Scouts: A Learning Experience

As a Scoutmaster, I was responsible for making sure that my scouts went on campouts once a month. For months, I had done my best to make sure the boys planned for everything when it came to the campouts. It was like pulling teeth to get them to sit down and plan out where they would camp, what they would eat, what groceries needed to be purchased to fill out the meal plan, etc. There was one campout, where I am absolutely sure the boys learned the value of planning ahead.

One campout, the boys had planned out their menu and where they would go etc. The mom of 2 of the boys took her 2 boys and one other scout to buy the groceries for the troop. Bless her heart, she let them fail! Why do I say that? When they got to the grocery store, mom stayed up front while the scouts went shopping. She shadowed them the whole time to make sure they didn't destroy the store from the front of the store.

Well, the boys got everything on their list and came back up front. Mom, bless her heart, looked down in the basket and asked, "How many boys will you be feeding?" The boys told her how many would be eating. She looked down in the basket again and asked, "Are you sure you have enough food?" That should have been a tipoff to these boys that they didn't have enough food. They, however, answered by saying, "Yeah, yeah, we have enough food." Mom, being persistent, asked again, "Are you sure you won't run out of food? You are feeding x number of boys." They responded with, "We have enough. Let's go!" So, they left the store after buying the food in their basket. At this point, you can see what's coming, I hope.

I had to work late the day of the campout and a couple of the dads got all the boys transported out to the campsite. When I arrived, it was about dinner time. I unpacked my food and went to get utensils out of the trailer. I found what I was looking for, but it wasn't washed from the previous campout and needed to be washed. I asked, "Did anyone bring any water?" The scouts responded with, "I didn't think we would need to bring water with us." I asked them, "Do you see any water spigots out here?" It was a primitive area without posted campsites, if you couldn't tell. One of the dads spoke up and said, "I'll take a couple of the water containers and go back to town and fill them up." I said, "Great. Go for it." This dad took off with the water containers to get them filled up.

Meanwhile, it's starting to get dark and the boys are starting to get hungry. I, and the other dads, had planned our own menu and had purchased our own food. So, we set up the stoves and got our food cooking. We were cooking steaks with veggies and a dutch oven cobbler. When we broke out our food they all started complaining that we were eating better than they were. I told them, "Of course we are eating better than you, we brought our own food from our houses for this campout.

Anyway, they started cooking their hot dogs. That was what they had planned for their dinner. The hot dogs started getting done and someone asked, "Where are the hot dog buns?" The scout who had gone to the store and bought the supplies spoke up, "They are in the trunk of the dad's car that went to get water." Scouts are resourceful, I'll give them that. All the other scouts, except for the one who had spoken up and the dad's son who had gone for water, started eating the hot dogs without buns. We had some boys there that could have eaten a whole pack of hot dogs by themselves. The 2 boys who were waiting for the hot dog buns to return sat in a tent talking and amusing themselves until dad got back. By the time dad got back the hot dogs were history. These two boys ended up eating hot dog buns for dinner and whatever they could beg from the adults. I thought to myself, "This is working out quite well. The boys, hopefully, are learning that they have to THINK when they are planning an outing like a campout. They may go to bed hungry, but they certainly won't starve to death before they get home." As you can probably tell, there were some boys that went to bed quite hungry that night.

The next morning, I got up early to get the adult's breakfast started. I had planned a One Oven Breakfast in a dutch oven and needed to get charcoal heated up and everything mixed up and cooking, because it took an hour to cook this meal. The dad that had gone to town got up and helped me start mixing ingredients together for this meal. The recipe I was using called for 1 and 1/2 dozen eggs. We got all the eggs broken up and mixed in our other ingredients and got it all going in the dutch oven.

Meanwhile, the boys got up while we were mixing up our ingredients and started breaking out their food. They had purchased 2 16 oz. cartons of the pre-broken eggs. I could just see their little minds working in the store thinking, "I hate getting egg white on my hands when I break eggs. Hey! Here's some eggs that are already broken. And look, it says on the carton that there are the equivalent of 8 eggs per carton. We only need to feed 8 boys, 2 cartons should be enough." Well, they got both cartons poured out onto the grill and started cooking them. Those cartons of eggs really don't produce a lot when it comes to scrambled eggs. The scout doing the cooking turned to me with the pan in his hand and asked, "Do you think we'll have enough eggs?" Knowing that the answer was no. He then asked if I had some extra eggs that they could have. I told him that I had just dumped a dozen and a half eggs into the dutch oven and it wouldn't be done for another hour. He was dissappointed and the boys had about 1 bite each of eggs and they were gone. They had also bought some hash browns, a 5 lb. bag, for breakfast but nobody could find it.

