Sniktaw

Names do matter, and they can matter to parents. When teaching second grade, I once got an angry phone call from a parent who noticed her daughter had been writing a nickname on her papers instead of her given name (she was using the first three letters of her 8-letter name). She was only allowed to use her given name. I thought it was ridiculous, but there it was. As a parent, if I found out by accident that my kid had chosen a name meant to change his identity and adults were going along with it without mentioning it to me, I'd be pretty upset. Deciding that you have no gender (what does that even mean??) and telling everyone but your parents points to either some pretty serious issues or some pretty ridiculous shenanigans. I would hope that adults who are supposed to care about my kid would clue me in. I would hope that adults who are supposed to care about my kid don't assume that I will abuse my kid and shouldn't know things that he is making public.

No matter how generous my intentions, trying to read and follow "the Church" (which church, now?)'s written instructions regarding nomenclature seems entirely too cumbersome. I've had enough friends, acquaintances, sworn enemies, and family members who are Mormon that I feel pretty comfortable diving into this rather off-topic topic. Still lamenting the upcoming loss of our local awesome Mormon day camp.

Hmmm, those instructions come from Mormonnewsroom.org. I'm not sure they're going to be very successful with this change.

Wait...Did Mormon just become a bad word in general, or only in connection to Boy Scouts?

I have a chronic medical condition that sidelines me a lot. Although I am being treated, I have had to accept over the years that there are certain things that I just can't do (or might not be able to do, therefore I can't plan to do them and have people count on me) and someone else has to take up that slack. I know what I can do and I do those things well. Everything else, I expect someone else to step up, and they do, because I work with a great group of leaders who are willing to do their part. And I have no problem asking them to do things. Sometimes I get ahead of myself, thinking I'm getting better, then realize it was just one of my good times. Sometimes I make plans I shouldn't. So even though I work at managing this I'm not perfect. I get frustrated with myself. I hope you are asking for help. Professional help, for all aspects of your life that are affected, and in Scouts. Sounds to me like you need a good partner leader who can do the things you are unsure of. Working with other leaders has been one of the most enjoyable parts of being a den leader, for me, and it's good that the boys to have more than one leader to rely on. If you're fine doing den meetings and planning your own outings for your den as needed, all those other trainings are not necessary or even helpful for a den leader. Heck, depending on the quality, most of the leaders may be better off skipping them entirely. You don't have to do it all, do it perfectly, or do it by yourself. Just do what you can and let others to do the rest of it. If you need to step back for a while that's okay too. I always look at volunteer opportunities as year-long commitments, then it's time to re-evaluate what I can handle and what I want to do. I would just suggest that you not miss out on something you want to do because you've set the expectations higher than they should be.

This makes me think back to when my son was a a tiger...a boy joined his den a week before Crossover. At the ceremony, the leader made a big deal about how he'd just joined and he completed all his requirements in ONE WEEK! Wow! What a great Scout! My thoughts were, He must've missed some school to fit in all those Go See Its, and What the hell were we doing, attending the meetings all year long when you could get the whole program done in a week?

Thanks everyone, I knew I would get a lot of ideas here! We are already doing some of the things mentioned but can definitely use many of the other ideas.

Hi everyone. I am a Webelos I den leader and would like advice on helping the boys transition to Boy Scouts. The requirements for the next year and a half are different enough from Cubs, and we have plans for visiting troops, but I need concrete ideas for how to introduce the Boy Scout mindset to my Webelos. As far as activities, one obstacle I feel stuck on is that we meet for an hour during the week when it is dark, so our outdoor activity possibilities are limited, and an hour isn't a lot of time to get bigger things accomplished. We are shooting for one weekend outdoor activity a month, but of course many Scouts only come to weeknight meetings. But I digress--what I'm really looking for is that mindset change. My ultimate goal is to get these boys to stay in Scouting so I want their transition to be as smooth as possible. What should I be doing to help them?

I think it depends on why the boy is joining--if they are gung-ho for doing all the requirements, sure, do it at home. If they are just joining to have fun with the experience, let them have the experience that everyone else is having now. Earn the Bobcat plus whatever the rest of the den is working on. My big worry is encouraging the new Bear to buy a blue shirt they're only going to wear for a few months before they go with tan in Webelos.

The idea that you are worrying about this makes me sad. You shouldn't stop your family from having normal activities nor stop yourself from being a normal mother because you volunteer in an organization that works with children. I have thought about the reverse--At Scouts, the rules say I can't be trusted to be in a room with 6 second graders without another adult present, but when I was a teacher, I could be in a room alone with 23 second graders all day, every day. And now I can pick up one of the second graders from school and drive him home with my son so they can play together. And amazingly. . . I can be completely alone with either one of my sons and be absolutely sure that I won't hurt them. Follow the rules of the organization when you're there. But don't start doubting yourself. You know you're not going to harm the kids at your kid's sleepover. If the other parents don't trust you, they won't let the kids go to your house, nothing to do with Scouts. If we tried to live our personal lives by the rules imposed by schools, Scouts, church, etc., we would be incredibly isolated because we couldn't ever trust anybody.