Or does Scouting tear families apart?
We first started seeking a scout troop for our oldest son when he was in first grade. We wanted to get him into a Royal Rangers group but there was none in this area. We looked for a Cub scout troop but were told they were all full. A year later we contacted boy scouts and asked if they could help us find a troop for him and were told he was too young, they directed us to Cub Scouts, who never returned out call. It was many years before our oldest son finally got involved with scouts.
Our first real introduction to scouting was with our youngest son. We discovered that a neighbor who had a son his same age was the Den Leader for a cub scout den, and they had room for more cubs. My boy wanted to join so I got him involved with that pack. He loved it. I didn’t love the extra strain on our schedule so much, but he was making new friends and people kept telling me how scouting helps to build strong leaders. So I kept him in. Later that year we learned that there was another local Webelos den that had room for our middle son. So he joined Cub scouts for half a year the last year he was eligible to be a Cub.
My youngest son continued in Cub scouts while my middle son started Boy Scouts, and after a couple months, I decided to get my older son involved also. I knew a couple of the boys in that troop, and I knew them to be good Christian boys, and hoped they would be friends for my son who at the time was rather shy and reclusive. He didn’t want to go. After a year, neither one of them wanted to go. I kept making them go, because we had paid for the dues, and I wanted them to follow through with what they had started.
During this time, my daughter always wanted to go with her brothers, but of course she couldn’t because she was a girl. She could go with me when I went to the pack meetings at Cub Scouts, but she was not allowed at boy scout meetings, campouts, or any of the fun outings.
When she was finally old enough, she got into American heritage Girls. She loved the sewing crafts, but sometimes complained that the other things weren’t fun, or just didn’t like sitting down for an hour and a half. We were kind of on again off again attendees for the first year, but the next year she was more interested in attending regularly. She wasn’t so much interested in the badges, as she was interested in the friends. Although when Court of Honor time came around, she did notice that other people got badges she didn’t get. One summer we went to Horse Camp and she completed all the things she needed to finish the Horsemanship badge, but because no AHG LEADERS were there, AND because her papers blew away in a wind storm, she was not allowed to count any of those achievements in horsemanship toward earning the badge. Photographic evidence that she completed the exercises was not enough. She has made some friends through AHG but none that actually invite her over for play days or anything.
Two years ago, my youngest son crossed over into the troop with his brothers also, and he was sad because his friends were going to a different troop. He felt alone, even though he was with his brothers. He technically could have gone to the other troop with his friends, but I did not want a 3rd night of scout activities in my schedule, not to mention trying to coordinate opposing scout camp-outs and events that might conflict with the other troop. I had been feeling quite overwhelmed with running 3 different directions for scouts every week and really wanted to get that off my schedule. I hoped that he would make new friends in the troop. He soon began to complain that Boy Scouts was not as fun as Cub Scouts however, that they never did anything fun during the meetings, and he also wanted to quit.
Last year, after a series of blood boiling shenanigans in their boy scout troop, culminating in a Chicken BBQ Fundraiser where the boys were forced to work 9 hour shifts with no breaks in the hot sun, I decided we would not return to that troop at the end of the summer when it was time to re-register. We would either start a Christ Centered troop, or we would quit entirely. I prayed about it a lot, and then started the process of finding a Charter Organization to establish the Christ Centered Boy Scout Troop. It took them a long time to get back to me about the approval process. By the end of summer I was rather leaning toward just quitting, and using that time for our family instead. But then, seemingly at the last minute, in September the petition was approved, and we had enough people to start the new troop. So we immediately filed our transfer papers and joined the new troop. It was small but we had hopes of it being more fun, less political, and more Christ Centered than the old troop had been. More like AHG for boys, since there is no AHB organization available. And The troop itself is meeting most of our expectations. It is very small, but much more friendly, and the boys have a direct say in what happens, and when, and the whole planning process.
One problem though, it still is exclusive to boys. Thus the term Boy Scouts. And maybe it would be fine if it was a Father-Son bonding time, but my boys’ father doesn’t go with them, he stays home playing on the computer while I take them to their various activities. So I am gone Monday nights to AHG, Tuesday nights to Boy Scouts, and at least one weekend a month, and one week a summer, someone is going somewhere with a scouting troop. Never do we go together as a family. It’s always divided. Boys here, girls there, one parent stays home with the siblings. With every week, I am feeling more and more and more like scouting is pulling our family apart, not building us up.
Scouting has advantages, yes. Scouting teaches children new skills. It teaches them some introduction to leadership. It teaches them about honor, integrity, justice… sometimes.
But then we have incidents like happened at my daughter’s most recent AHG campout where we experienced the opposite of “justice” from the camp leader. My daughter was falsely accused, the camp leader made her ruling and carried out her sentence with nothing resembling a fair trial, and issued her decree before I was even informed of the incident! I found out from my crying 9 year old at the breakfast table. I talked to the leader for what felt like nearly an hour, only to be told that she is in authority here, and where the camp begins, my authority as her parent ends and I have no right to know what is happening to my daughter, what the ruling is in regards to her behavior and no authority to appeal her case for review. She made the decision and it is final. I learned later that the accusers are the same family who are responsible for arranging the campground, and that the leaders are afraid of offending that family for fear that they might lose use of the campground the next summer. (I’m wondering here why they don’t trust that God will provide a campground for this Christ Centered troop, as long as they are leading in a Christ centered focus?) So it seems to me that my daughter was falsely accused, and unjustly punished, to appease the demands of a family that was demanding blood be spilled (in a proverbial sense). I’m thinking, this doesn’t exactly depict the kind of atmosphere that I was hoping my daughter would experience in her Christ Centered toop.
