Scoutmaster Podcast 207

I'm Pat Lays and I'm a Scoutmaster with troop number 1093 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like us, And now it's your Scoutmaster.

Well, if you keep up with all the important news, you know that yesterday, high atop gobbler's knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, That's right- February 2nd, Groundhog Day, The celebrated Groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil left his bro, saw his shadow and in so doing he predicted six more weeks of winter. I know that's a very exciting news for all of us And it may interest you and your Scouts to know this little bit of nature lore about the Groundhog. Groundhog has more hair on one side than on the other. Yeah, Not a lot of people understand this. Not a lot of people know this.

Do you know which side has more hair than the other? The outside, Of course. Oh, come on, It's seasonal, It's topical. Oh, it's pretty bad joke. This is podcast number 207..

Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. First things first. Let's take a glance in the old mailbag here. It's been a little quiet this past week, but I know everybody was busily making their Groundhog Day preparations and things like that.

It's a big holiday And so I wouldn't expect you to be in touch all that much. Over the past week I did hear from Tom in response to an article we posted last week about seasoning cast iron And he said that was very good timing. I've got a rusty Dutch oven that needs to be re-seasoned. Thanks for sharing.

I think just about everybody within the sound of my voice either has or knows someone who has a rusty Dutch oven that needs to be re-seasoned, Tom, So I'm glad to be of assistance. PA Bill wrote in about the same article. I would note that many of the new cast iron pans are made with very rough castings. I have a pan that's been in use for 40 years. It's the best non-stick pan I've ever used. What I've done with some of the newer rough surface pans that are allegedly pre-seasoned is sand the surface, smooth and re-season the pan.

I love my cast iron cookware. I do too.

I think probably 40 years ago the one that you have- that's really great now- may have been just as rough as the ones that are being produced today. It's just had 40 years to wear down. But sanding down that surface, that sounds like a pretty good idea.

Thanks, Bill, for being in touch and thanks for the hint there, Also on the blog this week we posted a notice about a BSA publication that I think you'll find very helpful. It's a guide that defines the way an Eagle project works from the perspective of the benefiting organization. It's a great one-page document that you can hand to an Eagle Scout, who can then, in turn, share it with the organization that's going to benefit from this project. It's great information. It tells the organization a little bit of background about the project itself and how the approval process works and what's going to be expected of them, Something that, if you have some Scouts working on Eagle, is a resource that you want to make sure to get your hands on Now.

Within the past couple of weeks, we have launched the newly redesigned ScoutMasterCGcom just to kind of streamline some of the features and to add a few more. Enoch Hysie has written two series of articles that are aimed at youth leaders or Scouts who aspire to be youth leaders.

The first three-part series published a couple of weeks ago and that one deals with getting a life for your patrol, And then the series that published this past week is three parts about being a leader, And I really value Enoch's writing and his perspective. He's a young man who has recently been a youth leader.

So what I need you to do is make sure to look up those articles at ScoutMasterCGcom- You'll see them under the heading of Green Bar Life- and share those with your youth leaders And then, if they seem to respond to them, encourage them to register for our youth leader forum, which is our Green Bar Life forum, And join in the discussion along with Enoch and the other youth leaders who join up. I think it'd be very useful for them. It's taken a little while to get that started.

Now we also have a forum for Scouters, And that one has also taken a little bit of time to get off the ground. A number of people have signed on to participate in the forum.

You know, go ahead, post a topic. I put a few starter ones out there to see if I could draw a little bit of interest in discussion around them. If you have a question or a comment or you want to share some useful bit of scouting know-how, feel free. Go to right there to ScoutMasterCGcom, Follow the Participate link at the top of the page And you will find the Scouter forum and the Green Bar Life forum.

Now, as you heard at the top of the podcast, all of this is made possible by ScoutMasterCGcom backers. If you're a regular listener and reader and what we're offering has helped you, you can help keep things up and running by becoming a ScoutMasterCGcom backer. The funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the podcast and the blog and everything else that we do, And it will keep them freely accessible to Scouters all over the world.

I want to make sure to thank Doug Marks and Bill Daniel, both who have signed on to be backers within the past week. Thanks very, very much. That support is not only important, it's also very, very meaningful. I really do appreciate it.

So in this podcast, in Scout MasterChip in seven minutes or less, we're going to do the first part of a two-part series on responding to difficult behavior in Scouts, And then I have an email question to answer about service projects That's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. Let's get started, shall we Scout MasterChip in seven minutes or less.

So this is the first of a two-part series in which we answer the question: how do we respond to difficult behavior in our Scouts? I think a good way to begin to answer the question. We're going to look at four basic kinds of difficult behavior.

