Before you read any further please promise not to comment on this post as if I personally made any of the comments below. Promise? Okay, then read on. The comments listed here are responses to a question posted on an online parents forum: One of my brothers kids is now a Boy Scout. I remember being in the Boy Scouts when I was a kid and felt it was kind of a Nerdy activity....
When Webelos and their parents visit one of our meetings we send the Webelos to our Senior Patrol leader who sees that they are welcomed and join in the activities. The parents meet with myself and a couple of Assistant Scoutmasters. I used to have a set program for visiting parents. I would sit with them and go through some standard information and answer questions. Then I would ask the ASM’s to do a pre-arranged talk about some aspect of the Troop program....
A good discussion of most common questions about Webelos to Scouts transition at Ask Andy: The Webelos bridge crossing ceremony is to publicly show the transition, or crossing over, from a Cub Scout pack to a Boy Scout troop. At one side of the bridge is the pack he’s leaving. On the other side are the representatives of the troop he’s chosen to join (always the Scoutmaster and most often the troop’s Senior Patrol Leader—the highest-ranking youth leader of the troop—too)....
From a letter by the 2005 National Chief of the Order of the Arrow; The Boy Scouts of America recently completed a survey of boys who had left the Scouting program. I would appreciate it if you read this letter and share the information with your unit leadership. The major conclusions from the survey are that young men drop out of the program due to the lack of a good unit program and not enough outdoor adventure....
Let’s build a “membership standards” Scouting checkpoint at the gate of our scout camp. Adult leaders can gain entrance only after they pass inspection on their adherence to the scout oath and law to enter. This way we can be sure to exclude atheists, the divorced, smokers, drug users, alcoholics, tax cheats, people who are overweight, adulterers, fornicators, the envious, homosexuals,the lustful, the prideful, the gluttonous, the dishonest, and the slothful....