Parent strikes a volunteer

[Old_OX_Eagle83]

Contact your Scout Exec ASAP, follow his/her directions. The Charter Org will be contacted, or you will be asked to contact them as part of the instructions. Let BSA handle law enforcement and media, let the Charter Org handle discipline.

 

This is a bad situation where the scouts took a back seat to ego. Your job will be to talk to the scouts about sportsmanship, proper behavior, and the meaning of the Cub Scout Promise, while smoothly leading this program past this speed bump. Do not delay in dealing with this.

[shortridge]

Sad thing is that we even have to talk about this. No Scouting training should have to teach participants how to make other adults grow up and stop acting like little kids.

[OldGreyEagle]

Have you read the discussion on the merits of the "old" and "new" Wood Badge?

[SR540Beaver]

Perhaps everyone should have stayed at least 300 feet apart.

[JoeBob]

Real jerks can be still stink at 301 feet...

 

[Basementdweller]

acco

 

Explain to me how woodbadge would have had any impact on what happened. Zero.......

 

This all happened prerace.....I am pretty sure what happened now....he was damaging his sons competitors cars, by bending the axles or misalignment them, The den leader slapped his hand when he tried to grab another car. He slapped her a crossed the face in return. Law enforcement is not involved. Called the two agencys that service our area and nothing

 

It all boils down to a lack of volunteers.......My right hand mans older son had a wrestling tournament so he wasn't there.....the CC and wife disappeared on a get away weekend. ????????

 

The parent who was kicked out left a profanity laced message on my answering machine the other night. The Den leader isn't answering my calls still....... The IH and COR are not happy with me....I have a meeting with the two of them friday after work.

 

Do me a favor and fire me.......I am evidently too stupid to walk away.

[BrentAllen]

I think acco was being a little tongue in cheek, but maybe not. One of the modules/lessons in WB21C is Conflict Resolutions, but I don't think it would have covered hand and face slapping.

 

What part of the country are you in? Here in the South, hitting a woman is still pretty much sacrilege. If that happened at our Pack, I could see the guy having to fight his way out of the building.

 

The worst we ever had, which was before I was involved in the Pack (pre-2004), a boy's car was disqualified at a weigh-in a few days before the race due to illegal axels or wheelbase or something. The parents contacted one of the local Atlanta news stations and gave them their side of the story - the mean Pack leaders wouldn't let their son race his car that he worked so hard on. A reporter and camera man show up at the Derby to do a story, based on the line they were fed by the disgruntled parents. Needless to say, when the rules were explained to the reporter, it turned into a non-story, and the family left the Pack.

[packsaddle]

"Here in the South, hitting a woman is still pretty much sacrilege."

On the other hand, the top 10 states for murder rates of women killed by men include: AL, NC, TN, TX, AR, MO, SC, and GA (ranked 3rd through 10th).

 

http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2010.pdf

 

Aside from the top two (Nevada and Vermont) we seem to be pretty good at committing that sacrilege. Heck, until recently a conviction for wife-beating in SC got less punishment than cock-fighting.

[moosetracker]

I had to look at the link, because I was shocked Vermont (my little quite neighbor state) was ranked 2nd.. 38 women Navada, 8 women Vermont, 50 Alabama... In proportion to population 8 women got them ranked 2nd worst offender..

 

Also it is a study of one year (2008).. It would be more interesting to be a study over 5 or 10 years.. Any of those states could have been having a bad year..

 

Still interesting study none the less..

 

Basement - Everytime you talk about your Pack, it just seems like everyone but you is totally self-centered.. Understand it is from your side of the story, but unless you really didn't announce the expectations that other people bring items for thier own snacks or a bake sale type venue.. Then things like expecting you or the pack to foot the bill of their party snacks is an issue with this group, that is not the first time you have brought up examples of this self-centered belief of theirs..

 

They probably wont fire you because without you that unit will cave in on itself, but since I don't think a few years of you "helping out" is going to help this group take control of their own pack, and it will either cave in this year or 2 years from now, because the mentality of "You do it all", will not change.. I don't really know why you don't just let it happen now..

 

After all you personally are getting no joy out of this.. You are gritting your teeth and trying to will the years of forced service to go by quickly..

[Basementdweller]

The expectations for the day were very clearly set.....An event flyer was giving to each youth with the car kit at the christmas party, and again at the January Pack meeting and again at the car building clinic that were held every other saturday and Wednsday since January 1st.

 

Asking for snacks and help for set up and tear down help, the derby rules and schedule.

 

 

In a nutshell, this is the feeder Pack for one of the oldest Troops in our district....the troop had withered to 4 boys, we have it back up 20 and the Pack went from 6 to 45 active youth and a sibs den. My first year we crossed zero into the troop, last year 3 this year 10.