Meanwhile, the adult's breakfast is finishing up cooking and I've made enough for at least 8 people. I was only feeding 5. Of course I had leftovers, but I told the boys, "You have to wait until we have finished eating before you can have any." I have never seen so many boys drooling like puppies before. We finished eating and I turned what was leftover to the boys. They finished off everything in the dutch oven including the crust on the bottom in less than 3 minutes.

What I was attempting to teach them was that, 1) You have to plan for success or else you will fail, and 2) When estimating how much food you will need for a meal, estimate on the high side.

When it came time to take the boys home, I took the 2 boys home that had done the shopping for the meals. When we got to their house, they started taking their gear out of the car and found out that the 5 lb. bag of hash browns was in the car the whole time. One of these boys had been told to bring those out of the car and put them in the cooler, but he felt like playing more than working, so he blew it off and didn't bring them in. He also forgot what he had done with them. Oops!

When I dropped them off, I took the mom and dad aside and thanked them profusely for letting the boys fail. The mom told me about their excursion to the grocery store and how everything went. She even gave me the commentary that I mentioned above. Mom took it as a compliment, but I could tell dad was a little ticked at me because I let his boys go hungry. I don't know if these boys will remember this campout, but I can tell you this, I will never forget it. Thank you Scouts for teaching me.

A Parent's Life Part 2

Getting kids to sleep on their own is one of the ways we learn patience. :-) When our children are babies, they require almost constant attention. They need us to feed them, change their diapers, dress them and, in some cases, sleep with them. Being a dad, I loved to hold my kids when they were babies and let them fall asleep on my chest on the couch. I got a nap and my wife got a break from the baby. But when it came time for bedtime at night, our kids were probably just like yours, in that they wanted a drink of water or they "forgot" to brush their teeth. You and I both know that all these tactics are stalling tactics for them wanting to stay up, when we know they need the sleep as much or more than we do.

When our kids were small they would scream bloody murder when we put them to bed. On our first child, we would get up in the nighttime and comfort/feed him until he fell asleep and then put him back in his bed. After a number of very long nights, my wife and I decided that it was time the baby learned to sleep on his own. This was where we learned to have patience. :-) We would take care of all the baby's needs and put them to bed. When he screamed/cryed we would open his door and let him know that we were still there, but we didn't pick him up. We would then close the door and go lay down. Inevitably, he would start crying before we got back to bed. We would wait 5 long minutes, then go to his door and reassure him that we were still there and then close the door. When he started crying again, we would wait 10 very long minutes before checking on him. Eventually, he knew that when it was time for bed, he had to find some way to comfort himself and go to sleep.

With the rest of our kids, we started the routine within one or two weeks after we brought them home from the hospital. I can honestly say that teaching them to go to sleep on their own was one of the hardest things I have had to do. Nothing pulls at a parent's heartstrings more than hearing their child cry. I've done it with 5 kids and it was just as hard with the last as it was with the first. It was also one of the best things I could have done for my kids. They learned that they could sleep on their own.

My youngest is now 12 and my older kids are in high school and college. I'll talk about the teen years in my next post...

A Parent's Life Part 1

As parents, we have a responsibility to our kids to set boundaries and rules for them. As we all know, kids will, when they know they have boundaries or rules with mom and dad, test those boundaries. It is our job to make sure those boundaries/rules are enforced. This is the tough part about being a parent. We don't always want to enforce the boundaries/rules because we don't want our kids to be mad at us. Personally, I feel that kids need to know that we will enforce those boundaries/rules even if they do get mad at us at the time. We are NOT their friends, although we like to be, we ARE their PARENTS.

The time to set boundaries/rules with kids is when they are young. How young? Personally, I feel that kids need to learn there are boundaries from the time they are still in diapers and feeding from a bottle. Why do I say this? From the time that kids are babies, they learn from us what they can and can't do. If we let them sleep in bed with us, they feel like they can sleep in our bed with us all the time. If we let them eat whatever they want, they know that they can throw a tantrum and get whatever they want to eat. Parents need to let kids know that there are some things that are negotiable and some things that are not.

Learning how to sleep in their own bed is a biggie. I'll talk about this more next time...