Scoutmaster Podcast 252

I'm Ray Britton and I'm the Scoutmaster with Troop 42 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me. Keep up the good work, Clark.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, The newest thing coming out right now: the cutting edge. Have you seen these yet? I'm talking about the invisible scout patch. No, I've seen them and they're really not much to look at.

Hey, this is podcast number 252.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag. Wow, we got a few here. Let's see.

Tony Wilson is the Scoutmaster of Troop 86 in Panoli, California. He said I wanted to take a minute and say thank you. I'm the new Scoutmaster of my twin son's troop. I started looking into your app and Facebook excerpts on a regular basis And I'm finding a lot of helpful items and ideas.

I also got a copy of your new book, and that would be so far, so good. If you don't have the book yet, folks, it's easy to get. It's on Amazon and you can also get it through the website at scoutmastercgcom. After a rough day, I sat back with the book. I read it from cover to cover and I really enjoyed it. It makes me feel better about being the Scoutmaster and the direction of our troop.

I already started trying some of the things mentioned in the first few chapters that I read on the web this past fall. Thank you for your insight into this new adventure in my life and the scouting careers of all the Scouts in Troop 86..

Well, thank you, Tony. Thanks for getting in touch. I'm glad you're finding what we're doing useful. I heard from Korra who said: I'm one of those crazy people who listen to your podcast when I am working. Quote unquote, basically over and over again in the background. Thank you for all you do.

Hey, thank you, Korra. Get back to work now, okay? William Colling-Bankston is the Scoutmaster of Troop 187 in Fairfax, Virginia. He said I recently started listening to the podcast and I really appreciate your work. You've convinced me how important it is to be thoroughly familiar with the guides to advancement, safe scouting, awards and insignia, et cetera.

Do you know if there are any audio versions of these guides available? Again, thanks for your efforts. I know our unit is providing a better program because of resources like scoutmastercgcom.

Well, thank you, William. I really don't know of an audio version of those guides.

I think an audio version may be kind of difficult to listen to. What you want is: you want the guide in a PDF version or an electronic version on your mobile device so that you can get right into it and you can search it and you can find the information that you want quickly. That's what I would suggest, better than an audio version.

I think Eric Ball is the Scoutmaster for the 7th Markham Scouts in Ontario, Canada, And he said: I just learned about your site this fall via posters made from several of your infographics posted on the mess hall wall of our fall camp. I've added your podcast to my daily commute and I'm gradually working my way backwards through them.

Well, thank you so much, Eric. I knew it was worth time making those infographics.

How about that? We had a couple of live chats this past week. If you keep an eye on the Facebook feed and the Twitter feed, you will see notices when there's a live chat going on at scoutmastercgcom. Usually it's a weekday morning And we had a number of folks check in. Thank you, Dale and John and Dennis and George and Kendall and Steve and Randy and Dave for checking in with me this week. Like I said, keep an eye on the Facebook feed and the Twitter feed for when we'll be on with a live chat at scoutmastercgcom.

Let me take a moment to say this: If you're a regular reader and listener and the resources we've created are helping you, you can return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing all of the stuff that we publish, keeping those resources accessible to scouts all over the world. It's easy to do. All you have to do is go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose any level of support, and some of those levels entitle you to premiums like autographed copies of my books.

So let me take a moment to personally thank Brad Ayers, Greg Kennedy and Jim Moore, who all became backers since our last podcast. Go to scoutmastercgcom and become a backer this week, and I'll be sure to thank you during our next podcast.

Well, this week I have email questions to answer. I have one, two, three, four of them, and that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started. Shall we

E-mail? That is, folks, And here's an answer to one of your e-mails. We're going to begin with an e-mail in which I will hold the sender anonymous and the reason will be clear as soon as I get started here. An issue surfaced in my troop and it's explained in this e-mail I received from a parent. Our son has started counseling. His teachers recommended this because they're worried about his anxiety levels.

