Can by laws of a troop be different than boyscout "rules".

[evmori]

When my son was in my Troop, I did not sign-off on any of his merit badges even though I was registered for most of the required ones. Reason - Adult Association. This is something I feel all kids need.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Vicki]

I agree with all the posters who have provided well-thought-out reasons why a parent should not counsel their son on a merit badge. I also agree that if there is someone with a specialized skill in the troop, there is no reason on earth why he or she should not be able to counsel their son in this merit badge.

 

That said (venting on:

[allangr1024]

If this were our country's legal system, we would say that the BSA rules form a constitution that lays out the program and the structure, and that a troop may form its policies as it needs, but those policies must support the BSA rules or be considered "Unconstitutional".

 

If there is no direct reference in BSA policy to having a parent do a MB with his kid, then the troop can regulate the MB program for themselves. We do not have a supreme court, aside perhaps from the district executive, to appeal to, but the principal is the same.

 

 

[SueM]

I have acted as a MB counselor to my own son for several MB's along the way, including a couple of Eagle required that I worked on with the troop as a group. Since I am also the SM, the I felt that I needed to avoid any illusion of "conflict of interest", so what I did was to have other adults in the troop review the worksheets for any work that my son did outside of a group effort to get their opinion as to whether or not he had met the requirements. I did the same thing for his Eagle project..took it to several other adults to review and had one of them sign off on it. When I did his Eagle SM's conference, I also had a couple of adults there to witness it too and encouraged them to ask questions themselves if they had any that they felt I might have missed. I did not want anyone to be able to "question" whether I had given him any "special treatment"...as I do have those types in my troop! But I did these things on my own..not as a troop "bylaw" or anything.

 

SueM