Why do girls drop out of Girl Scouts in the 5th, 6th, 7th grades?

[Anonymous]

i dropped out because it was boring. all we ever did was sit inside and do crafts. my brother was a boy scout and i heard about how much fun he had so when i joined it was really dissapointing. i would hav left much earlier if my mom hadn't been incharge for a while

[Anonymous]

Speaking as a mom to to Girl Scouts and as a leader of one of their troops, it is SO MUCH WORK and so much administrative crap to be a leader. I work full-time as does my co-leader, and I honestly don't know if I can keep it going for next year when our troop will start middle school. All of the other parents in our troop also work full-time, and although many of them are great others are completely absent when it comes time to respond to emails, let alone pitch in and do a job. I think a huge part of the success of a troop is not only the mix of girls you have but also the time and willingness parents have to dedicate to the sheer paperwork and administrative hoops and organizational tasks that running a troop requires.

I am sure a lot of girls drop out because their parents simply can't continue the workload of being a troop leader any more.

[Anonymous]

Thankfully Ladies, now your daughters can be Boy Scouts. My daughters were both Boy Scouts in the Sea Scout program and loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i dropped out because it was boring. all we ever did was sit inside and do crafts. my brother was a boy scout and i heard about how much fun he had so when i joined it was really dissapointing. i would hav left much earlier if my mom hadn't been incharge for a while

This was my exact experience in the late 80's. My mom was a den mother and I tagged along to all that and it was SOOOO disappointing when I became a brownie b/c it was so domestically oriented (let's sew a pillow!) and boring. I still wish I could have gone to my brothers boy scout camp!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think girls become very sensitive to the opinions of peers at that age. Girl Scouts is (sadly) considered lame and for goody-goodys by many older girls.

+1 When I was a kid, it was very uncool to be in scouts in middle school.

I think this is still true.

We knew three guys that I had no idea were in scouts, until they became Eagle Scouts. They clearly hid it on purpose and all three stated they simply did it for college, though I feel like that’s unlikely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- as a leader it is really depressing to hear people rag on the leaders. We put SO much time/effort into making a great experience for your child (not talking about the leader who was anti-semetic -- that is terrible).

I do see that the requirements for earning badges/awards get harder as the girls get older (more independent work, more service hours, more field trips). And I can see how some girls/parents wouldn't be willing to do that. I think it's a natural tension --- if earning something is going to have meaning, it has to be something challenging. But, if it's challenging, then some girls won't take the challenge and will drop out. I'm not sure it could be any other way b/c if they were just playing games and painting their nails, then other people wouldn't see the value in being a member.

I have heard that people don't like the journeys much -- so I'm going to keep the option open not to do a journey at all.

Thanks for the feedback -- and if you have advice on what I should do to keep it positive (if there is anything I can do), then I'd like to hear your suggestions.

The Council is one step ahead of you. Troops can't earn the bronze award unless you've done a journey. I think it's their way of making troops do a journey by end of 5th grade because nobody wants to.

[Anonymous]

Either its becomes boring to them my friends girls dropped it because of the leaders, or sadly thet care too much of what other kids think. Trying to avoid teasing and bullying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thankfully Ladies, now your daughters can be Boy Scouts. My daughters were both Boy Scouts in the Sea Scout program and loved it.

You brought this 2013 back to life just to say this^^^????

Boy scouts/girl scouts have been discussed ad nauseam already on ther threads.

[Anonymous]

My DD dropped out at the end of 6th because she wanted to dive deeply into one specific pursuit rather than dabbling in a new one every couple weeks.

Her sister was a Scout for 10 school years. She liked dabbling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thankfully Ladies, now your daughters can be Boy Scouts. My daughters were both Boy Scouts in the Sea Scout program and loved it.

You brought this 2013 back to life just to say this^^^????

Boy scouts/girl scouts have been discussed ad nauseam already on ther threads.

+1. BSA is trolling for attention. They haven't actually had much success in getting girls in the DMV to join BSA, because the GSCNC program is pretty strong in most areas of the District. I have a son in BSA and have had brothers, nephews, etc. go through the program -- I like it, but I'm liking it less with how desperate they are to raid the GS and pull girls into second-class citizen status with BSA.

[Anonymous]

Crafts, cooking, fashion camp, (yes FASHION camp, we learned how to *really* wash our hair... yay?) and the clique-iness that happens in that age range with girls... was not thrilled with the program at all. Signing up as a kid for GS I thought I'd be doing stuff boy scouts get to do like outdoors, archery, etc... I still want to learn to whittle wood someday, but in GS we learned instead how to make mini toilet paper roll crafts. Useless. Didn't learn any useful skills that a one-day cooking class (at best) couldn't have taught me. Unless you consider the "friendship song" a useful skill lol. Girl Scouts was a huge disappointment unfortunately. There are better programs out there.

[Anonymous]

I was younger DD’s troop leader for 2 years and we wanted to outsource that for the sake of reclaiming family time. The MS troop leader was anxious and obsessive which triggered my anxious and obsessive younger DD. After she said she couldn’t fall asleep on the nights we had GS, I said enough.

Her sister did GS through 12th with a different leader.

[Anonymous]

Ugh, why do people revitalize these 6 year old threads to add nothing new? I already commented on this multiple times over the years.

[Anonymous]

^ Because they want to continue the conversation. It will be okay, I promise.

The "why" still has a lot to do with the rampant bullying on the part of both leaders and members though

[Anonymous]

My kid liked daisies. However, she didn’t click with the kids and stopped enjoying going at the brownie stage. I was not about to insist she doing activity that she wasn’t enjoying herself at, so we just stopped going.