They've also recommended he needed additional help with a couple of other things. So he already feels a little bit like the world is conspiring against him. He's having an issue with scouts. He's very offended by the language used by some of the scouts in the troop. To be fair, it probably isn't anything he hasn't heard coming out of my mouth on many occasions, but coming from his peers it's disturbing him. He's also feeling a little ostracized and left out because he doesn't join in with the bad language and therefore he's on the outside looking in.

I think the main thing is that he said that because of this this is no longer fun anymore. He's talked about changing troops and I'm not sure that would be the answer. I can't say one troop would be better at suppressing language than the other. I know what I heard when I was a scout. When my wife asked me if I ever felt ostracized by my Boy Scout troop, I replied with a resounding yes.

So that was the message from the parent, and the person who sent me this question went on to say: should the conference be helpful? Should adults be more involved in disciplining inappropriate behavior, even if we don't witness it?

Are we letting the inmates run the asylum? I'm at a loss right now and I could use some advice. If you have any thoughts, I would appreciate you sharing them. I'm concerned about the use of foul language in my troop, but I'm not sure to the extent of it. I'm not sure about the anxiety issue. Perhaps this scout is a special case.

We've been very successful in having a youth-led experience and the scouting question is a fairly new scout who joined last spring. Well, let's see if we can sort this out a little bit. Most of the time, if one scout is complaining about the behavior of other scouts and nobody else seems to be bothered about it, then the likelihood that it has more to do with the scout or the parent who's complaining than the seriousness of the problem.

Now, naturally, I would never say that foul language is good, but it's almost always not an absolute serious problem. You know, while I'm saying that it's not often a serious problem, it's a problem and it should be addressed- and I should be addressed directly and I would make it the subject of a Scoutmaster minute. I would talk to my patrol leader's counsel about it.

I would say that this is a concern that we need to deal with and you guys need to work on your observance of the Scout Oath and Law as far as these matters are concerned. I wouldn't necessarily go about dictating this to them as much as encouraging them to think about it and to empathize with people who might be offended by that kind of language and whether or not they think that is proper in the context of what they're doing as scouts. Get them thinking, Get them working on it, Get them empathizing with one another, Get them thinking about the Scout Oath and Law. It's actually a very good opportunity to do just that and that's the way we work with these types of issues in a scout troop. The scout you're talking about sounds very familiar to me. He's a little fragile, He's a little frightened, He's younger, He's looking for some reassurance and for some reason the foul language is something he's perseverating on.

But this may be due to the other anxieties that he's experiencing, and it can get very complicated If he doesn't make friends easily and he has feelings of ostracism. He's finding things difficult Now. This won't last forever. I found this is a pretty common thing that happened with boys.

They feel like outsiders and that kind of fuels their fears of being ostracized and they get defensive and sensitive to lots of things and then their peers react to that and that reaction supports their fears and the cycle just kind of keeps on going. But, like I said, happily a lot of this fades as they get a little bit older.

Now it can make parents absolutely crazy, and I understand, because your child is in distress and they're trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And between the ages of 11 and 14, most of the scouts that I have worked with are going to have done this, what I call going on the dark side of the moon- for a while.

It could be a number of months, It could be a year or so, but they just seem to be out of the range of communication. They're in their own chaotic world, blindly pushing buttons, lashing out at things, trying to figure things out, and that can make them very anxious, it can make them kind of surly and mean, it can make them emotional and unpredictable. They act out in all kinds of ways, and some of them can be dangerous and negative, and some of them can be like what you're experiencing, with just a lot of anxiety and feelings of ostracism involved. They're looking for consistency and constancy in the world. They're figuring out how the world works.

Now, if the adults get all reactive to the anxiety or to the bad behavior or they try to affect those behaviors with a change in circumstances, things are going to become even more unsettled. If parents and scouts will hold the line, stick to their word and remain as consistent as possible, you're showing your sons and your scouts that there is some peace and order in at least some aspect of their lives, that they can step out of that chaotic life that they're experiencing onto some solid ground. They won't understand this very much, but they will ultimately appreciate it.

