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I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!)
#28
RE: I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!)
Yeah... I have issues with the BSA's religious leanings, but I do respect the way they require family involvement for the younger scouts. Girl Scouts is the opposite. The leader training is all about kicking the parents out of the room. We always have to have two registered background-checked adults from different families in the room, but other than that, we're instructed to tell parents that it's "Girl Scouts, not mommy and me" and encourage them to drop their kids off at events. For some of the larger events, we're actually limited to a certain number of chaperones. My first year, I had parents pulling their kids out of events or having fits (direct at me, of course) because I wasn't allowed to bring more than 3 adults... and they all wanted to come... It really puts you in a weird spot. And then when you NEED adults (because you have to cancel events without adequate supervision) everyone has the attitude like "well, you encouraged me to drop off my kids and now I'm comfortable with it...so screw you, I'm leaving". And when I realized that we had gotten to that point, I quit...

If I were able to start over again, with the knowledge that I now have, I would completely ignore 90% of the instructions from the Girl Scout "higher ups" and make the first few years of Girl Scouting more of a family thing. I had no idea what I was getting into, so I listened to the trainers and the guidelines, and it was obviously wrong. Everything in the Girl Scout training sets the leader up in a position that's antagonistic to the parents in many ways. It literally drove me crazy. I signed up to be a leader of children, to help small children have fun and learn things, not to be a wrangler of half-witted cranky lazy adults who were just looking for reasons to get mad at me all the time.

I know it happens with sports too. I was talking to a kids softball coach and he was telling me about how they'll have games at night...and parents will be late to pick up their kids... totally leaving their children standing in a field as it gets darker and darker. And he's terrified because it's a bunch of girls and he's a grown man and his assistant coach will have to leave, so it'll just be him and a bunch of girls standing in a field in the dark.. and they're not answering their phones.. and so far everyone has always shown up. But he's dreading the night where someone no-shows and he has to decide whether to drive the kid home with him, drive her to her own house to see if anyone is there, or drive her to the police station which is the official league policy..but which sounds really messed up.

We were commiserating on how shocking it is that parents will sign their kids up for an activity that is totally run by unpaid volunteers.. and then act badly and completely disrespect the volunteers. In my family, if my kids like an activity, we go out of our way to support the people who are making it happen... whether they're unpaid volunteers or highly paid professionals... My kids' dance teacher goes out of her way to make the class special and fun, so we treat her well (cards, prompt responses to requests, offers to help with special events, always showing up on time and picking our kids up on time, etc.). We also pay quite a bit for the classes.

The parents in my troop were basically like "I don't like you. I don't respect you. Here, take my kid, I'm going to pick her up late and not be contactable at all." .... it was not only massively disrespectful to me, it's absolutely no way to treat a child! If I hated someone even half as much as those other parents seemed to hate me, I'd never leave my child with them. It's baffling.

(I should note, that it wasn't ever parents who openly despised me... just a few...but their cruddy attitudes seemed to spread to the others. Like... no parent is going to go out of their way to help when they see other families being totally useless and getting away with it)
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Messages In This Thread
I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!) - by Aroura - September 5, 2015 at 4:07 am
RE: I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!) - by Aroura - September 6, 2015 at 12:31 pm
RE: I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!) - by GUBU - January 19, 2018 at 7:01 pm
RE: I'm a Girl scout leader (who's about to quit!) - by janeway - January 21, 2018 at 11:10 am

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