Guiders Staff Room Part 3

I'm really lucky with my district, all the leaders really know what they're doing so I don't have to do much. I'm much more worried about my name being on a list of potential camp advisors as one of the few leaders in the County with a camp license and no other county job.

Welcome welcome!

How are you finding being DC? I was meant to be taking over this month, but someone else came forward instead and is letting the leader who stole unit funds remain in place despite the arrangement that she leaves once it's paid back, might consider it next time round.

Hi, just found this via one of the FB groups. I'm a MN lurker and also a Guide leader in Scotland. I've just taken over as DC as well, but have a nice small district to look after.
I'm pretty saddened by all the trans vitriol - I think it's a great thing that HQ have a clear and inclusive policy. Can't see my unit being infiltrated by teenage sex pests FFS.

We've done writing to other units too recently to do it for thinking day, we usually just adapt the WAGGGS pack but recruitment is definitely not something we need to be doing, our waiting list is already huge!

We got out a map, picked a country and decided we'd learn about guiding there.

Ria, Wise Owl is bringing in a map and we'll get them to find the general area the card came from. Now that's a community activity, surely?!

great. I'll pm you the address

Anyone else before I go to Facebook?

Inflagrante that would be great! I'm hoping it'll help them grasp 'guiding-outside-of-our-village'. Would anyone else like to join in?

I didn't say, but thought, that our slight tendency to blue knickers/un-PC behaviour that I have noticed may stand us in good stead here. In other words, un-girl-like behaviour may be clamped down upon and anyone who is saying they are a woman (but the other leaders know fine well is/used to be a man) and who wants to share a room with a female leader will not be treated equally, I suspect.

In more relevant news, we only had 2 Guides again at this week's meeting. One dad picking up said "are you going to merge with another unit". No we are not and I have no idea where he got that idea from. We actually have enough in the unit to manage fine as a unit and to do outings etc. either with another Guide unit or with our Brownies (and where we have sisters the latter is helpful). We just have very poor attendance at the moment and I have no idea why!

Various other reasons we are not going to merge a) we are the only unit in our geographical area and girls wouldn't travel to the next one - before we opened Guides I did our Brownies and nobody moved up b) we are the only one meeting on our night and ditto and c) it's the only time I can volunteer (combination of day/time/childcare) so I wouldn't be moving to another unit, unless they merged with us of course.

Interesting posts. That thread have me the rage by p2, so I watched off!

Ria my unit made cards to swap tonight, want to swap? anyone else?

The trans thread gave me rage

I honestly don't believe that many boys think "ooh I can pretend to be a girl and go to brownies and go to sleepovers and share a room". I believe some boys believe they are girls. And possibly they're encouraged in this more now than in the past where they would have just been less macho boys. But I don't believe in the hordes of men pretending to be women so they can access female only spaces. They feel they are a girl, they want to be a girl, they want to act like a girl, why would they act like a boy and be inappropriate to the girls? I imagine these children are far more self conscious especially about their body than any other girl.

I don't have any trans girls in my groups. But if I did I would discuss with their parents what was appropriate, e.g. Them being in a tent on their own or sharing with particular friends who were understanding or them only attending the day part of camp if that's what they and their parents felt was best.

My brownies come from about three local primary schools. They would know if a boy in their class changed gender (having known them since age 4) and I hope would have been supported in dealing with it in school. So if that child then started brownies it wouldn't be a big deal to the ones from the same school at least.

A friend of mine has a 13 year old son. He quite calmly refers to a friend of his as trans. Young people are more aware of these things than most adults and seem more able to take it in their stride.

Formatting mess up AND duplicate post..

Sorry for slight hijack - I just spent ages writing something on the trans thread but it got closed. This was meant for there. Anyone got any further thoughts?

