Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is gross. Here we are, all adults discussing the coolness or nerdyness of our children. What the hell is wrong with people?

I am on a first name basis with the owner and several regular patrons at a board game cafe, and I have paid over $50 for a set of metal dice. My child is a nerd, and I can recognize other nerds when I see them.

I think the racial question is a real one, and I don't know the answer.

My son is a Boy Scout in a large, well-established troop in a neighborhood where the schools are probably 70% Black or Hispanic. The troop is not entirely white, but overwhelmingly so at all levels, and the entire leadership is white men.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but it's worth visiting a couple of troops if you are worried about how being a "lonely only" would play out for your kid.

Anonymous wrote:Our troop is heavily Asian and Indian, used to be more Caucasian. Kids play sports. Some may be considered cool but most are pretty nerdy.

We also have lots of kids who are ADHD and disruptive. There are lots of Behavioral issues and parents are in denial. Scout Master is challenged. It’s like school.

My kid achieved Eagle. One more to go. They enjoy the outdoors and did all the high adventure. It is a good experience.

Poor behavior was a big problem in our Cub Scout pack. We spoke to a kid once who was behaving really badly and we were then reprimanded by the leader (who we think was actually the father of the boy, although we didn’t know that at the time) that “some kids have disabilities” and so we aren’t allowed to have any expectations around their behavior. (The kid was ripping up others’ stuff and scribbling over their work when they had just put a lot of effort into it. And the father/leader was not supervising his kid closely to ensure that he was respectful, despite apparently knowing that he’s not usually capable of appropriate behavior.)

This whole thread is gross. Here we are, all adults discussing the coolness or nerdyness of our children. What the hell is wrong with people?

Anonymous wrote:Our troop is heavily Asian and Indian, used to be more Caucasian. Kids play sports. Some may be considered cool but most are pretty nerdy.

We also have lots of kids who are ADHD and disruptive. There are lots of Behavioral issues and parents are in denial. Scout Master is challenged. It’s like school.

My kid achieved Eagle. One more to go. They enjoy the outdoors and did all the high adventure. It is a good experience.

Looks and attractiveness may make a troop look cooler. Our school has a dominant Girl Scouts culture. Many girls participate. I guess it is almost like a grade level social group. There are outings, overnight adventures. Girls celebrate birthdays together. Moms (and some dads) are friends. The girls in our troop do dance, sports and good looking. We actually don’t have many/any “nerdy” girls. We do have many girls who do dance and gymnastics.

Our troop is heavily Asian and Indian, used to be more Caucasian. Kids play sports. Some may be considered cool but most are pretty nerdy.

We also have lots of kids who are ADHD and disruptive. There are lots of Behavioral issues and parents are in denial. Scout Master is challenged. It’s like school.

My kid achieved Eagle. One more to go. They enjoy the outdoors and did all the high adventure. It is a good experience.

Scouts is cool. Can’t wait to see the all- girl troops we have one but I have not seen them just yet
-mom

If your kid is well liked and popular, your child will be liked. The activity and sports he does should not matter. Every neighborhood and school is different.

I grew up in an area where girl scouts and cub scouts was common as was soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, football, etc. it was very “American” and mostly white. We live in a diverse area and different ethnic groups participate more heavily in different activities. The basketball team has more black kids but there are still white and Asian kids. The science teams are majority Asian. Scouts is mixed race. I don’t think my kids think it is uncool to be a smart kid doing model UN and going to Harvard or Princeton. The dads in scouts are cool in my book. Any dad willing to help all those kids cut their pinewood derby cars is cool to me. Being selfless and in tune with nature is cool.

NP - DS is in Scouts in 6th grade, I have just started realizing how the time commitment looks and we sat down to work backwards for him to get Eagle around 9th grade. I basically told him that he needs to be done by then because so many other things will take priority. For him, he is sporty and involved in multiple sports. There is no problem in missing meetings, honestly it seems like the only reason to go is to get things signed off. His meetings are on Mondays, so he will work Sunday night on several things to get them signed on Monday. He probably does 70% of camping weekends and has had to go late or leave early because of other commitments. His troop is almost all white, but so is our town. We have just added a girls troop, which actually now has more members than the boys side. All in all it's been a good experience and not uncool where we are at least.

