5scoutmom

My crew is charging $35 for the first member in a family with a $5 reduction for each subsequent member. The youth members themselves came up with the schedule. We also charge a per person fee for certain activities like camping trips. Fundraising monies go to the group as a whole and are used for things like renting camping spots for the crew and purchasing crew equipment. Adult members other than the committee pay the same rates.

Oh, and you should have a word with the bed wetter's parents. My oldest wet the bed till just about the time he had his first girlfriend We sent him to camp with a medication that suppressed urine output over night. At home, we'd wake him twice a night to go but we didn't want to broadcast his issues or, more importantly, put a burden like that on a volunteer, so our pediatrician prescribed a med. The camp nurse gave it to him at my request so that the SM and other adult leaders didn't know what he was taking. He just thought it was a med to help him sleep. He never had an accident at scout camp or on a sleepover.

Our troop had one boy who was so homesick that his mom had to come get him on day 3. Ironically, his dad had actually been at camp and stayed after the boy left! The kid couldn't be apart from his electronics without withdrawal symptoms. He went to camp every year with his dad and every year went home early while the dad stayed. The day he turned 18, he left scouting without having advanced beyond first class or earning any merit badges. He didn't want to be in scouts, but his dad sure did. OTOH, my son went to scout camp having never been away more than one night in his life. After one week, they called and asked if he could stay a second week. When he came home, his first words were "When can I go back to camp?"

Jblake - Your kid sounds like my son. He earned the MB's because he was interested in the topics, not so with the other things on which he had to be pushed.

Our council has a special needs troop. Many special needs kids don't join it, including my own ADD/Aspie son, but the SM of that group was a wonderful resource for advice on how to accommodate MB's so kids with special needs can accomplish on an equivalent level.

David CO - Our CO is a church and it has a pack and a troop. There's another troop in town as well. Our COR, a friend of mine for many years, sent his only son to the other troop. When I asked him about it, he said he wanted to avoid any appearance of favoritism towards his son, especially since his family belonged to the CO church. His son knows he earned his eagle and wasn't just pushed along because of who his dad is. The dad is still our COR even though his son is now out of college.

Given that the boys involved were cubs, I think the pack did the right thing. Small children don't grasp the issues and wouldn't understand why they were good enough to pick up garbage but their water wasn't good enough to sell. I would not have given it away for free because that's rewarding the bad behavior of the organizers and the bullies. I would have either stored the water for the next event or donated it to a worthy cause. I am an adult leader of a crew and, if my unit had been involved in this incident, I would have given the group a chance to vote on what they wanted to do to handle it. They're older and this would have been a good learning experience in many ways - how do you react to hostility from people who don't know you personally, discussing the issues as a group and reaching a consensus, responding to the hostility (or not)... One thing for sure, I would never expose my unit to that particular activity again. As for community service, etc.: when my scouts were younger, they volunteered at blood drives. Now, as each turns 16, it's a right of passage for them to begin donating. Several of my boys even do the big machine, which can take up to an hour. They get fed and once they even got tickets to a sports event. They don't do it for that, they do it because they understand that donating blood is an important thing to do and an easy way to contribute to your community. They go as a group and wear uniforms... Ditto for our food drives, where they only get the fun of trying to win the "strangest food" donated contest. The prize is a picture of the child holding up the item. However, they can also get community service hours towards scouting advancement. Does that lessen the value of their activity? Not in my mind. I think that these cub scouts in Vermont are owed an apology, but I doubt one will be forthcoming.

Congratulations on your son's achievement. My son's COH was one of the proudest days of my life as a mom. As for scout music, I have no suggestions. For my son's processional I selected the theme from "Dr. Who" because my son and all of his friends are big fans but I didn't tell anyone what the music was until it began to play. The smile on the faces of my son and his friends and the laughter of the audience was a great start to the ceremony. I also had my daughter sing the National Anthem; she's a vocal music minor. Whatever you choose music wise, the day will be wonderful and memorable.

