A Prespective on 'Difficult' Scouts

I have had my share of ‘difficult’ Scouts.

Behavior, attitude and physical barriers are not all that uncommon.

Scout aged boys may have any number of difficulties that call for understanding, tolerant and compassionate leadership.

Scoutmasters must educate themselves to meet the challenge of working with boys who are challenged in one way or another. We must especially guard against the isolating and excluding tendencies that are almost always a reaction from ‘normal’ boys and adults.

have read in the past about schools… where children work together to solve problems, and where the kids who learn faster in any particular area, instead of being separated out and told they’re special and above everyone else, end up being taught to use their talents to cooperate with the other children. “Winning” or “getting ahead” isn’t the goal there — and all the children tend to learn more than they do in the more cut-throat style of schools. If schools have to exist that sounds like a much better set of principles to run them on.

Children aren’t born knowing how to behave towards other children. None of them are, autistic or non-autistic. They have to learn that everyone’s dependent on everyone else, that people aren’t better than others just by being better at something, and that tendencies to do bad things to other people are things we all have to fight, not give in to, if we want society to be remotely just to anyone.

Scouting is not competitive, not exclusive, not elitist. At its best Scouting is a safe haven for learning to live and work with just about anyone andbenefit from the experience.