Applying Scout Law Outside of Scouting

[Engineer61]

I've always supposed that the Scout Law was intended to apply as much outside the confines Scouting as it does inside them. Perhaps a bad assumption in my case.

 

Scout's behavior is taking a turn to the dark side...to the point where I'm almost ready to stand up ask, "What part of the Scout Law that you recite every week do you not comprehend?"

 

Even has the 15 year-old son rolling his eyes...

 

How do you get them to apply it? I mean, that is the point of having the Law, right?

[Lisabob]

we call it parenting.

 

 

(sorry, I know that sounds snide. seriously, if every kid totally "got it" and applied it, there would probably be something wrong with them! It is pretty normal for kids to not see the application, or to think in very black & white terms, as in "that's scouts, this isn't." With guidance, love, boundaries, and a lot of patience, they usually come around eventually. Some seem to take longer. Try to resist the urge to throttle them. )

[Oak Tree]

You were hoping for a magic bullet? Just emphasize the law and all of sudden they'll follow it?

 

Give them guidance and understanding and continuous positive reinforcement of good behaviors (with some incentives that actually matter to them). Invest time. Do your best as a parent or leader, and still things won't always work out in the end. There are times when very opposite kids come out of the same family.

 

I don't think the law is to be used as a club to get people to obey, no. I think of the law as aspirational.

[RememberSchiff]

I ask but mostly indirect, focused questions and sometimes I get a more than a one word answer and maybe some head gears turn.

 

"Did you have a situation today where you were not sure what do?"

 

"Anything happen today that you knew right away what to do when others stumble? Were others looking to you for answers(leadership)?"

 

"Did you disagree with someone today? What was it about?"

 

"Were you alone in any decisions today?"

 

"Anyone accuse you of acting like a Boy Scout? What was that like?"

 

More so today, there is a misunderstanding that a scout is only expected to be a scout when in uniform or at an official scout activity, that leadership only counts if it is a POR in the troop, and the only scouting on the great outside is the occasional service project, sort of the 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas' mentality.

 

I disagree.

 

My $0.01 for pre-coffee rambling

 

[Engineer61]

I'll freely admit that my OP was more of a vent...mixed in with a thread of hope that someone had a magic bullet.

 

Mom and I are to the point where we might consider re-writing the Scout Law to display to him his actual behavior...there were a number of words and combination of words that came to mind...

 

Trying to maintain humor...it's baseball season after all...

 

[resqman]

Teenagers have a 15 minutes event horizon. If it is happening or going to happen more than 15 minutes into the future, it does not exist. They will deal with it when it happens.

 

The Scout Law is a set of guidelines to help them make decisions. Doesn't always come to the forefront of a teenagers mind.

 

I was a scout as a lad from about age 9 to 18. I have been a leader for the past 8 years. I raised my sons using the Scout Law, they just didn't know it. We did scout stuff and use scout methods long before they joined scouting. Family rules follow Totn' Chip rules. My sons were using axes, knifes and saws before they joined cub scouts. When they had to earn their whittln chip and totn chip, they wondered what the fuss was all about. That was the only way they knew how to use those tools.

 

One heads to college in the fall and the other is a freshman in high school. They do stupid kid stuff. It is part of being a kid. But I catch them thinking and using the Scout Law more often than not. They don't label it the scout law in their mind, it is just the way our family lives.

 

It is probably harder for those scout boys whose families don't also life by the Scout Law.

[evmori]

Well, everyday life includes Scouting but isn't limited to Scouting.

 

I love your answer Lisa!

[Lisabob]

Through scouting, I have come to realize that I'm really good with kids under the age of 12, and pretty good with the ones over the age of 16. The ones in the middle? Not my favorite age group to deal with. Much temptation to throttle.

 

Eng: don't use the Scout Oath & Law as bludgeons. He'll just come to associate scouting with being yelled at/grumped on , and that's not likely to help.

[qwazse]

Yes. It does apply outside of scouting. In fact there's no point in putting it to memory if you're only going to work it one hour a week and maybe a couple of days a month.

 

That makes it hard, but when my son said the second term of college was going to be hard, I replied "We ain't paying for easy." Same thing here. That said, they know the Scout Law and when they have stepped beyond it. No need to remind them of it.

 

So, here's a few lines that I thought nothing of at the time, but they turned out to have some worth to the kid ...

"Don't cuss."

"Done wrong? Make it right?"

"No point in arguing with me. Ask God what he thinks of you skipping church tomorrow."

"I did not write the rules."

"How is your teenage anxt any concern of mine?"

"Settling for second best, are we?"

 

Obviously underlying all of this is the knowledge that you're there for the kid. Don't be so proud as to not apologise when you do something wrong. Be bold and talk to his friends about life and such. If invited to a young lady's birthday party, make sure he brings flowers (save the gag cards for the guys). In other words, most youth will respond to that oath and law stuff after a few years of seeng their folks display it -- even if it's never said out loud.

[Horizon]

I have been known to ask my boys, "Sooo, how many points of the Scout Law do you think you just violated?"

[OwntheNight]

I feel your pain Brutha!

 

My 12 YO going on 25 has my wife and I at our wits end. But hey, what do I know? I'm the mean old parent who doesn't get what he's going through, and never will! As many times as I tell him that I was 12 once also, and I did almost the exact same things he's doing now. If he doesn't believe me, I tell him to go talk to his grandmother to get the scoop on ol' Dad. Still hasn't bitten on that one yet.

