FireStone

There's a story that floats around my Pack about a scout from years ago who made it all the way through Arrow of Light without officially registering with the Pack. Not sure how accurate the story is at this point, could be he was registered but didn't pay dues the next year or something. Who knows. The point is, it has become a sort of cautionary tale for leaders. Make sure your scouts are properly registered, everyone is up to date, rostered in Scoutbook, etc. As for the scout in question here, I would use the dangling carrot of advancement. We do all advancement tracking in my Pack through Scoutbook now, including reports for purchasing awards/badges/pins. If a scout isn't registered, they don't have a number and aren't fully entered into Scoutbook, nor can we generate the report needed to buy advancement awards at the Scout Shop. I would leverage that to persuade the parents to officially sign the kid up. Just say, "We'll be handing out awards/badges/belt loops/whatever next week and your son/daughter has been participating but can't receive their award because they're not in the system yet. Let's fix that."

My daughter is 4, going on 5 this year, and she's skipping the Lion year. I don't see the point of it, and it will only contribute to burnout, possibly hers, more likely mine. Maybe this is a little selfish, but I don't want to learn the Lion program and end up running it, which I will since I'm already a DL and I'm sure I'll get pulled into that role in the Lion den too. So I'd rather just skip that whole year. And I doubt my daughter will miss much. I doubt my son would have missed much skipping Tiger, and half of his Wolf den was first-year scouts, many who had older siblings and knew Tiger year was a waste. I'd skip Tiger with my daughter too, but she's already too aware of Cub Scouts and I have a feeling just skipping Lion will be about as much of a delay as she will let me live with. I just watched a bunch of really anxious Webelos cross over to troops last week, and they could not have been more ready. They were tired of the Cub program, ready to move on. And they didn't do Lions, I don't know how many did Tiger. I'd be willing to bet a lot of those kids wouldn't have been crossing over if they had spent an extra year in Cubs earlier on. We had 3 Webelos not even show up to cross over, they already basically quit earlier in the year. Tiger burns kids out on Cubs but many still make it all the way through. Lions will kill enthusiasm for Cubs by the time these kids are in 3rd or 4th grade. Parents? They'll be done even earlier.

I discovered my career because of the BSA. And it has nothing to do with the outdoors. The BSA has been in the business of offering exposure to a wide variety of topics for a long time now. STEM is just the latest addition. It's certainly not "idiotic".

I still never thought there would be any "jump" involved, a jump in numbers or a jump-start of any kind. This is going to be a long process, rolling out the opportunities for girls and building a culture of girls in the Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA programs. That's ultimately what will drive membership increases, more girls seeing other girls doing things in Cubs, SBSA, etc. There are still a whole lot of those "Well how is this going to work?" questions on the minds of parents. I hear them often, from parents of girls who are interested but still unsure about participating. Because they haven't seen it in action yet, other than in the stock photos the BSA put out last year. Now when I do recruiting this year, I'll have girls in uniform at my open house, girls in school talking about Cub Scouts, and Pack girls in photos on my website, flyers, etc. I think that will start to resonate more with prospective new parents. We're definitely moving in a better direction. I'm better off this year than I was last year in terms of being able to speak to how this all works and potentially bring in more new girl members this year. I think if we look at a "jump start" in terms other than raw membership numbers, I'd say we're already experiencing that jump. And I still believe that the numbers jump will follow. It just needs more time.

National does some interesting math. Everyone knew there would be some fall-out from admitting girls, there was almost no way that we'd see any kind of increase in overall numbers. That's at least a few years out. I'd be surprised if we even see a leveling-off in a couple of years.

Did anyone really think we'd see that jump in less than a year? I certainly didn't. I always figured this was a 5-year minimum to get any real sense of how things would go. I never even looked at it as a "jump". It would always be a long, slow progression and a leveling-off after the early years of ups and downs.

I'm pretty sure this is just about the single best way to sum up any involvement in Scouting as a leader. 🤣

We don't run an Outlaw derby as a fundraiser, it's just a class of cars that run after the regular derby. We already don't get a lot of cars entered into that class, so I suspect that treating it as a fundraiser somehow would result in even less participation. I could, however, see it run as a separate event. Maybe an adult-only event, entry fee, big cash prize for the winner (pack keeps half of all entry fees). We sell food at our regular PWD, and that turns a decent profit for us. I believe at the last derby we raised $500 through food sales alone. We also had a 50/50 (which the winner graciously donated back to the Pack), t-shirt sales, etc.