The first one that comes to mind when Scouts seem to be lost, You know exactly what I'm talking about. This is kind of the Sunday morning syndrome on a camping trip. They just don't seem to be aware of what's happening around them and they're kind of walking underwater. They're not getting anything done, They can be distracted and things can be a little chaotic. This is almost never intentional misbehavior.

It's just kind of aggravating to adults when Scouts don't seem to comprehend the world around them and get with the program, if you know what I mean. Number two: sometimes Scouts unknowingly misbehave. They may not be aware of the rules or the right way to do things and they just charge ahead in all their energy and ignorance and they cause difficulties for us. The third type of difficult behavior is what we would call deliberate misbehavior. This is when Scouts are aware of the rules or the right way to do things and they charge ahead in all their energy and exuberance and deliberately do something they know they shouldn't do.

And then the fourth kind, which is thankfully the rarest kind, is: every once in a while a Scout will do something that is just so unaccountably foolish and reckless. I find myself asking why would such an intelligent kid do something so stupid And sometimes they will behave in ways that have some pretty serious consequences attached to them. We've got those four kinds of behavior. There's just that kind of disaffected, I don't know what's going on around me, kind of chaotic or lazy behavior. There's that energetic, unknowing misbehavior, when they don't really know the right thing to do because nobody's really told them or they never got it. There's deliberate misbehavior, which is a little more problematic.

And then there is this unaccountably crazy, foolish, reckless, sometimes very serious misbehavior that we see in our Scouts. The next step is trying to understand why they act this way, and this is where you're going to have to stick with me for a little bit, because I want to examine this from just a very neutral standpoint.

The first thing I see that causes some misbehavior is physical. Scouts need a lot of sleep, They need plenty of food and they need plenty of water.

If we're out camping or we're doing a week at summer camp or a high adventure trip or even, you know, just an evening meeting that lasts a couple of hours, I think sometimes we discount the effect these rather simple physical things can have on our Scouts If they didn't get a lot of sleep, if they haven't eaten recently, if they haven't had a drink of water recently. That's a lot of times when they end up in that kind of unaware of what's happening around them kind of lazy, chaotic behavior, and sometimes it gets fixed when they have a chance to take a nap or have a snack or get a drink of water. Those would be among the first things I would encourage Scouts to do if I see that kind of behavior in them. If you're like me and you're that far away from having been a teenager, if you're that old, you don't remember necessarily how dramatically things like that affected your behavior. The second cause of misbehavior that I see commonly I would say is kind of mental. The first one is physical.

The next one is this mental process, which is a process of growth where Scouts want expectations and boundaries so they go looking for them. Sometimes the way they find them is by misbehaving. They want expectations and boundaries. They don't necessarily consciously understand that that's what they want, but that's really what they're looking for sometimes when they misbehave. The third kind is I would identify as something more than mental and something more than physical. It kind of is in the spiritual realm of things.

Spiritually, Scouts need an internal standard of behavior that guides their actions, and developing that internal standard is a key aim of our work as Scouts, and you're going to understand more about that as we go through this two-part series and we talk about how to develop that internal standard. If that internal standard isn't well developed or if they're not paying attention to it, a lot of times that results in some kind of difficult behavior. Even when Scouts deliberately misbehave, understand that they are likely looking for boundaries. They're asking you if you care enough about them to give them some expectations and some boundaries. Don't be shocked or disappointed when they do this, because it's a pretty natural thing. If you've raised children, you've seen this.

Their inquisitiveness about who they are and how they relate to the rest of the world and how far they can assert their independence and influence is usually at least a factor in difficult behavior. Our job is to point out the boundary with as much kindness and understanding as we can muster. Sometimes that sort of difficult behavior has consequences, but put aside consequences and punishment, because we're going to talk about that later.

How about that fourth kind of difficult behavior we talked about when Scouts do something that is just incredibly risky or dangerous or has very serious consequences attached to it. First off, I think it's good for us to understand that, no matter how many times we've heard it repeated, young people don't perceive themselves to be invulnerable. That's not why they do crazy, mixed up, risky things. Research actually reveals that young people make poor choices about risky behavior because they haven't developed that part of the brain that provides for a working understanding of the good and bad consequences of a given action. Young people sometimes choose poorly because they tend to weigh benefits more heavily than risks.

Here's an example: if we go hiking on a steep trail, sometimes we're climbing switchbacks- right that instead of going straight uphill, kind of gradually climb up and then switch back, and gradually climb up and then switch back. That's why they call them what switchbacks. Some Scouts are going to look at switchbacks as an impediment to getting to where they want to be as quickly as possible, and they may try just kind of bushwhacking a trail straight uphill, regardless of the switchbacks.