 

My reason for staying is entirely to save the troop.

[Lisabob]

I hate to say this, but that's not a good enough reason to stay. Find another way to "save the troop." Recruit non-cub scouts. Do something else, anything else.

 

I have to agree with moose, you clearly, strongly, dislike being involved with this cub pack. I can't help but think that vibe comes through loud & clear to people in the cub pack, too. If you (as CM) aren't having fun, ain't nobody else in the pack gonna have fun, either.

 

I am not blaming you; some of the problems you've described would make me hate it, too. While your service & sacrifice are admirable, at the same time, you can't expect to succeed in rebuilding a stable pack that will continue on without you in the future, by following down this road. And I assume that's the goal, right? A stable pack that continues on without you and keeps supporting the troop?

 

As for this latest incident w/ the parent & (former?) den leader, it really is a shame. I hope the DL will decide to come back, and I hope she *does* press charges. If some jerk slapped me in the face, I'd be doing so in a heart beat.

 

But aside from all that, the pack needs a plan for how it will build up a stronger leadership core, and you need to not be the keystone in that leadership core. Since you are meeting with the COR and IH tomorrow anyway, maybe that needs to be the focus of your discussion (from your end, anyway).

 

Again, sorry that you have to deal with all this drama. As somebody who has been through almost this exact situation I know how draining it can be. (And oh yeah, I used to get calls from a crazy parent too, screaming & ranting at me about how I wasn't treating her little darlings right. She finally laid off a bit when the choice was starkly put: either shut up, or leave. Her kids turned out to be horrid bullies who didn't fall far from the tree & continue to make lots of other people's lives miserable both in and out of scouting.)

 

 

 

 

[Basementdweller]

fair enough assessment....Lisa

 

 

 

 

[packsaddle]

Basementdweller, while I have never had to endure the situation in the title of this thread, I stuck with it (in my case it was to save the pack) when things were dark and looking darker. I succeeded and then stayed on for a couple of years after my son moved on to the troop. Once I had the pack in a stable situation, I moved on to the troop as well. I can't second-guess my decision to pour personal time into other persons' boys. I did it and that's that. And like I have written numerous times, I really like the cub scouts.

(I do remember my old scoutmaster from back in the '60s commenting to my father that he had sometimes left his wife in tears in order to keep the troop going. That memory has really stuck with me.)

 

There is no one who can make your decision any better than you can. My only advice is once the decision is made, embrace it and don't look back (as I noted in the spun thread). Life is short and your family needs you more than others do. Don't sweat the small stuff and don't let the turkeys get you down (slogans from a couple of coffee cups will have to do for philosophy today, LOL).

[sherminator505]

"Real jerks can be still stink at 301 feet..."

 

ROTFLOL and still can't breathe normally...

[hicountry]

Basementdweller, as long as you continue this you not only make yourself miserable but you are enabling the rude, selfish, self centered behavior of the parents and other leaders you have described in this and other threads. The benefit of what you do for the boys is far outweighed by the abuse, lack of help, demands and total BS you described. If you leave it is highly doubtfull the remaining leaders or parents will pick up the ball, things will likely collapse but that is on them, not you.

 

I read what you say about cross overs, be careful what you wish for. In an effort to increase scouts in the troop would you also be bringing on some of the problem parents ?

 

When I first took over my unit I tried to get the scout numbers up (from about 2 dozen to about 3 dozen). I learned that 20-24 involved boys with decent parents was a better formula than 3 dozen which included some troublemaker scouts and paents, leaders who didn't do the job and the deadwood scouts.

 

Once I got the numbers down with the gradual elimination of the problem folks and deadwood I could also keep only the leaders who dependably did their jobs. Our troop ran much better by all measures, boys were enthusiastic, learned more, did more and things became more boy led. Be careful of the desire to feed the troops numbers at the expense of inheriting the problem people all over again.

 

We are fed by 2 area packs, one of these packs is lacking in communication and leadership but also had a real miscreant parent who was a leader in the pack. This individual has been stirring up trouble in the community and pack, there were 12 Webelos 2 to cross over, 11 of them were gone before christmas, quit because of this problem parent. Only one remaining was him and his kid who we advised to try another troop last month when they wanted to join us. I learned the hard way, now that the unit is working well we don't need to relearn the same lesson a second time.

 

Put your energies in the troop. I'm sure the idiots and fools you have described will blame you but their anger lies in the fact they deep down know they are to blame. When things collapse and you are not there to fix it all the while running the show and serving as a dartboard for their compliants they will resent it. They made theri bed, now is time they sleep in it. You have earned and deserve better, time to move on before your entire view of scouting is poisoned by the experiences of this caustic bunch.