And all of this came crashing down and amplified the ongoing annoyance at the “Scouting Requirements” for earning merit badges. These badges are supposed to be emblems of accomplishment, visual awards depicting skills the boys and girls have earned, and they work the same way in both Boy Scouts and in American Heritage Girls. The kids follow a prescribed recipe of activities to achieve an award called a badge or patch that they wear on their uniform. It shows their achievements. But the thing is, children who come into the program with knowledge of particular skills they learned outside the program, do not get any recognition. Also, skills they learn WHILE IN the program, but not in the witness of an approved Scout Leader ALSO do not get recognition for their achievements. Even if they can demonstrate that they accomplished the thing through photos or other means. Many times it is implied that they can’t earn badges unless they do them with the group, or unless the group starts the craft or activity together and their instruction is received from the group, then they can finish the project at home. This creates an ominous cloud of frustration around the family who is trying to help 4 children earn their badges, and who has a lot of interesting skills to contribute but is continually hampered in progress because they have to meet stupid little requirements, under very particular circumstances that may not even be realistic to daily life.
How does this strengthen our family? Parents aren’t allowed to be mediators for their children. Parents aren’t allowed to be instructors for their children. Parents are perpetually divided while one child goes to an event and the other stays home. We don’t even get to go camping together as a family any more because all our weekends are planned for us ahead of time. How is this helping to build strong families? The only real benefit that I see to scouting is the building of friendships in a safe environment for the children. One could argue that Scouting is for families that don’t have time to teach their children these skills on their own, but that would be a fallacy because the only way scouting can ever be successful is through the contribution of parent volunteers. If the parents don’t contribute time to the troop, then the troop fails. Period. So now parents are investing their time and energy into Scouting instead of investing it into their family.
Maybe, if we could schedule the same amount of time every week that we spend on scout functions, on doing things together as a family instead, we would see stronger families. Maybe if we spent an hour and a half a week working on a new skill or project together as a family, we could see our children growing in skill and knowledge from their elders, learning generational knowledge, family trades, or even going to local events together to learn about the community together as a family. Maybe if we spent one weekend a month camping together as a family, or going on a family outing, we would build stronger bonds within our family, rather than straining the bonds by stretching ourselves too far trying to do too many things at once. Maybe if we went on one family vacation a year, together as a family rather than sending children off different directions with other people who think they know how to raise children better than their parents do, we would see stronger families with deeper respect, loyalty, and love for one another than what we see today. I’m seriously wondering if maybe we were to spend the money that we spend on scouting, on our family instead, if maybe we could invest in our family more directly. Right now it kinds feels like paying a farmer to grow hay and hoping to get some beef come harvest.
So what would we do if we weren’t doing scouts? My kids have already come up with some suggestions, and I’ve come up with a few ideas too.
Horseback riding lessons.
More trips to the Zoo.
SCA events.
-Merchanting wares at SCA events.
-Taking Ithra classes through the SCA college.
Model Rockets.
Lego Mind Storms.
Huckleberry Picking (and other wild fruits.)
Learning Ancient Arts (like making vinegar, and cheese)
Camping on the beach.
Camping in a Camp Trailer in the mountains.
Fishing.
Hunting.
Driving to local places of interest, historical sites, landmarks, etc.
Playing games together.
As it is right now, we’re always too tired or too busy to do these things together. I would like to free up some time in our schedule to be able to do these things. Scouting never wants to include the whole family on these fun adventures. I really want the whole family to go together, and do these fun things together. Let each learn from the strengths of the others. Maybe this doesn’t sound like the best way to raise children to other people. But it is what I always wanted, to travel together with my family. I never wanted to do fun things alone. I want to do the fun things with the people I love the most. My family. And I don’t like other people telling me that we have to do other things that divide our family apart instead, because it’s “important” for them to get the next badge.
I saw at Champoeg that they have cloth patches you can buy for $2. Maybe we should just start our own family adventure sash, and buy a new patch or pin each time we go somewhere. Answering only to the rules of our own family, not some arbitrary force who feels they need to replace us as parents and insert their own method of training up children instead. I think that is the best way to raise children, is to spend time with them, have fun with them, and be there when they achieve their accomplishments. After all these years of seeking a Scouting group for my children, and telling them all this time to follow through with what they started when they have wanted to quit, it feels a bit uncomfortable to be telling them that maybe they were right and we should have quit a long time ago. But maybe it’s better to quit now, and focus on the future, rather than perpetuating the mistakes of the past. Unless of course… the children have finally decided they prefer going to scouts rather than doing fun things with their family. In which case… I may have already lost the war in the fight for recovering my family. We shall see…
