Scoutmaster Podcast 358

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And now it's the old Scoutmaster. Just the other day I discussed a number of points about orienteering with my scouts.

Now, if they comb their hair correctly, nobody will notice those points. But yeah, points, orienteering.

Thank you, I think, for the inspiration to for that one to listen to Bill McFarland, I think maybe.

Anyway, this is podcast number 358.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. It's me, Clarke Green. Today.

I have a couple of email questions to answer, but before I do, I just want to tell you that this podcast is being published on December 4th and then we'll have another couple of podcasts and then we'll take a couple of weeks off for the holidays and return to you early next year with a series- yes, a series- about some of the foundational concepts of scouting. I don't think I've ever actually done that before, Usually just to answer an email questions or talking about whatever comes to mind. I'm going to take a little bit of a structured approach for a few podcasts early next year, just to kind of start from square one and build a foundation for being a effective scouter.

So that'll probably be like: maybe five, maybe three, maybe one, two, five, three. So that will be an as yet to be determined.

Maybe five? Two weapons are fear and surprise, and ruthless Lysificiency of three weapons are fear and surprise, and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope are four Amongst our.

Well, could be more. Three sounds about right, Yeah, but come to think of it, it's probably going to take more than three.

Well, anyway, we'll get there. Okay, we'll get there one way or the other, But for now I have a couple of email questions to answer.

So let's get started. Shall we send it by email?

That is, folks, And here's an answer to one of your emails. Here's the first email question. I have a young scout who just got scout rank signed off two weeks ago and asked for at least 10 merit badge blue cards. His parents have signed him up for merit badge events And I wonder if mom and dad are doing more than he is. I know my role as Scoutmaster is to determine whether or not the merit badge counselor is registered before I sign the blue cards And I get to have a short conference with the scout as to what he's doing, And his mother has been involved with these talks And she emphasizes- her and her husband are helping him out because he has some help at school through an individualized education program or an IEP. I suspect mom and dad are doing too much And maybe he's not getting anything out of the program.

What do you suggest I do? Ah well, that question should have the ring of familiarity with many of us.

So before I offer any advice, ask yourself these two questions. Number one: did you choose your parents?

And number two: if I tell you how to work with your children, how would you react to that? Would you welcome that as helpful advice, Or would you perhaps see it as something else?

So as you ponder the answers to those two questions, I know it's difficult to figure out what we're able to do in some situations when parents are doing things, or at least seem to be doing things, You kind of. Rather, they didn't. All the parents I've worked with over the years did at least something that I found either puzzling or alarming or just kind of tiresome. I can't recall any instance where any attempt to correct their parenting came out very well.

Just to let you know, And I'm not saying that all concerns are totally misplaced, but you have to put these in the context of what we're doing and what the scouts doing and the parents, who he has not chosen, are doing. So it's almost certain that the scout is not being harmed by doing merit badges and what an individual parent chooses to do is not going to harm the merit badge program. Merit badge program is pretty resilient But, as you noted, every time you sign a blue card you have the opportunity to discuss what's going on with the scout and just keep that casual and see if you can begin to understand what he might be getting out of the whole process. Sometimes scouts get a lot out of the process, Sometimes they get a little, and some are certainly collecting merit badges like Pokemon cards.

Now you can think that that's good or that's bad, But, like I say, is the scout being harmed by doing merit badges or is he able to inflict harm on the program itself? Probably not. None of us have the ability to look into another family and see exactly what's going on.

You may think the parents are overreaching, being a little too ambitious or over involved, And you know what. Sometimes that's the case, but they're trying to figure things out as best that they can, And the scout may be getting a whole lot out of this that you don't see it first blush.

Going through the whole merit badge thing may be helping him with any challenges he has so far as learning is concerned. It could be helping him and his parents have an activity that they can participate in together and that they enjoy. I mean, we may never understand or know what's going on.

Now there are rules, you know. Like any game, There are rules.

We follow the rules, And when it comes to evaluating who's doing the work and who isn't, well, that's up to the merit badge counselor, isn't it? That's not up to us. And if, and only if, there was ample evidence to find that there was something untoward going on here, I don't know whether I would stir this particular pot. I would better advise to observe what's going on, talk to the scout and see if that changes the way that you perceive the situation. Along the same lines of scouts, advancement and their parents, I had an email that I'll summarize by saying that it deals with a scout who is very ambitious himself and has very ambitious parents, apparently, and they're probably driving pretty hard to get him to Eagle Scout.

He's involved in a lot of activities outside of scouting And there are a few concerns that this raises with his Scoutmaster. That's pretty broad strokes about the situation And, at face value, like most of you, this kind of situation would rub me the wrong way and I can identify with that sense of frustration. But laying all the frustrations and the personalities aside, a demanding thing to do at times.

What are the real issues? Well, we know that scouts advance by fulfilling a list of requirements. Of those requirements, Most of them are defined metrics. In other words, there's not a whole lot of ambiguity about how you fulfill the requirement.

If it's 10 nights of camping, you go camping for 10 nights, Not that big a deal- And a few advancement requirements don't have a set metric And so you have to make a judgment call as to whether a scout has fulfilled them or not. Now, I most commonly hear about these judgment calls when we talk about active participation and quote leadership, unquote- and more about that in a moment- positions, And I hear about them pretty often because these are two things that are not real easy to understand about scouting.

Now, whenever somebody asked me about quote leadership, positions, unquote, I am quick to point out two things. The first is is the requirements refer to positions of responsibility, not leadership? The guide to advancement explains the importance of differentiating between leadership and responsibility and puts emphasis on responsibility.

