Bringing brother to girl scouts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In GS lingo, younger sibs are called "Tagalongs" -- generally events specify whether Tagalongs are welcome or can be accommodated or not. It's not generally appropriate for troop meetings, which are geared to a specific age and designed to help foster independence from the family unit. I'd say something to the troop leader, who should probably just start saying something along the lines of "tagalongs welcome for the hay ride!" or "sorry, but we can't accommodate tagalongs for the computer programming badge activity" or whatever. There's a lot of activities where younger siblings really do disrupt the experience for the older girls, and as a troop leader trying to stretch a buck to keep costs down (which is a big push in GS), I'd be a little irritated at having to get supplies for additional kids -- if we are doing a particular badge activity like jewelry making or tie-dying or making journals, I may have only bought enough supplies for the troop members. Sometimes we invited younger siblings for the last 15 minutes or something, if we were doing something that might be fun for them like the Pet Badge or racing cars or something.

It's totally different from Cub Scouts, where an adult member is REQUIRED to stay for the meeting until they hit Boy Scouts in 6th grade. Apparently BSA does NOT want to foster independence from the family until 6th grade -- they really want the parents there to rein those boys in. I've been pretty active in both GS and BSA for almost a decade now, so I'm pretty familiar with the differences in the programs.

What a shame that after almost a decade of being active in boy scouts, you are still so ignorant.

I was half kidding but it is a major difference between the programs. With BSA, there is a sharp change between Cubs and Boy Scouts. My dad was a Boy Scout leader, my brothers and nephews were Eagle Scouts, and my own som is very involved in his seventh year of scouting, so I am pretty familiar. Our pack required a parent to stay through AOL.
GS really does not want parents staying unless they are a designated volunteer (in which case they are there for the troop, not their daughter) or there are particular issues.