Quiet Weekends

 The boys (by which I mean all 3 of them) have gone off camping this weekend with Trail Life. It's the "family campout" which does mean I could have gone. But meh. I don't love tent camping. And I'm feeling a little at odds with the main leadership of the troop so figured maybe it was better all around if I just recused myself.

Plus this way I have some quiet time to myself, and I've been feeling a need for that solo recharging of late. I guess we'll see how it goes. As tends to be the case, whenever I start to feel like that, and then get some time alone, I invariably miss the noise and chaos.

I have word count goals for my writing, if nothing else, to keep me occupied.

Why am I at odds with the leadership? It boils down to what I consider inappropriate expectations of middle school boys. Eldest bumped into Navigators (the middle school level) last year. And whereas in elementary school, Trail Life is kind of "If you're alive and breathing at the meetings you earn all your awards", in middle school there's actual work to be done and planning that has to take place to make it happen.

I'm all for making kids for for awards. I'm not a fan of everyone gets a trophy. But I'm not a fan of dump the kid in the deep end and say good luck. There has been zero scaffolding -- zero "Hey, let's look at your book so you can see what the requirements are. Maybe I can help you make a plan." Nothing. 

And worse than that, the parents weren't even told "Hey, you should sit down with your son and go through the book and get a handle on things cause it's different now."

It was only when we hit the mid-point of the year last year, and he got nothing at the winter awards when I'd seen him working that I asked what was going on and got basically the above sentence.

So he and I sat down and we read it over and we made a binder and a plan and he started finishing badges.

And I mentioned that it would be good to give parents a heads up -- because no matter how much "it's not about the awards" you want to say it is? I know my kid isn't going to work his tail off without getting the shiny thing at the end of a reasonable amount of time. So yeah, it kind of is about the awards.

Anyway, that went over fairly badly and when I brought it up at the parent meeting this year (after waiting to see if they might volunteer the info), I got the stink eye. So I'm backing away quickly. Because I guess they figure I'm that mom. 

But really all I want is for my kid to have a chance to succeed. He needs to do the work. No question. But he also needs to know what work to do.

Regardless, it got me out of camping, so I'll call it a draw.