Now, as an experienced hiker, I understand that bushwhacking straight uphill is much, much more difficult and it's going to take a lot more time and energy than following the switchbacks on the trail. And do you know how? I know that the same way that you do. At one point in your life as a hiker. You said: I've had enough of this going back and forth. I'm going straight up, and you do that a couple of times and you find out that it's a very bad idea indeed.

That's how we know. We have experience that tells us- and sometimes what Scouts need is experience that tells them- that this is a bad idea.

Now, sometimes they can gain that experience without any risk or doing any damage to anything, and that's a great experience for them to be able to have within scouting, especially with the oversight of an understanding, experienced scouter helping to correct them. What's important about this little story is is, to a young person, to a scout, the benefits of getting to where they want to be quicker outweighs the benefits of following the trail as they should. Sometimes, poor choices are based in the fact that young people tend to weigh benefits more heavily than risks or consequences.

The benefit of their action becomes so heavily weighted in their mind that it outweighs the right thing to do, and that's why they end up behaving in a difficult manner. Scouts are also much more motivated by the promise of this type of reward.

You know, getting to where I want to be as quickly as possible. In this instance, then they're discouraged by the threat of punishment. They don't sort out mixed signals very well. Young people are actively looking for experiences that create intense feelings and thrills and sensations and excitement and novelty, and they tend to react more strongly to emotional situations. The kind of rewards they get from the admiration and notoriety that their peers give them if they do something will almost always outweigh good judgment, and no matter how far you are away you are from being a teenager, you will remember how important the opinion of your peers was to you, and it may have caused you to behave in a difficult manner. I know that I did, and I'm going to bet my bottom dollar that there was at least a couple instances where you were growing up that you did.

Now we've probably all sat down with a young person who's done something incredibly reckless or stupid and found that they're at a loss to tell us exactly what was going on, what happened and how they made that choice. Their rational selves were somehow outsmarted by something they can't really lay their finger on and they feel kind of helpless and it can be a kind of a scary feeling, and the reason for that just could be this inability to weigh benefits against consequences.

If we accept that this kind of poor decision-making and the difficult behavior that results from it is a natural part of a larger developmental process, we can begin to understand that our scouts aren't simply choosing to act poorly out of wilfulness or anger or something like that- even though they may- but that these choices are based on the fact that they just aren't fully cooked yet. They haven't developed the full capacity to process information in a way that leads to better decisions, and that's why we're there: to help them process this stuff, to help them figure it out and to go through this massive developmental process that we all go through as people in a safe way with a good result.

Now, if this is so, we can treat bad decisions not as a moral or ethical failure. In the same way we don't treat falling off a bike as a moral or ethical failure.

We can't hold people accountable for skills they don't possess. This is not to say that we're going to protect our scouts from all the consequences of bad decision-making, because consequences are part of that learning process too.

So, now that we understand a little bit about the source of difficult behavior, in the next installment in this two-part series on next week's podcast, we'll discuss how we can help our scouts avoid these kind of risky, difficult situations and how we react to this difficult behavior. Oh, i'm in love with the man who loves to camp. He camps when it's sunny. He camps when it's damp. All he needs is a tent, a sleeping roll, a package of hot dogs and a sack of charcoal. He camps in the desert.

He camps in the snow. He says, baby, come with me. He camps in the snow. Ride me a letter, send it by name

Email. That is, folks, and here's an answer to one of your emails. I had this question from a listener just wondering if you could say a few words about service hours. As a Scoutmaster, i often am faced with the question about what qualifies as service time and what doesn't, and i'm not quite sure of the right answer.

Is there anything you can tell me that might help me figure this one out? Well, that's an excellent question.

A couple of decades ago, when i was serving on camp staff, i remember very clearly trying to keep up with our camp directors who walked around camp. He walked at a pretty good clip to begin with, but he never passed a piece of trash without stooping down to pick it up. He did it without pausing. It was just a natural part of his movements and he did it without drawing any notice to himself. If you were walking along talking to him, he would keep on talking. He would lean over, scoop up that little piece of trash and keep moving.

It was just a natural part of who he was. Now, in our figurative walk through scouting, we serve in the same way. We serve without pausing, without drawing any attention to ourselves. It's really just a natural part of scouting.

Now, this is not to say that service to others can't or shouldn't also be intentional time that we focus on like a project. It's just saying that we shouldn't look at service as something out of the ordinary or something that is only done during a project. Service to others really isn't just a project.