So what does a scouter or a parent do? Well, as a parent, I'd pretty much require some highly interactive social activity like scouts right. If the child fights me on that- and they can do that sometimes very dramatically- as a parent I would be likely to push back a little bit and require this of them. Now. That's very general advice and any parent who's faced with a difficulty like this. I would want some reassurance strategy from the counselors that the child is talking to and be prepared for some rocky times.

But this is what I would suggest. As a scouter: I would address the basic anxiety and insecurity and the fragility by being as supportive and encouraging as possible.

Now you can also enlist your older scouts in this. I've had many a quiet word with an older scout asking them to take notice of something positive or to befriend them or to help them out, and usually that older scout that I'm talking to has been through exactly the same kind of thing where they were anxious, where they felt ostracized when they were younger. I have seen this literally hundreds of times now. Parents are usually going through this for the first time and it can really knock them for a loop. I understand any boy will have his moments and some can be more dramatic than others. Some have complications like learning differences or physical limitations, but just about every single one of them makes it through just fine.

You have to be consistent. This is no new advice. You have to be consistent and your child is in distress and I know how painful that is, but they're all going to be in distress of one kind or another at this age and they're going to get on the other side of it. They're going to be just fine. Every one of the scouts that we're working with, every young person is a special case. They all need different things in different measures.

There are no normal scouts- I've never met one. There are no normal children- I've never met one. Half the fun of our work is sorting out how to deal in a good place to be able to do that. I heard from James, who had this to say: along with being a Scoutmaster, I'm also a dive instructor. I read an article on a dive instructor who was training scouts in which one of the scouts unfortunately died during the training and the parents were suing the instructor. I haven't heard you talk about anything as to what liabilities a scouter can incur when they take scouts on outings.

If a scout is injured, is there civil liability protection for scouts? If parents decide to sue a scouter, what happens?

Well, James, you haven't heard me discuss legal liability very much because I'm far from being an expert in that sort of thing, but you hear me talking about safety a lot and I like to feel pretty experienced with safety so far as scouting goes. And, of course, the most important thing is being safe.

Now the BSA does provide general liability insurance coverage. That explains this way and I'll link to what I'm about to read here in the post that contains this podcast.

We have what's called comprehensive general liability insurance and this is what the BSA says. Registered volunteers are provided primary coverage through the BSA general liability program. BSA general liability policy provides public coverage for a bodily injury or property damage claim that is made and arises out of an official scouting activity. The guide to safe scouting contains a listing of unauthorized and restricted activities. Unauthorized activities are not considered official scouting activities. Volunteers, registered and unregistered units, chartered organizations and local councils are jeopardizing insurance coverage for themselves and for our organization by engaging in unauthorized activities.

Please do not put yourself at risk. So the short answer is: if a scout in our care is injured, we're covered. There is a caveat in what I read talking about official scout activities, and I'm not going to try and delve into specifics on that, because it's all dealt with in the guide to safe scouting, something that you should have a copy of and that you should review on a regular basis to make sure that you're running a safe program.

Now anybody can initiate a civil case against anybody else. Pretty much it's not that difficult to do so. If a parent wants to sue you, they probably can.

Now, I don't have personal knowledge of any cases when this has happened, so for me this is kind of a theoretical situation. But when it comes to managing risk, the first thing on my mind is my personal liability and the foremost thing on my mind is the safety of my scouts.

I am not thinking about well, we better not do that because somebody might sue me. No, I'm thinking about: is this a safe thing to do?

Would a reasonable person do this? Is it in accordance with the guide to safe scouting?

Am I following the sweet 16 of BSA safety? Am I keeping my scouts safe?

