Scouting vs. Scouting (help me come to terms?)
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Anonymous
| Girl scouts is great - you had a weird experience - and you can always become a GS leader yourself if you want to control what happens. |
Anonymous
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I have a ton of family experience d in both GS and BSA. They are both great but with different structure and strengths/weaknesses. Is your daughter in an all girls Cub Scout troop? My experience has been that the girls in our mixed-sex Cub Scout troop look pretty miserable by 4th-5th grade. There is a maturity gap that develops about that time and the boys frankly are not very nice to the girls for a few years and the girls are highly irritated by the boys. It’s a rough few years to be a girl in a male-majority activity.
GS troops are “girl led” which in reality means troop driven. So it will totally depend on what the girls in the troop like to do and what the parents will support. My suggestion would be that you should volunteer to get GS camp certified. It’s a weekend long training so troops always have trouble getting a parent to volunteer for this, but without a camp certified adult, you can’t do troop camping. (You can do things like larger encampments with other troops). The little girls love camping so it’s key to get them acclimated to it before they turn into MS aged girls that are resistant to a lot of stuff. One thing about BSA is that it totally re-sets at 6th grade so she could always rejoin BSA of her GS troop turns out not to be what she wants. But you should also check and make sure the troop has space. Lots of troops are full up. If they are full, if you volunteer to be a third leader they might be able to expand. |
Anonymous
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Ah I loooooved my Girl Scouts experience. We were a huge troop and had weekly meetings. We were very active.
I’m not happy with dds Girl Scout troop. They only meet every other week, there are a mix of ages and all the kids don’t go to school together. I really wish I had just started my own troop. I love to plan activities, I’m busy and very organized. I wish I were a leader. Both the leader and coleader are too laid back. |
Anonymous
This. As several others have stated, with any kind of scouting the experience is going to depend on the leaders. My DD was in a pretty lackluster troop. The leaders had started the troop as Daisies but after many years they just weren't into it any more. When they stepped down I took over and now we are very outdoorsy. We go camping 3 times a year as a troop, and many of the girls do overnight camp together in the summer. Trust me that the leaders will LOVE if you get involved in the troop. You can help to make it the experience you want for your daughter. |
Anonymous
| This goes for any activity- let her try it. If she doesn’t like it then don’t sign up again next year. No two troops are the same. My daughter was in a terribly boring GS troop with controlling leaders. They didn’t do much. There was one that was slightly better at the school but she didn’t want to switch because her friends weren’t in it. She ended up dropping scouts and found other interests. My friend’s daughter is still in an active troop in high school. They have been doing amazing things this entire time. They are very active, always were, and even raised their own money to go in an international trip last spring. You don’t know what type of troop it is until she tries it. |
Anonymous
| you may find that a lot of troops are full. you may want to volunteer to be cookie mom, for example, for someone to find space for you. |
Anonymous
This. I have been amazed at what my sons have gotten to do. I grew up on a military base and for years our assistant brownie leader was a gunny sergeant in the USMC. His name was Mr. Coffee. I'm over 50 and I remember this man to this day. We hiked and did so many fun things outdoors. He was one of the greatest people I ever met. When I aged in to Girl Scouts it was such a disappointment. We never went outside and for the most part we sat indoors doing crafts being ignored by the one adult there. |
Anonymous
You would not be a good Scout leader. The best troops are scout led. The worst troops are parent led. Think about what that means. They plan the activities - not you. There is chaos. Things start late. Things get forgotten BUT it is all about the kids leading. It is one of the few activities you can find that offers your kid leadership training. The worst troops have parents who will not give the kids independence and want to organize things for the kids and lead the kids. Even if you agree with what I'm saying, from your post it is clear you are going to assert yourself all over some troop if you do volunteer. Scouting is about the kids leading and all that entails. |
Anonymous
OP here again with an honest question: what constitutes "full"? (In our Cub Scout pack, we have no caps, so "full" is new to me.) Is there a required ratio between girls and volunteers, for example? In that case I can see why a girl who wanted to make a later-years entry into an established troop would essentially have to bring a volunteer with them in order to adjust the numbers. That might explain why I can't find DD's friends' troop on the joining section of the Girl Scouts website, too. Maybe it is full. (I will contact them directly, of course - I was just looking around.) |
Anonymous
There’s a very strict required ratio of volunteer:Girl Scout. That’s because, unlike Cub Scouts that has parents in a 1:1 parent:Scout ratio at most meetings, Girl Scouts is Girl-led and a dropoff activity. The bright side of this is that girls learn to express their own opinions, make their own choices, and learn to do things on their own. As a leader, I’ll say that my Girl Scouts are very different people at the rare event when parents are present vs. when it’s just our troop. In a good way. However, they are a lot to manage and we have trouble getting volunteers willing to do the background check and trainings and show up reliably, let alone plane meetings and facilitate badge work or outings that fit the girls’ states goals for the year. So we’re exactly at the ratio at all times and cancel meetings if a volunteer isn’t available. That’s why our troop is not publicly listed or actively recruiting new girls. The other reason is that we meet at school and the rules of our room use say that we aren’t allowed to have children or adults who aren’t affiliated with it in certain spaces after school hours. |
Anonymous
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Another family who said it is all about the troop volunteers and what your daughter wants to get out of it. Like a PP my two daughters have had very different experiences. My younger daughter is in a troop that has girls who mostly want to hang out, do some crafts and an occasional outing. She has fun, the troop leaders are nice, but it's more like a structured playdate than scouting. My middle schooler's troop by contrast is very active. The leaders work hard to find lots of really cool activities around the area in addition to their own monthly meetings, they camp at least twice a year, and they are really into the girls leading meetings and all the girls working towards Bronze and now Silver Awards.
Reach out to the troop leaders and find out more. Let your daughter try it and definitely be open to the idea that it's a different experience everywhere and for every girl. |
Anonymous
+1 It does vary quite a bit by local troop leaders, since there isn't the same kind of coherent curriculum provided for GS. In general though, Scouts BSA is more outdoors-focused, GS much less so. Which approach does your DD prefer? |
Anonymous
| Go watch the Barbie movie for a quick reminder that the world we live in is still controlled by men. Then realize it might benefit your daughter to be in an empowering space with all girls, led by women. |
Anonymous
BSA Scouts is sex-segregated. It is also an empowering girls space, with girls taking on leadership roles beginning in MS. |
Anonymous
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. That sounds really painful. I'd let her go where her friends are. In my experience, Girl Scout troops are supposed to be more kid-led than Boy Scouts. So the Girl Scouts should be voting as a group on activities and badges. Of course, if they vote to do kayaking but no parent is certified, then it's more work to track down other volunteers to lead it or it's more $$ to go with an outfitter. Some troops may vote to focus on crafts and indoor badges, some troops are very high adventure focused and largely do camping and outings rather than crafts and childcare badges. Especially during covid, many troops ended up doing a lot of computer badges like cybersecurity and coding. Most troops are a mix. Regarding bullying, I'd guess you'd see that less as the girls get older. When kids are little, they may sign up because their parents want them to. When they're older, it's hopefully more self-selecting and the kids who continue to show up really buy into the Girl Scout law. They're often the stereotypical "nice girls" of the school. Many are pretty quirky, at least the ones who go to summer camps, and it's great to see them as leaders who don't necessarily follow trends just to follow trends. If there are any problems with bullying, please speak to the troop leaders. |