We want to develop scouts with a strong sense of serving all the communities that are involved in, that's, their family, their school, their church, their town, their state, their nation and you know, ultimately, the world. Service is a way of life for scouts, not a special part of our activities set aside to fulfill a requirement.

Now, that being said, there are requirements for service and we ought to understand what these are. And we're going to deal with the three requirements in second class, star and life rank.

So let's read those real quick. Second class rank says: participate in an approved minimum of one hour service project. Star says: while a first class scout, take part in service projects totaling at least six hours of work.

Now, these projects must be approved by your Scoutmaster. Life says exactly the same thing, but it says: while a star scout, take part in service projects totaling is six hours of work and approved by your Scoutmaster. These are very generalized requirements. They're simple and open-ended for a very good reason: they have to be surmountable challenges for every scout, no matter where he lives, no matter what his family situation, no matter what his schedule. At first, when most of us encounter this kind of open-ended general requirement, we start to look for definitions. The definitions don't exist outside of the requirement.

They're right there, but the requirements are so simple that they don't quite seem right to us. So we're left with a couple of options. We there accept the simple answer that is supplied by the requirement itself, where we come up with a set of definitions and rules that provide a complex and, to a lot of us more satisfying answer.

So let's parse the brief statements in these requirements for the simple answers that they contain. All three say participate or take part in. That's simple right. This is something that a scout does as a participant. He doesn't have to lead or plan the projects that he participates in. All three mentioned service projects.

There's no modification of the term service project to indicate it must be a certain type of project or who benefits from the project. All three give them minimum number of hours that must be completed in second class, one hour in star in life, six hours, and that's pretty simple, isn't it? And they are all minimum hours. All three require that the Scoutmaster approve the project before they are started.

Now, why is that? Well, we don't want scouts participating in activities that may be unsafe, like a roadside cleanup with no safety considerations or something like that. We don't want them participating in things that are inappropriate. I can't really imagine an inappropriate service project. I imagine if i sat around and thought about i might be able to come up with one.

So we're asked to vet the project before they're started. I have several standing approvals for projects. Any participation in eagle project, because that's already been through an approval process, a service role at school or church or a family organized project, i'll be happy to approve those. In some cases i would even approve them retroactively. In other words, the scouts already done them. They come to me and they say i did this.

Would that apply for this? And if i can't see any compelling reason to say no, i say yes. If we accept these requirements at simple face value, we see that they can be fulfilled in a variety of ways. The only real restriction to note here we're not allowed to modify, and that is to add or to take away from any requirement. It's understood that that the service being rendered benefits others. These others may be family or specific groups or individuals.

Organizations are just the general public. The service can be rendered as an organized project, like an eagle project or part of a regular commitment, like being an altar server or an usher at church or something that a scout comes up with, like picking up trash in his neighborhood.

Perhaps we want our scouts to serve to benefit the community throughout their lives, and the really kind of very minimal service requirements for these ranks are a good start. We want this to be simple and rewarding, not overlaid with a bunch of rules and regulations that make them difficult.

So when a scout asks me what he can do for a service project, i kind of turn the question back on him and ask him what he has in mind. Well, he might think about it, for many says: how about if i take out the trash once a week at home? At that point i would ask him what the difference is between a service project and kind of an ongoing familial responsibility like household chores. I would ask him if their mom or dad gets credit for doing a service project whenever they go to the grocery store, they cook dinner.

You know, these are just things that are expected of you as a member of a family. So we eventually arrive at the conclusion that their service to others should be something above and beyond normal responsibilities.

And usually we arrive at an answer pretty quickly, because if i ask what a boy does at school, in the broader community or at his church, we can usually find something that would work for a service project. Now there are a number of urban legends about service projects and things that people have unfortunately done to modify the very simple service projects for second class, star and life, and i think that these misunderstandings stem from some of the rules for eagle projects.

Now, in eagle projects the project beneficiary can't be a scout camp. Now, that's true for eagle projects, but there's no such stricture implied for the other service hours that a scout needs. He could certainly participate in a project for the scout camp outside of his normal responsibilities. When it concerns the new go project, the project has to be planned and carried out by the scout, but there is no planning requirement in the second class, star or life service projects.

And we need to also remember that all the service hours don't have to be devoted to one project. They can be accumulated over several service opportunities.

So when it comes to what should i approve as a service project, it's very simple: read the requirements. Service to others should be something that is as common in our scouts lives as going camping or coming to a meeting, and it shouldn't be difficult to find something that they are doing or would like to do that would qualify as service to others for the ranks of second class, star and life.