COVID as an excuse for adult takeover of troop

[CynicalScouter]

So I am seeing and hearing from people at roundtable more and more efforts by parents to convert Scouts, BSA into Cub Scouts.

The latest: a "health and safety committee" made up of parents and troop committee (and 1 or 2 "invited" scouts) that will provide the SM & PLC a list of things that scouts are allowed to do. The PLC would then select from the list and the "committee" would plan everything and recruit scouts who want to attend.

Anyone else seeing anything similar? This seems insane.

 

 

[skeptic]

The basic idea seems okay, but the arrangement of the pieces is out of whack.  It should be starting from the youth side and the support then being available.  

 

[SSScout]

This is certainly not crazy, it is very well thought out.  But it ain't Scouts.   It is Parents who are afraid to "trust" their Scouts to do the Scout thing, within safe. sane limits. The Parents can always veto any project/activity, but as to the actual desire, planning,  accomplishment, that is what is lacking here. The SCOUTS should be the originators, not the parents.  THEY should be the encouragers.   

[thrifty]

I don't know if Covid is an excuse but there has definitely been more adult involvement in the troop lately.  We had online meetings for months and various leaders had their own opinions of what these meetings should or should not have been so of course adult feedback forced the scouts to change what they had been doing. scouts were even given a script of what they should do or say.  very sad.  I get the impression that most of our newer parents are chasing Eagle and only care about requirements.  We've started in-person meetings again and those have been better but the troop is very chaotic right now with different Covid opinions and various health requirements.

[David CO]

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

Anyone else seeing anything similar? 

Yes.  Our Chartered Organization has a similar committee.  Since the scout unit is owned by the CO, it is subject to the same rules and restrictions as everyone else.  This includes the adult activities, so I don't think it would be fair to say that the boy scouts are being treated like cub scouts during the coronavirus epidemic.  The boy scouts are being treated pretty much the same as the adults.

I agree with your observation that boy scouts are being treated more and more like cub scouts.  It's also true that middle school students are increasingly being treated like elementary school kids.  I don't like it.

 

[Eagle94-A1]

2 minutes ago, David CO said:

I agree with your observation that boy scouts are being treated more and more like cub scouts.  It's also true that middle school students are increasingly being treated like elementary school kids. 

I would add high school  kids being treated as elementary school kids. And college kids, and some college grads, being treated like the are in middle school kids. I cannot tell you how many high school and college students' parents contacted me about the hospital's job shadowing program. I'm now at a college, and I saw many parents attend advising and registration sessions with their child.

I too, don't like it.

 

[CynicalScouter]

18 minutes ago, David CO said:

Our Chartered Organization has a similar committee.  Since the scout unit is owned by the CO, it is subject to the same rules and restrictions as everyone else.

I would be more OK if the Chartered Org did this. That I can grasp.

I would be more OK if this was a situation where the PLC came up with ideas and they got vetoed on health/safety grounds by troop committee. PLC says they want to hike and the troop committee vetoes due to health concerns OR better still send it back to PLC to come back with corrections and COVID-related adjustments. Not thrilled, but I can get that.

But as it was described to me this is grouping of a) non-committee parents and b) committee members that are c) making up a list of "approved" activities and handing it to the PLC and telling them "pick from this and nothing else."

That doesn't sound like scout-led.

[qwazse]

 

7 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

.... That doesn't sound like scout-led.

If it doesn’t walk like a duck or talk like a duck, it ain’t a duck.

If the SMs and ASMs aren’t willing to resign their posts over this, however, There’s not much you can do.

[scoutldr]

It's an ongoing general trend.  20 is the new 10.  I have nieces and nephews pushing 30, living at home,  who are still treated as if they are 16.  And they act like it, too.  Parents refuse to cut the apron strings and force them to be self-sustaining adults.  

[qwazse]

4 minutes ago, scoutldr said:

... have nieces and nephews pushing 30, living at home,  who are still treated as if they are 16.  And they act like it, too.  ...

Well, I have son and daughter 20-something at home who treat me like I’m 16.

No comment on how much I act like it. 

[BAJ]

I have been giving a lot of thought to COVID and scouting as our troop is starting back to some in person activities and our annual planning cycle is starting.  I am actually going to Wood Badge next weekend (put off from weekend scheduled early in the pandemic) and so have been thinking some about what my “COVID scouting ticket” might look like.

At our round table, there there were troops that talked about their chartering org not letting them do anything in person.  Other troops did something like a summer camp.  I’ve read the postings of others here that did things like that and tried to read stories I could find of other troops summer activities, and it is clear that they — and the level of infection control they thought was necessary for “safe scouting” — varied a lot.