 

You do the best that you can do, with what you've got! He may not hear the message you are sending, but if that message is the same from everybody around him, eventually it sinks in...So I've been told I can't tell you how many times I've apologized to my Mom for my behavior as a kid, after I had kids myself. If you do find that magic bullet, please let us know, I'm still searching for it!

[momof2cubs]

I know that what I am about to say isn't strictly what this thread is about, but I think it may apply to the "scout law outside of scouting" theme.

 

Today, I chaperoned a school field trip to our Botanical Gardens with my 2nd grader (God help me). After the guided tour, we were given free time to walk around and we separated into small groups. I had 3 boys and 3 girls of which only my son is a scout. They were running, jumping, whatever, as you might expect. They came across a caterpillar. One boy says, "Can I stomp on it?". Instinctively, I said: "You may NOT, we leave NO TRACE!" My sons says, Mom, he's not in scouts!! So of course, as all of you would have done, I launched into a 3 minute talk about how the principles of LNT should apply to everyone in any situation, respecting other life forms in their habitat, blah, blah, blah. And they listened! And they understood! And they did not stomp on the caterpillar.

 

So moral of the story, of course you can apply scouting laws to every day life situations. Even with non-scouts!

[Eamonn]

Kinda think that I might get a little messed up on this one.

 

Most of us adults are willing to stand up and stick out our chests while claiming that we do live (Apply) the oath and law in our daily lives.

This might be true?

But most of us are so engaged in whatever it is we are doing that there really isn't time to be conscious of what drives us to do it.

Kinda like being at work.The real reason most of us go to work is to get paid, but while we are doing our job we don't dwell on how much we are earning. We just go about doing what needs to be done and give it our best shot. There are times when we do go that extra mile, maybe because it's part of our make up that we always go the extra mile, sometimes because we enjoy that specific task, maybe because we want to please the person who asked us to do it? Sometimes we only do what is needed. This might be because we don't enjoy that task? Or we have an issue with who asked us to do it? Or maybe it's just the mood we are in at the time?

Young children and young adults have a harder time than adults have with living up to expectations.

Back when I was a little fellow it seems to me that most adults just wanted to impose their will upon me and there were consequences in place for when these expectations were not met. "Be a good boy and you get ice cream". "Be a bad boy and you go to bed early." For the most part this rule of consequence worked. Parents and other adults got the outcome that they required.

There really wasn't any need for the young person to understand why he was doing what he'd been asked to do or in fact understand anything. He knew that by either doing it or not doing it, there was at the end of it some type of consequence. Be it good or bad.

Rats and mice can be trained this way.

 

Young children and young adults still growing, still in the developmental stage. While there are times when blind obedience is needed and is required. (I'm thinking about situations where not following the rule might harm the person not following the rule.) We as parents and as youth leaders should be thinking long term about the future development of the children we work with.

We need to have some idea of the goals that we have for our children and be willing to share these goals with the child.

Most of us want our kids to grow up to be happy, caring, loving individuals who can find a job in which they will be happy.

The more the child understands the goals and is given ownership of them, the ore he is going to be willing to buy into them.

 

I think that it is wrong to just take the Scout Law as a stand alone topic.

It needs to be taken with the Scout Oath, so it is always the Oath and Law.

The Scout Law by itself is set in stone, has no wriggle room and becomes almost impossible to live with. But when we add the Oath alongside it we see that the bar is set at "To do my best.."

This "To do my best" leaves the door open for discussion. Which the Scout Law doesn't.

Much as we might like the idea the expectation that "A Scout is.." All them fine things all the time is just unrealistic.

Taken together the Oath an Law are a work in progress. A work that lasts a lifetime.

None of us like to be nagged at or have someone keep on at us.

Most teenagers really get upset when they feel that someone is always on their back and this situation is worsened when they might not understand the reasoning behind it all or feel that the reason has or is of no value to them.

I can and do see how a Lad who is being bashed over the head all the time with "Your supposed to be a Scout but you do..." Will soon get fed up with it all and the easy way out? Is to just quit being a Scout! At least that would take away part of the stuff that is causing him pain.

Rather than stressing the Scout Oath and Law, with my kid I tried to give him tools that would make things not as hard.

We used the STAR for a number of years:

Stop

Think

Act

Reflect.

 

I'm not sure how things go in other homes? But in ours, HWMBO mostly played the "Bad Cop". I think in part because OJ was more lightly to go to her first and ask or request something.

At times they would argue like nobodies business.

She would get mad and upset very often bring up past sins and not dealing with whatever the situation at hand was and then when she got mad enough she passed him on to me.

I'm very lazy. I really can't be bothered with fighting or allowing myself to become upset.

I also tend at times to not be as flexible as maybe I should or could be. He knew and knows that when I say no or something that that's the way it is.

Now he is older (going on 23) He is far closer to his mother than he is with me. He seems happy to go to her and share things with her, than me.

I do sometimes resent this, but am willing to accept that this is the way it is.

Maybe if we'd had a daughter? Things might be different.

Ea.

 

 

[scoutmaster52]

I try to remind the Scouts that the Scout Law says "A Scout Is", not A Scout is only when in uniform or a Scout is sometimes when he feels like like it. A say this often and like most things we teach hope it hits home.