Pp here. I just reread your post. I’m not sure what you mean by cool. Scouts is very American. I grew up as an Asian minority and always was curious about Girl Scouts. At our elementary school, many girls are Girl Scouts. The demographics of the troops is very representative of our elementary school.

Most kids seem to drop out by the time they are in upper elementary/middle school due to other commitments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian American here. Both my boys did cub scouts and my daughter did Girl Scouts. Most of the boys were athletic. We have had African American, mixed race, Indian, Iranian, Chinese and Koreans in our troops.

This would be great. Can you give a general idea of where you are in the DMV?

We used to live by a military base and the dads and kids were athletic. Camping, fishing, archery, building fires, etc were all cool for my boys.

We now live in McLean. Each grade level has different boys but every troop my three kids have been in have had athletic kids. My kids are all athletic as were many of their friends. My boys did not move on to Boy Scouts because they were too busy with sports, but those elementary Cub Scout years were a great time.

To get to be an Eagle Scout is very impressive. I’m not sure where this “cool” or “sporty” obsession comes from. Eagle Scouts as a whole are much more successful in life than someone cool who played baseball as a kid

Here are some billionaire CEOs who made it all the way to Eagle Scouts…

Steven Spielberg -- Founder of Dreamworks
Stephen Bechtel, Jr. -- Co-Owner of the Bechtel Corporation
Charles F. Dolan -- Founder of HBO and Cablevision
Michael Bloomberg -- Mayor of New York City
Bill Gates -- Co-Founder of Microsoft
Rex Tillerson -- CEO of Exxon Mobil
Hank Paulson -- CEO of Goldman Sachs
J.W. Marriott Jr. -- CEO of Marriott
Walter Scott Jr. -- Former CEO of Peter Kiewit
John Edward Anderson -- CEO of Topa Equities
H. Ross Perot -- Founder of Perot Systems

And there are plenty of successful non-billionaires who were Eagle Scouts. Cool gets you nowhere so who cares?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Typically, the racial composition reflects the area the troop is in. Also, I'd never refer to a nonwhite child as a "minority." Its such an old skool term. In my county white people are the ethnic minority so it wouldn't even make sense.

My area is 25% East Asian/Indian and we don’t see any Asian or Indian Scouts.

We live in McLean. We have had a two Asian troop leaders, one Indian and one Asian. Our current Girl Scouts troop is about 25% Asian. I have seen a majority Girl Scouts troop on zoom where both leaders were Asian and photo of troop was majority Asian.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minorities, yes
Cool kids, no

I disagree. there are about a 1/3 who are cool No one runs around saying what rank they are as school , for sure

My boys are scouts . It’s not boy scouts any more btw . We all like it a lot

I guess it matters how you define cool kids. If you mean kids who are the male equivalent of judgmental queen bees or the ones at keg parties on the weekend, probably not. But our troop has boys on JV sports teams, boys on travel sports team, boys with girlfriends, boys who play in cool bands, etc. Theh do tend athletic because most of them will do the high adventure summer camps. This summer my son is doing a 65 mile backpacking trip with massive elevation climbs — personally, I could not do it.
I’ve said before on this forum that if you’re the kind of person who worries a lot about whether your kid is hanging out with the cool kids, scouts is probably not the right vibe for you. If your kid is secure enough on their sense of self that they can be friendly with all types of people: that’s a different thing.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of pedos still in Boy Scouts?

I’m sure. They are wherever kids gather.

It’s a different culture these days. Lots of awareness about safety for kids in that way. I feel much safer about scouts than any other activity they do. Soccer training for example has the kids alone with the coach sometimes but that’s not allowed to happen in scouts.

It’s true — youth sports has a lot less control in place.