Scoutmaster help/guidance

[DrResQ]

Hi all, here is my background in Scouting. I Have been involved in Scouting for only 4 years and at the beginning of this year, I volunteered to take over SM duties. I have taken all the adult leadership courses I could attend within our Council (Illowa 133). I wear the trained patch and I am currently in Woodbadge.

I am asking for help from experienced Scouters to share with me what works and what doesn't.

#1 The issue I am having is how to get the Scouts to understand, embrace, and execute to the best of their ability, the Boy-Led troop/patrol. To me it means, they decide what they want to do (within reason), figure out the steps to get there, and assign responsibilities to try and get it done. I am there to guide them as needed.

That being said, The boys show up consistently, they are good at Scout skills, they give a lot in the form of service projects, and work very well as a team. The first winter camp outing I went on with these young men was about 8 degrees at night. It froze all our food (oops, my bad), yet none whined. I am proud of our Scouts. Every summer camp I get at least half of the troop to do the mile swim with me. Some of them have done it 3 times.

Earlier today^
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Later tonight \/

Reading on here that I should learn everything and know my group's history, I decided to buy Scoutmastership by Baden-Powell.

Is my problem patience ? I just read this and it gave me pause.

"A man dared to tell me the other day that he was the happiest man in the world! I had to tell him of one who is still happier. You need not suppose that either of us in attaining this happiness had never had difficulties to contend with. Just the opposite. It is the satisfaction of having successfully faced difficulties and borne pin-pricks that gives completeness to the pleasure of having overcome them.

Don't expect your life to be a bed of roses; there would be no fun in it if it were. So, in dealing with the Scouts, you are bound to meet with disappointments and setbacks. Be patient: more Britons ruin their work or careers through want of patience than do so through drink or other vices. You will have to bear patiently with irritating criticisms and red tape bonds to some extent; but your reward will come. The satisfaction which comes of having tried to do one's duty at the cost of self-denial, and of having developed characters in the boys which will give them a different status for life, brings such a reward as cannot well be set down in writing.

The fact of having worked to prevent the recurrence of those evils which, if allowed to run on, would soon be rotting the nation, gives a man the solid comfort that he has done something, at any rate, for his country, however humble may be his position."

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Thanks to JJ_BPK for helping me this morning. Your pm got me from a buckshot post to a bullet point with just 1 word.

Earlier today ^
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Later tonight \/

I am having a difficult time writing what I want to say. I took JJ_BPK pm advising me on when I can "enumerate" my need for a mentor to post a thread. I did not know that word and looked it up and dwelled hard on what I need help with. Keeping that word in mind and reading a post on having purpose, got me to what I want to happen (#1). Reading here to know my group's history, got me to buy a book. That book, and the quote from it above, is telling me I am lacking patience. If I am proud of boys, they work well as a team, why am I sweating the small stuff. I just need to make it fun.

Anyway, thank you JJ_BPK for taking the time out to pm me. That just seemed to help. Strange what things can create a spark (this place is a tinderbox). I still look forward to talking to other Scouters on here and learning from their experiences.