Question for Cub Scout parents
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Anonymous
Girl Scouts definitely does not have to be by school. Around here there are typically far more girls that are wanting to join than troops, so they have waiting lists. Contact your local council and tell them you want to start a troop. They'll get you up and running and help find the girls. |
Anonymous
Girl Scouts is drop off from the beginning - even the Daisies. And it's the 1st and 2nd grade boys who are far more likely to have siblings who can't be left alone at home for the meetings. |
Anonymous
At this point, I've kind of lost the plot of your argument. Again -- GIRL SCOUTS are not trying to change. We are pretty happy the way we are as far as I know (except a lot of us don't like the official program and try to make it more interesting, etc.) But we are not the ones sending our girls to join Cub Scouts. And we don't have a bunch of little boys desperate to join Girl Scouts either. (For better or for worse... I wish we had a program boys really liked and were attracted to, but as it stands, we don't... again, unless we leaders kind of go rogue and do it ourselves....) ON THE OTHER HAND apparently Cub Scouts requires families to be involved in Cubbing. So moms, dads and siblings are often involved in pack activities. And it is THESE parents (siblings etc) who see the Cub Scout program and are thinking, that's a great program -- it'd be great if our girls could do it too.... So there's no particular reason to "fix girl scouts". Why not "fix Cub Scouts"? Stop requiring families to be involved. Stop allowing siblings to come along. Change your program so it's more boring and no one wants to join? |
Anonymous
Why is it wrong? Because you say so? My sons have been a part of a couple of dens in two different states. Both had parents at the den and pack meetings for Tigers and up to and including Webelos. Its great because its an extra pair of hands during knife skills training, knot tying, and other activities. Very few parents drop off. If siblings want to participate, they can if its age appropriate. |
Anonymous
The girls are there because their parents are there. Many of them are girl scouts. They show next no interest in participating and the boys aren't exactly inviting. |
Anonymous
Actually, all of my pack's dens meet at the same time and in the same location. We just spread out so we don't interfere with other dens. |
Anonymous
The holded is one of the silliest statements posted on this entire thread. 1st and 2nd grade girls are just as likely to have young aged siblings as 1st & 2nd grade boys. |
Anonymous
Logic and deduction aren't your strong suits, are they? It's not that the BOYS are more likely than girls to have younger siblings, but that 1st and 2nd graders (the ones who, apparently, aren't allowed to be dropped off) that are more likely to have younger siblings than the older boys. It was in response to a poster saying that anyone staying beyond 1st or 2nd grade was doing it wrong. My point is that if the problem is younger siblings trailing along because they're too young to be left at home, that's more likely to be a problem with the 1st and 2nd graders than with the older boys. Make sense? |
Anonymous
It does not matter if younger siblings are there anyway hanging out. They cannot join their sibking's scout den, period. Cub Scouts is grade specific. Each level, bobcat, tiger, wolf, bear and weblos, is linked to one specific grade and have specific advancements for each grade. So even is five year old Larla is there every week hanging out at her second grad brother's den meeting, she cannot become a wolf no matter how convenient it is for mom. And even if she follows along with everythig her brother's wolf den does, she cannot be a bobcat because the 2nd graders are not working on five year old bobcat skills. They are working on wolf skills only. The bobcats are at a different place and time working on bobcat skills. So the argument that Larla should be allowed to become a scout because she is there every week anyway, following along with her brother's wolf den is an invalid argument and not a legitimate reason for cub scouts to become coed and let Larla join. Unless they are twins in the same grade, Larla cannot just become a wolf Cub Scout with her brother because it is convenient. She can't even if she were a brother or decided to identify as a boy. |
Anonymous
5 year old siblings can't join, no. (Unless the pack is trying out the new Lion's den program for kindergarteners) But apparently it is becoming more and more common for the whole pack to meet in one location, and then for dens to break off all at the same time to do their den work. So in a pack like this, with the correct aged female siblings hanging out for the hour while all the brothers are in their dens, would be able to work in dens at this time as well. |
Anonymous
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That still wouldn't solve the childcare problem. If I am supposed to stay with my son's wolf den to help monitor and participate in meeting, I can exactly be with my younger child at their lion meeting, even if they are meeting at the same time in the same building.
I feel like many of the people posting on this thread do not have children in either Girl Scouts or cub scouts. The only real problem I've heard articulated in this thread is that some girls want to do more activities that are perceived as more traditionally male. Girl Scouts already provides for all that, if that's what the girls and Troop want, so there's an easy solution--just very volunteer to make that happen in your Girl Scout troop, or form your own Girl Scout troop. Some other people posting just object, I think, to any single sex activity on principle. That's fine and I get that, but there are also co-ed scouting programs. |
Anonymous
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One more thought about something I think is a fundamental historical difference between Girl Scouts and cub/boy scouts. I think BSA has always subscribed to a more rigid definition of what a man should be--this comes through in the fact that most of the program is mandatory and the program presents certain core skills and beliefs. This also resulted in the historical opposition to gay scouts.
GSA, in contrast, has always been about challenging boundaries and reinventing what it means to be a girl. The program has nothing mandatory about it, and its contours are defined by what the girls, parents and leaders want to achieve. It's also historically been pretty welcoming of gay scouts, and generally socially progressive. (My grandmother was horrified when sex Ed was part of the GS program, in the 1930s--not so much that she opposed it but because she didn't want to do it as a leader!). I think GSA has struggled, in the past decades, with figuring out where to add value in a world where there now are so many options available to so many girls, whereas BSA seems to have a clearer vision of what it's mission is (to provide boys with a certain set of old world skills and values). |
Anonymous
As long as you are there in the building, it's OK to not actually be present in the den of the older children, especially grades 2 through 5. At least it was that way with the pack my son was in. As long as a few parents stayed to help out. The family aspect was mostly present on camping trips. |
Anonymous
http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/FAQS/program.aspx
Seems like there's leeway in Cub Scouts -- families are expected? invited? to attend pack meetings, while den meetings are more for just the den leaders and the cubs, but parents are welcome (but not expected) to attend. The convenience factor in having den meetings at the same time would mostly be that of dropping all kids off at the same time and place -- allowing a parent of 3 kids to be the den leader or assistant den leader of ONE den, while all 3 kids are in the pack. A parent in such a situation would not be able to be den leader of 2 dens that met at the same time, of course. |
Anonymous
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^^^ Cub scouts meet once a month all together. At this big meeting, everyone is in one room, dens sit together with either a leader or usually volunteer boy scouts sitting with them,. Awards and advancements are given and pack business is covered, so parents and families donattend but they sit in the back.
Each den (grade level bobcat, tiger, bear, wolf, weblos 1 and web 2) meet separately, at different locations chosen by the leaders, once per week on the other weeks, usually in the evening because most of the leaders are dads who were former scouts and most dads work instead of staying home. I think Mormon scouts meet on Sundays all together at church in different rooms, but they are the only scouts I know of who do this and their packs and troops are only open to parish members (ward?) So there will be one time per month when all the different levels of scouts get together for a meeting, but the den meetings are separate and often at separate locations. Parents tend to stay for bobcat and tiger because the boys in those lower grades are so wild, but that tends to taper off by 2nd grade and by 3rd-4th grade it is just the leaders unless there is a kid with behavior problems or special needs. |