR with the dates and PACK number on it, not a written document. There are probably folks in your pack good with computers who could do this. I will flat out state that this behavior is totally unacceptable from other packs. I dont care if its in writing or not, if I arrived and someone else was there I would probaly ask them (politely) to leave and go to the store contact and help them set up another time to sell. How can we expect our kids to end up being decent humans if they see their parents acting this way. For the good of the boys, they need to be called out. What would happen in business? If I set up a coffee stand in front of Starbucks tomorrow, what do you think they would do? I think of the movie The Pacifier where Vin Diesel trains the girl scout types to use Karate on the boy scouts. It was pretty funny.

okay so this is my first post to the forums. Interesting thread. I think the bottom line here is that it is about the boys and sometimes the difficult parents, paperwork and minutia crowd out this fact. I was a Girl Scout in the late 60's, early 70's and I still look fondly at my badges and the pictures of our campouts. The meetings I dont remember too much, but I do remember the camp outs. My mom was a leader. Once we got snowed on in the spring and woke under a blanket of fresh snow. In the Southern California Mountains. My daughter was in a troop that was more interested in shopping than camping and I was told flat out, if you want to camp YOU go and take the girls. Now she is in a new troop and they are all about service and the outdoors. I think that sometimes you just have to think outside the box a bit and be reasonable. I would be more upset if my son pee'd on his leg than was with one adult. I would put it back on the person who asked and ask them what they would do. Scouting must be fun, bottom line. And the adults must be fun too. As an "old mom" I appreciate and thoroughly enjoy watching the kids play and have fun and I like to act goofy with them. Maybe its the district? Maybe its the old school mentality? The older I get the more I try to provide solutions if I bring up a criticism. The packs NEED good hands on caring leaders, ones who will step up to the plate and good ones are few and far between. Ones who can creatively solve issues. And sell a lot of popcorn. Thanks for listening.