From our experience, it is also obvious that individual families, even within the same area, are doing very different things with respect to exposure mitigation and have very different levels of concern about COVID.  Some are being extremely conservative, others in the middle minimizing going out to stores/other contact, and others have seemingly resumed near normal activities.  So in thinking about troop activities, I realized that one can never assume that the other families connected to the troop are thinking about this the same way I am or the same way the Scoutmaster is, or whatever.  We did some things like instituting a form that has to be filled out that the scout isn’t sick/has a fever/been exposed to suspected cases recently, but that is less about a paper trail than at least trying to make sure people at least think about their kid’s health before they bring them to a troop event.  But our local school system did a small summer day camp program that pretty much proved that those don’t work — in a couple weeks, in a group of 50, 4 people directly misrepresented their situation on the form (two kids with fevers, two with parents at home waiting for COVID test results) so their kid could go to camp.

That gave me pause, and made me step back and think about what the right response should be.  Some families have already decided that they aren’t doing in person things, and so we are trying to have what virtual engagement with them we can (we streamed the campfire on our first campout, and it worked... tolerably.). But for the ones that are willing to participate in physical events, the question is how to appropriately balance the fact that people clearly have different risk perceptions, and even if they have the same perceptions, different tolerances.  Add to that the concern about what COVID spread at a scout event would do in this environment, liability, etc. and it doesn’t surprise me that there are COs and leaders who are trying to put some guardrails around this.

So, I was less shocked by a group of parents coming up with a list of ok events than other posters.  Sure, everything could be scout initiated in annual planning, but then you might get a proposal for (a) a campout at a site so far away families can’t realistically drive their own scout there to avoid exposure in the car, (b) a scheduled lock in “social campout” in a poorly ventilated building during flu season, (c) a fall activity involving bobbing for apples, and (d) patrol games night where there is so much scout physical contact that everyone will leave with every virus brought to the event.  You could let the scouts propose that to the troop committee and have them freak and veto everything, but that seems like it would undermine the lessons scouts is trying to teach as well.  I admit, I am exaggerating to make the point.

A middle ground is coming up with some parameters and guardrails — “we are only camping within an hours drive of home” — and also make clear the types of infection control that will make things ok with parents for scouts to participate.  That emphasizes to scouts their responsibility too... if we go camping and people can’t keep their masks on, it may be that camping ends up being off the table... since if everyone wearing a mask is the parents’ price of risk reduction to let their kids be there (not to mention government policy in some areas) then it doesn’t matter if we are “allowed to camp” if no families will let their scouts come.

The “adults recruiting scouts to go” piece is odd to me, though I also wonder if that may not be as bad as it sounds either.  Before our event, there was more parent contact than usual for a scout trip.  We needed to know that the parents were ok with the safety planning (and, if needed modify the plan to respond to different risk views) and would allow their scout to participate.  Was that adults recruiting scouts to go?  It might look like that from the outside, but I would also put forward that just scheduling something and only realizing that parents were uncomfortable with it when their scouts didn’t show up wouldn’t have reinforced what youth leadership is supposed to be teaching either.

So, a long winded attempt to say — maybe let’s not be as fast in making judgements on this.  Safety planning in this environment is different than planning for severe weather, and getting together now involves risks that COs and leaders are still figuring out how to manage.  We know that when a severe thunderstorm rolls thru camp, experienced scouts (potentially prodded by their leaders) seek more substantial shelter than tents and higher ground if we need to... to manage a risk that, if it happens, will only affect us and the scouts who are there.  We are managing a risk here that affects the community, and family members and others too... and one that even means that our usual ways of managing thunderstorm risk are tougher (on our campout we had to see if the solid building we could retreat to if we needed was big enough to distance while inside it.).  If scouting is going to happen in anything like what we want it to be, it’s going to have to navigate different risk perceptions and ways of managing them, and getting adults on board — and figuring out the terrain in which we are ok with the scouts leading by themselves —is going to be needed.

[David CO]

3 hours ago, qwazse said:

Well, I have son and daughter 20-something at home who treat me like I’m 16.

No comment on how much I act like it. 

I grew up in a family with 4 generations living in the same home, so I don't see it as anything unusual for adult children to live with their parents, or for elderly parents to live with their adult children.  In order for a multi-generational household to work, people need to treat each other with respect.  This includes recognizing that adult children are adults.

This discussion is actually related to the topic.  In multi-generational households, it is common for a member to be in the high risk category for coronavirus.  The kids need to be extra cautious to avoid bringing the virus home.  Carelessness could kill someone.  Some scouts need to curtail their scouting activities out of concern for their family.

 

Edited August 15, 2020 by David CO

[David CO]

22 hours ago, SSScout said:

But it ain't Scouts.      

BSA is encouraging lots of stuff that "ain't Scouts" during the coronavirus epidemic.  They are concerned about registrations.  Keeping kids registered is a higher priority than maintaining the purity of the scouting program.  It's all about $$$. 

[John-in-KC]

My opinion only.   
 

The chartered partner, through the COR, should provide hard policy level limits on what the troop can and cannot do. In the current state of flux of National, they own more risk, IMO, than they used to.

Troop committee, thinking about what CO imposed, should factor in any guidance from the Council  

The SM, CC, COR, and SPL should have a quiet talk over cocoa about what the limits mean  

SM should be there to help SPL form a planning meeting of PLC, which includes the limits.

Youth ownership of the program decisions matters