The second thing is: the only rank requirement that explicitly requires the demonstration of leadership is found in the Eagle project. I also want to note that the guide to advancement discusses factoring in activities outside of scouting in our evaluations of responsibility for others and an active participation.

So before I go further, it would be important for me to note- I will have a link to the guide to advancement in the podcast notes. If you have not spent significant time with the guide to advancement and you haven't at least scanned it and read those sections that are relevant to your work in scouting, you really need to do that, And then you need to keep it handy so you can go back and refer to them. It's not because of the complexity of the rules, which are kind of complex in some situations, but the principles that are very clearly expressed in the guide that inform the way that you work with your scouts. These are really important things. Get the guide to advancement, look through it and especially study and read those areas that concern your role in scouting And these issues around participation and responsibility are something that are useful to discuss with your fellow scouts.

I think most of us act on assumptions about these things that don't jive with the very clear directions we're given in the guide to advancement and those assumptions run up against some of the things that the guide to advancement says and that will cause a little friction. But it's important to make sure that we are clear on exactly how these two things work And once we're clear on that, we understand a broad underlying principle that advancement is not the scout versus the judgment of adult volunteers. It's the scout and adult volunteers being supportive versus the requirements.

I want to say that again, Advancement is not about the scout satisfying the judgment of adult volunteers. It's about the scout and supportive adult volunteers finding a way for the scout to satisfy the requirements. We are all on the same side.

Now, you and I did not write the rank requirements. We don't personally embroider patches to present to our scouts. These are something whether we agree with them or not, whether we particularly like them or not. It's all part of the deal. It's all part of your commitment and loyalty to the program to understand how these things work and it's really tiresome and self-defeating to devise our own hoops for our scouts to jump through or to impose our own judgment on the scouts when there are better ways to get the job done. In my book there are two basic approaches to advancement judgment calls.

So the first one is establishing a metric or a number that all scouts have to meet. So when we're talking about participation, you got to make this percentage of events and this percentage of meetings, things like that. That's one solution. The second basic approach is setting an individual goal, in consultation with the scout and sometimes, when it's appropriate, with their parents.

Now, having tried both approaches, I prefer setting an individual goal with and not for the scout. So let me emphasize that we're setting a goal with the scout, not for the scout. If we just come up with a metric that feels right and we say that's going to apply to all scouts, that's setting a goal for them.

If we instead take a very little bit of time, listen to what a scout has to say, inquire of his parents or his family when that's appropriate, will come up with an individualized goal that makes a whole lot more sense, that will fulfill the requirement just fine And that takes about, you know, 10 minutes. We sit down, we talk to the scout about the goals that they would set for themselves to fulfill the active and responsibility aspects of the requirements. And that begins with questions, not statements. Just to give you a shorthand approach. If I was doing this with a scout, I would sit down with them and I would ask them to read me the requirements in question, while a scout participate actively in your troop and patrol for X number of months or occupy a position of responsibility for X number of months.

So we would be very clear on the exact wording of the two requirements. And then, before I offered any, my thoughts on it, I would ask the scout to explain the requirements to me and how they understood them and what kind of goal they were setting for themselves to fulfill the requirement. And I would listen carefully to what they have to say, because what they have to say is going to reveal any number of things. It's going to reveal something about the relationship that they have with their parents, if that's applicable. It's going to reveal somewhat of their relationship they have with the scouting program, with the things that they do outside of scouts, And I'm going to get a better picture of what's realistic and appropriate for that individual scout and fulfilling those requirements.

So once I've asked them how they arrived at that goal, if it makes sense to me, we're done, And if it doesn't, I'm going to ask more questions. And if I do more listening than speaking- which is very difficult for me- I will get some insight into his life and I'll help him find a way to make things work. And that's what we're all about. Remember, we're all on the same side here.

Now, in this instance, the author of the email explained to me at length about how difficult these particular parents are, And some parents are difficult. Oh well, they may be overreaching, They may be driving pretty hard, They may be over involved And you know, looking from the outside in, it's easy to judge that other parents are doing things wrong. Of course, they're looking back at us and judging how we're missing the mark, And we'd really rather that parents just understood what we're trying to do and agree with our judgment. But that doesn't always happen, Because some parents are just hell bent on their child becoming an evil scout. OK, that happens. Some look for loopholes to get this checked off their list as quickly as possible.

Yes, that happens And it can be extraordinarily frustrating And we might try to explain things and they might reject them And that you know they kind of lawyer their way around the whole thing. It's frustrating, I get it, But we shouldn't allow our frustration with a scout's parents to color our relationship with the scout. Remember what I said earlier: Tell me when you picked your parents. Scouts don't get to do that. If we aren't careful, we'll express the frustration with a scout's parents by using their scout as a pawn to prove a point to the parents, who probably aren't going to appreciate the point that we're trying to prove anyway.

So the scout didn't choose his parents and battling them only harms the scout. So, rather than being frustrated by parents who act this way, what if we embraced their ambitions for their son?

We get everybody on the same side of the question and we make being in our troop valuable, relatively simple to do and satisfies their ambitions, because that's kind of the kind thing to do for the scout, isn't it? Power struggles with parents only hurt scouts. They're really aggravating. They cause unnecessary upset. See if you can get everybody on board headed in the same direction. I mean, the requirements are right there in black and white.

Don't color them with your judgment. Appeal to the scout for their judgment, set a mutually agreeable goal and everybody should be relatively happy.

You know, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about this exact thing a number of times, but I always think it's worth repeating because, like I said earlier, this is one of the harder things to get about the work that we do, And I appreciate how difficult it is. It took me a long time to get to the point where I could work with a minimum of frustration- not totally absent frustration with parents like these- and make the experience of being a scout in our troop as advantageous to the scout as was humanly possible.