It's true, but still better to at least try to get the correct message out there and then maybe you'll have some help in relaying the corrected message if/when things do get garbled. Some scout, parent, or other leader will know what's accurate and maybe help pass along better info to the lesser informed parents and thus avoid the issue becoming a topic of discussion on an Internet forum. 😉 Parents are just as bad. I do recruitment for my Pack and I have a rule about recruiting events: No chairs. Despite the many opinions I hear otherwise, it is my belief that the worst thing I can do at a recruiting event is sit people down in chairs and drone on about all of the things everyone thinks new parents should know. (They do need to know a lot, but not all in the first night). It makes no sense to me that I'd put out a bunch of flyers and promotional materials around town selling the idea of "adventure" and then welcome them into that adventure in seated position with a boring speech. Likewise, I would not expect parents to remember anything from such a speech. Other leaders in my Pack (and some district folks I've talked to about this) think I should be filling parents with info about the uniform, camping, meeting schedules, Bobcat requirements, etc. I could, but I'd rather let Den Leaders handle much of that. And I won't, because it's boring and they'll forget 80% of the info before they get up out of those chairs.

Just reading up on the OA election guidelines/procedures, and found this interesting as it relates to this discussion: So technically, the SM in this discussion is not wrong to impose a rule against first-year scouts. "Participation" is a pretty broad term and could be made to mean having participated in the troop for a period of no less than 1 full year.

At some point it got back to parents that there was a rule, no first-year scouts allowed on the ballot. I have to imagine that just as easily it could get back to parents that SM recommendation is one of the several requirements (alongside rank and nights camping). This still feels like just a case of the wrong info being put out there. If it becomes known in the troop that the SM has to recommend a scout to get on the ballot, that's what will circulate among scouts and parents. The problem seems to be coming from the seemingly broad rule that scouts and parents think this SM created about first-years. It doesn't have to be that way, just make it known that there are 3 requirements to get on the ballot, and SM recommendation is one of them, equal to the other two. If there is sufficient time at a meeting when OA shows up to discuss the other 2 requirements, surely there is time to mention the 3rd one.

I think that's fine as long as that is communicated. Maybe this whole thing is just a failure of communication at some level. Re-reading the OP, it sounds like parents were under the assumption that to get on the ballot, a scout simply had to meet the qualifications, those qualifications seemingly being the more quantifiable stuff, rank and nights camping. If SM recommendation isn't viewed (or communicated) as a "requirement" to get on the ballot, it could just be a matter of making that clear. Again, if this is presented as "no first-year scouts allowed", that doesn't speak to the SM recommendation part of the process. That just makes it sound like the troop is adding a rule of their own, which hardly ever sits well with parents and leads to discussions/debates exactly like this one. Ultimately I think this whole thing could be put to rest with a clearer explanation of the ballot process. Don't say "no first-years", instead just say "SM recommendation required". The SM can then do whatever they want really in regards to their personal criteria for ballot selection.

There's no room for folks to step into new roles in the Troop after Pack life? I'd like to be involved in the troop after my son crosses over. I hope it's not a case of "Thanks, we got it from here."

It's not just from "some hiking show." Demographic data on Appalachian Trail thru-hikers is freely available, and fairly strong. And I mentioned my source for the camping demographic data. The Outdoor Industry Association is pretty reputable.

Yes, it's as easy as that, but it should still be merit-based, not just a blanket "no first-years allowed" rule. The SM should decide on an individual basis, not a group basis. Personally, I don't think most 12-year-olds are ready for OA. But there's always an exception. I'm just not a fan of these age-based rules that units create around advancement, OA, etc., stuff like "no Eagles under 16".

I agree on the SM using discretion. But in this particular case, it is, in fact, an arbitrary rule, no first-year scouts allowed on the ballot. That's often where the frustration comes in, I think. What the SM sees as "discretion" becomes a rule instead, even if unintentionally.