I go into them now, but I've been in a couple of really harrowing situations in the wilderness that have made me very cautious about following the rules, and that is what's most important to do now. There have been a handful of times- maybe three or four over the past 30 years when a scout in my care needed medical attention for an injury above and beyond what we would render as first aid, and I think that's a pretty good record. I attribute it to following the rules and being aware of the dangers and safety is really pretty simple. It's what you don't know. You don't know. That usually causes the problem and most people, if they're dealing with risky situations, will develop a sense of when we're approaching dangerous territory, metaphorically, and we stop.

We're cautious, we try and figure out what's happening before we just go barging on ahead. And if you get anything out of this, the whole idea is instilling appreciation for managing risks and keeping your scouts safe. I wouldn't lose any sleep over the fear of being sued and I wouldn't be anything less than vigilant about keeping scouts safe. I feel I'm a little over cautious from time to time, but I get over it. Having a good understanding of the guide to safe scouting and reviewing them on a regular basis is the best insurance that you're going to have. Eric Byrd is an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 33 in Laurel Mississippi and he wrote in to say this.

I recently found your podcast and have greatly enjoyed listening to the new and archived editions. I have a question. I'm sure you've addressed it on the podcast, but I've got to come across it in advance for your time.

Well, Eric, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast. Cell phones- wow, we haven't talked about that in a while. I'll tell you.

When scouts first started carrying cell phones routinely- and I guess maybe what is that 10 years or so ago- they were a brand new challenge for us as scouts, and there's all kinds of mischief you can get up to with a cell phone and man. We tried lots of different permutations of this and I struggled with the whole way of managing them for a long time, and after I'd been doing that for a few years- and, by the way, I never really came up with a good way to manage them other than saying no, you can't have them at all, and that never worked- I noticed that one or two things happened in the intervening years.

Like I said, there was this time where cell phones started showing up and then we had this difficult period where we were trying to manage them and figure out what to do, and during that time a couple of things happened. Either cell phones didn't bother me all that much anymore because all the problems I thought they would create never really came into being- you know, I never really had a whole lot of trouble with them- or cell phones became so much a part of the background of our lives that I just stopped noticing them very much, and the scouts don't really notice them all that much. They use them reasonably responsibly and they don't cause much, if any, difficulty with them.

So I don't really have a policy. One way or the other, our scouts carry their cell phones everywhere and all as I ask is that in every other situation that they carry them- whether it's at school, whether it's with their family, whatever is that- they're using them respectfully and courteously, causing disruption to what they're doing, and this seems to work pretty well.

It doesn't always work, but you know, it's kind of like if you're going to tell scouts not to talk while you're talking. How well does that work? They do it, but with a little reminder they'll be respectful and courteous. It just seems to be in the background of their lives and it's part of all of our lives now.

So we've learned to be more respectful and courteous with the use of cell phones. That's the best thing I can understand. Now. You can just imagine our forebears, the scouts of old, reacting to similar things that came along over the past when comic books started showing up.

Well, there's no way we're allowing comic books at camp around a camping trip. All the boys will do is sit there with the comic books and then the electronic games started showing up.

Oh my gosh, we can't have those. That recorder showed up before then.

And the boomboxes and all this stuff comes along, whether it's a comic book or a boombox or electronic game or anything like that, anything that is so ubiquitous and is just a part of their daily lives. You're not going to do very well having a blanket disapproval of them and not being able to deal with them at all and actually some of these influences.

We want our scouts to work along with them and learn to be respectful and courteous and learn the difference between being distracted and paying attention. In a prohibitive environment where we just prohibit any of those influences, we're not going to be able to do that now.

When it comes down to it, we can make any number of rules and regulations for what our scouts can and can't bring to camp, what they're going to do while they're camping or with the troop, but what we may not understand. We add the need for us to enforce and police the rule and pretty soon that's where you spend all your time.

As I say often, we have the scout oath and the scout law. Those are the only things that we need. We don't need any rules on top of that, because once you start talking about the scout oath and law, it covers everything, and creating a whole lot of rules on top of that it's really a losing proposition.

