What to do

[mashmaster]

As much as we want kids to speak up, sometimes it is just easier (and safer) to lie low or leave. If there's no mechanism to, for lack of a better term, "blow the whistle" on the guys serving up this large bowl of crap, then boys tend to keep their head down. Or worse, they leave Scouting.

 

I know a local troop that had this issue. The SM instituted a way to have guys let him know when such things were going on. Guys could send an email to a list that went to the SM and the TC Chair (two deep). The report was then investigated and acted on. It really cut down on issues. They also held a troop-wide "re-training" of their leaders disguised as a TLT program that everyone attended. They had a whole section on anti-bullying and living the Oath/Law.

 

Good luck. It's not a easy task but you are doing the right thing...if not for your Scout, someone else's.

Thanks, I like that idea.  My boys don't like email so much but maybe have that and a box they can drop a note into.  Have it at meetings and on campouts in a discrete place.

[MattR]

Col. Flagg's description of scout's not wanting to rock the boat is what I saw. A lot of scouts will not talk or they'll be very vague when adults ask them. A lot of adults struggle with calmly bringing up painful interactions so there shouldn't be too much surprise that scouts have more problems.

 

Getting down to the ugly nitty griity, with everyone staying calm, seems to be very cathartic. The fact that MM is the SM and the father of the scout receiving this grief could easily make it that much worse on his son. I think it's really hard for scouts to admit things aren't going right. Think of it, my dad really likes scouts and wants me to like it, so I can't bring up problems, not to mention the boy code.

 

One time I had a good idea of what had happened to a scout and I just wanted to hear it from him. It took a long time for him to talk about it. I'd ask him what happened and he'd reply that other scouts were mean. "What do you mean by being mean?" "They swore at me." "What did they say?" "They cursed." "What did they say?" "Umm ..." "You can tell me, I've heard it before." "Well ... he told me to, fuck off." "Anything else?" Once he realized that I wasn't going to go and kill the other scout, or throw him out of the troop it was much easier for him to talk. So then I brought the scout that did this over and talked. "What did you say to him?" "Umm, it wasn't nice." "What words did you use?" "Well, I swore at him." "And what words did you use?" "I used the f-word." "The f-word? What's that? What did you tell him?" At this point he's really uncomfortable. "I told him to, um, well, uh, to fuck off." "So, would you say that to your mom?" "No!" "Then why do you think it's appropriate to say it to a scout?" "ummm." "how are you going to make this right?" At this point the two scouts start talking to each other. The first scout was probably just happy that this was not going anywhere beyond the few of us standing there. The second scout realized how his words came across and was happy he could be forgiven. Well, that and this was likely to be the end of it.