For Adults - The Patience of Youth-Led
| Category: | For Adults |
|---|---|
| Notes: | For adult leaders, especially new assistant leaders and parents who are camping with the troop for the first time. Good at leader training, a pre-campout adult briefing, or a committee meeting. Part of a series for adult audiences - see the other minutes in this category. |
Here's a scene every adult leader will recognize.
The patrol is trying to set up a dining fly. It's taking forever. The ropes are tangled, the poles are leaning, and they're arguing about which knot to use. You know exactly how to fix it. You could have the whole thing up in thirty seconds.
And everything in you wants to walk over and do it.
Don't.
There's an old saying in Scouting: never do for a Scout what a Scout can do for themselves. It sounds simple. It's one of the hardest things we're asked to do. Watching young people struggle with something we could solve instantly goes against every instinct we have as parents and as adults.
But think about what happens when we step in. The dining fly goes up, and the Scouts learn one thing: when it gets hard, an adult will fix it. Now think about what happens when we don't. It takes twenty minutes. The fly is crooked. But they figured it out. They argued, they compromised, someone remembered the taut-line hitch, and they did it. That's a patrol that just got stronger.
Our job isn't to make sure things go smoothly. It's to make sure they're safe, and then to let the Scouts lead, even when they lead slowly, even when they get it wrong. Ask questions instead of giving answers. Stand back with your coffee. Let the crooked dining fly stay crooked.
The program works when we let it. Our patience is part of the program.