So I heard back from Eric, who said: I appreciate your advice. I'll tell you this story.

Near the end of a long hike a few years ago, we were all exhausted and we stopped for a break and my cell phone rang and it was the parents of one of the scouts who was on the hike who calmly informed me that she just heard from her son, who had called on his cell phone to tell her he was lost on the hike. I assured her, of course, that he was right there, but as I looked around I noticed he was not.

So I called him on his cell phone and he was shortly reunited with us. I told all the scouts to leave their cell phones at home for the hike, but thankfully he didn't listen to me and he had his phone with him.

So hey, that's an interesting story, Eric, and I think it goes to the point. There's actually quite a few positives to having cell phones around, and we've used them when we're camping or hiking, to communicate without it distracting from what's happening.

So far as the program goes, Melissa is a registered nurse and a merit badge counselor for the first aid merit badge in Ozark, Missouri, and she got in touch to say this: it's getting harder and harder to get scouts to use the actual first aid merit badge pamphlet rather than worksheets. I've had parents and even scouts who should know better tell me I'm out of line trying to make scouts use a merit badge book or to get the merit badge book or to have anything to do at all with the merit badge book. I apparently am supposed to feed all of the info to them on merit badge worksheets and sign off on their blue card after a tidy little four-hour merit badge class. I've had parents and scouts argue with me about making first aid kits as listed in the merit badge requirements. They just want me to show them the stuff and what goes in the kits and let that be done. I honestly believe that worksheets take the place of the merit badge book and I've had scouts use the worksheets and google the answers to fill it out.

Then I have to show them in the merit badge book that the correct information is often quite different from that that they found on the internet. When I began teaching the merit badge, I went and got the merit badge book and I found the BSA has specific information that they want scouts to learn as part of getting the badge, specific focus that you don't get in similar first aid courses.

And when it comes to the worksheets, scouts can fill out the worksheets with info from all kinds of sources and demonstrate how to do a skill and so on, but it may or may not meet the requirements the way they are written in the merit badge book. What can I refer to and or distribute to parents and scouts that will back me up when I try to get scouts to use their first aid merit badge book?

Well, Melissa, I certainly hear you now. I haven't counseled many merit badges in the past few years, but I do understand the situation. I really don't like the way workbooks and worksheets are used and I don't like groups doing merit badges.

I've never really liked that and there's plenty that I would change if it was in my power to do so, but it's not so I don't want to complain. But as far as officialdom, backing up your approach, there was a recent post on the blog about worksheets and you know the kind of difficulty that they can cause, which echoes exactly what you've told me here. In addition to that, there's the training that is offered to merit badge counselors.

That has some very specific things to say about the relationship between a counselor and a scout and it has a lot to say about specificity so far as requirements and things go. And I'll add that you know first aid merit badge. There's some very, very specific things that are part of the requirements that may be open to a little bit of interpretation.

So far as the medical community is involved, there may be, you know, several different ways of doing a particular skill involved, but it's hard to be mistaken as a counselor when you go with what's in the merit badge book. So, Melissa, I hope that helps, and I did hear back from Melissa and she said thanks. It was awesome to hear back from you. I'll keep on doing my best. Thanks for the encouragement on my website and I use the info a lot. Thanks for everything you do for scouts well.

Thanks for being in touch, Melissa. I do appreciate it.

Now, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, you're going to have heard this before, but it's very, very important. You need to make sure that you're differentiating between the official sources that I cite and my advice. Our starting point are the official things that our organizations tell us, the resources that they produce. That's our starting point. Make sure you go and understand them and read them and review them on a regular basis. I will have links to the ones that I've cited here in this podcast.

That's where you begin. I don't want you to take me at my word. Go to those resources and make sure that they back up any advice that I might give you and if, like Melissa, you have a question for me, you can get in touch and we'll do that in just a moment.