SSScout - The organizers didn't pay for the drinks. The attendees paid for the open bar and tickets cost a great deal of money. There was a discounted price for current unit members, everyone else paid much more. It cost me close to $400 to bring part of my family to this party. There was no choice given as to whether you wanted to pay extra for an open bar as is done at my company holiday party (I would have declined). It was a scout event honoring the unit, not any individual members. It was billed as a celebration of the unit, there was a glossy magazine with the history of the unit and advertisements. People were expecting a scout event. I guess I just find it hypocritical.

There isn't a copyright on how to start a fire per se but the precepts of, for instance, Leave No Trace, were designed by BSA as are the merit badges, etc. The impression that I got is that TL is cannibalizing those parts of BSA material that they want. They want Christian religious recognitions, that's fine, but making a similar number of ranks and almost equivalent requirements to BSA is cheating. A conversion chart implies that they are not using original concepts but are copying Scout concepts. Although imitation is supposedly the sincerest form of flattery, this isn't imitation, it's theft of ideas. I don't know if BSA has copyrighted or trademarked any of its merit badge books or the names it uses but... Let TL come up with a completely different program that doesn't just steal BSA ideas and put them in a fundamentalist right wing context and I'll be fine.

Thank you all for your thoughts. Packsaddle, I am familiar with the rules you mention and I have feasted my eyes on them. That is partly where my inquiry comes up. The unit involved is NOT my unit and I had no input into the planning of this event. My family left this unit a number of years ago because we didn't like how it was run but we attended this celebration to mark the time we had spent in it and to honor those who came before the current adult leadership. In my current unit, adults do not drink in front of scouts at any type of scouting related function and we emphasize that scouting and drinking do not mix. My husband's father died of alcoholism related illnesses and we are, therefore, incredibly diligent with our children and those we are responsible for in scouting about how we treat alcohol and drinking. I did have a drink at the function but only because there was an open bar; I would not have complained had there not been one. To that end, I was modeling responsible drinking for my own children but I told them that I was shocked that there was a bar at the event. I will state that I did not see any adult uniformed leader drinking but I wasn't watching all the time and I wasn't sitting at the same table. Someone at the party who was also upset about it told me that I should contact the DE but then I saw him at the party. I didn't see him drinking but he wasn't in uniform. Again, I wasn't paying that much attention to him. After reading these responses, I think that I am not going to do anything other than make sure that my own scout functions, to which the other unit will be invited because we share a CO and some overlapping members, are properly run. We are planning a party for an upcoming unit anniversary and are going to hold it at our CO (a religious facility) which will doubly ensure that no alcohol is served. I guess I was just surprised and wondered if there had been any changes in the rules that I was unaware of.

/when you say district recognition dinners, do you mean adult only? I have no problem with alcohol at that type of function. This was a family event, though, with cub scout aged children in attendance as well. There was one adult leader in uniform, and many boys in uniform.

Your son is a Webelos I and will be 10.5 in April? Is this typical for where you live? My son turned 10.5 in Webelos 2 in March of 5th grade and bridged the same month with his W2 den members. My school district has a December cutoff so he was one of the younger boys in his grade. However, he did fine and made Eagle - he is 20 now. I think that 10.5 is old enough to be in scouts but if your son moves up without his friends, he'll not only be the youngest but he'll be without his support group of friends. That's the main reason I would hold him back. My son wasn't the only 10 year old there, there was enough of them to form 2 patrols that year and many of them wound up remaining in scouts through HS. If your son doesn't have friends to tent with or work with in a patrol, he may not want to be in scouts anymore. Perhaps you can think about having him volunteer with a den or to help out at pack meetings so he doesn't feel bored.

It was not a spontaneous gathering, it was apparently planned for quite some time and it was organized by the scouting unit. There were more than 50 people in attendance. Why do you say someone goofed and what might the repercussions be?

I read about Trail Life and my first thought was the BSA should go to court and get injunctions against this group. How DARE they just change the names of things and think they have a "new" program. They even have a conversion (ha ha, not!) chart for changing BSA ranks, etc. to Trail Life equivalents. It's a copy cat program and National should sue them. It's fine to have your own group if you have sincere differences of opinion, but have some originality. Don't copy because you don't have enough creativity to come up with your own ranks and badges.