These days, I wouldn't be so sure about that. I've been watching a lot of hiking videos/documentaries lately and did some research into demographics of hikers, in particular thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, and the demographics are something around 1/3 of those who complete the 2,000+ mile trek are women. That's up significantly since the early 2000s when that number was closer to 20%. Backpacking seems like a pretty scout-oriented activity, and 1/3 certainly isn't a small group. Recent reports from the Outdoor Industry Association suggest that 47% of Americans who went camping in recent years were female. I wonder if the idea that girls/women don't want to do scout-like things is at all related to simply the visibility of females in these sorts of activities in past decades. Today's demographics would certainly seem to suggest that woman have a significant interest in doing outdoorsy things like camping and backpacking. So where else could this notion of females being "the exception" be coming from if the data just doesn't support that?

I would always rather risk upsetting one parent than making the rest of the parents feel like we have no control over kids who are acting badly. And I've seen it happen that way, parents start voicing concerns about the ability of leaders when no one steps in to stop bad behavior. I think we often are tempted to worry about upsetting one parent and maybe even possibly losing one scout as a member of the den/pack, but we have to think about the broader group, and the potential to lose a lot more parents and scouts if they start to see us as ineffective when it comes to crowd control and discipline.

It's really interesting how even within a single unit there is so much variation in how neckerchiefs are worn. Just watch any video on YouTube of a scout troop and see how many scouts within one unit wear them entirely differently. Over collar, under, rolled, loose, high/tight slide, low/loose slide, tied in a knot, no neckerchief, bolo...

Oh come on. By that logic, I could go complain to my local supermarket that I tried to buy a gallon of water and got a gallon of milk accidentally because the containers looked the same. Even if, hypothetically, it were true that a parent unwittingly ended up at a BSA recruiting event instead of the intended GSUSA event, we're not really in the business of forcibly signing up families just because they walked in the door. Or holding them hostage once signed up, even if they made a mistake in joining the wrong organization. 😂

Totally agree. But I would also hope that the scouts would be able to decide that, and I'd trust them to make those choices in their votes. If it works the way it's supposed to, they should be voting for scouts who have been around long enough to prove that they deserve the vote.

What happened to the Patrol Method and "boy-led"? Seems like this is the perfect opportunity to put that into practice. Let all eligible scouts appear on the ballot and let the scouts decide by vote. Isn't that the point of these elections? I find myself increasingly frustrated by the adult interference in the BSA lately. I see it locally, a lot. A SM at a recent district event made the comment in front of a crowd that he actively enforces age rules for advancement, especially higher ranks. He admitted in front of a crowd that he blocks advancement unless a scout is at an age that he deems appropriate to allow advancement to that particular rank. To which of course a district rep had to jump in and say, "Well, we cant really do that, that's not what the guide to advancement allows..." But that's the culture with a lot of troops. Arbitrary rules.

I'm in-between these two looks. Tightly rolled, but loosely fit with the slide. I wear my slide about even with where my square knots are. I guess it's personal preference. In the UK style, slides (or tied friendship knots) are really low on the necker. And I've seen a little of that look coming over to the US. As far as I know, it's not any sort of uniform violation to not roll it. In fact in some old texts you'll see neckerchiefs worn like the scout on the right, not rolled at all. Personally I think the scout on the left has the slide too tight. I'm not a fan of the slide pulled all the way up to the collar. But again, personal preference.

One of the hardest things for me to get used to was reprimanding other people's kids in front of those parents. Especially other leaders' kids. Like @Treflienne mentioned, maybe someone needs to step in and do what everyone has been hoping the mom would do. In fact, maybe the mom is hoping for exactly that. We have a sort of un-written rule in our Pack: Whenever possible, another leader intervenes in a situation with a scout who has a parent leader in the Pack. So in my Den, if my ADL's kid is acting up, I step in before the dad/ADL does, whenever possible. It helps reinforce the roles of leaders, I find my own son is more likely to behave because he's learned that being the son of a leader gets him no benefit in terms of getting away with anything. He sees that another leader is always nearby, and dad can't save him from trouble. Treat this scout like any other, including a scout who doesn't have a parent present.

Would be interesting to know if any adults still have them after all these years. Are any of the Pack parents former cubs from the Pack?