Guider here and have not read the whole thread but my thoughts are:

Very young boys living as girls - I know there's been a whole load of stuff on why a lot of these will be pressurised into believing that liking pink= being a girl. This is very sad and a problem of society as a whole but these boys won't be likely to be a threat to Rainbows. My DS went on residential with a mixed age group and is under the impression he'll be a Rainbow when older.

Older children: again they may be in a stereotyped box due to dim parents, or possibly (but not too likely) they may have decided this is fun/alternative/to their advantage. Guiders are used to dealing with clashes, domination of a group, bullying among groups of girls. I think we can cope with one boy doing this.
Teenagers: a bit more problematic. Senior Section groups tend to be very small and often have fragile members. I would welcome some general guidance on dealing with abuse by girls to other girls BUT again this won't be specific to trans individuals.
Volunteers: Boys aged 14 and men can already volunteer with GG. They can also go on residentials and currently have to have separate accommodation (and bathrooms - awkward for my 4yo who didn't want to go into the gents on his own).
Risks here are women who are aggressively pushing their right to share accommodation etc. In this instance it would be good to have guidance on volunteers' rights to feel safe and e.g. my rights as unit leader to say "X and Y will be in this tent and Z in that one, thank you". I've already done this with a slightly uncertain adult female interaction and would feel happy doing it again.

I would also hazard a guess that girls who've been living as girls for quite some time will be less likely to behave in inappropriate ways that are specific to boys (if you see what I mean) while parents and girls will be fully aware that girls who have newly started living as girls, were not girls until recently.

Does anyone have any Thinking Day activities for Rainbows? Last year we did paper doll chains with different countries' Rainbow uniforms, which went down well. The official stuff this year is all about recruitment, but that's not a problem for us at the moment. I thought possibly exchanging cards with another unit?

Ooh I like the idea of an extended library visit. Ours is near the park which opens up plenty of opportunities.

Sadly the pottery places within reasonable distance have both recently closed. I put a shout out on a local crafters group to see if anyone could come and show the girls something. Hopefully something will come
Of that as I think there are plenty of skills which are slowly slipping away. My own sewing is passable for repairs.

My Guide unit is the same, we have 7 (maybe 6) with a couple of Brownies coming up soon. We need 10 really to fund ourselves.

We're doing a recruitment push for Thinking Day of getting local businesses to give out packs of seeds to every customer to 'grow our unit' with an attached postcard from the girls explaining why girls should join our unit 'grow friendships', 'grow skills', etc.

Hopefully that will gain some interest but if not we may seriously be in trouble!

Tesco was brilliant, my brownies loved it. If you have one local that's an easy one for you as they do all the work

I had 5 guides this week, plus side is they all got on together despite being spread out in age and 4 different schools between the 5 of them. Downside is we really can't afford to run at this size for very long. All the guide units in the district seem to be having the same issue so at least it's not just us. My brownies on the other hand is full to bursting, 5 new starters and only 1 gone up to guides. (My brownies go to the guide unit that had the same meeting place as us, I do a different guide unit in the same district).

Local library? Our Brownies had a sleepover at our library as part of their centenary year, they were allowed "behind the scenes" to see how it all worked, helped reshelve books etc and it was very well received. The librarian did a story time thing with them as well.

Do you have a pottery painting place nearby? All of our girls from Rainbows to Guides love that. Also a lot of stores like Pets at Home, Tesco, etc, will let you come for visits & run activities.

We do have a similar issue in that we meet in a village on a Monday night and obviously a lot of out-of-meeting place trips seem a bit much to ask of parents on a weekday.

So posted too soon. Any suggestions for easy to arrange trips when town has limited facilities and we'd have to travel most places would be greatly accepted.

Morning,'I'm hopeless at remembering you guys are here as I spend a lot of time in the fb groups.

First night back at rainbows last night, we're down to 9 girls. We've had a steady decline over the last 18 months from 25 girls so I'm quite happy with that. We had a new enquiry who decided to join another club instead and one who has left due to a clash of activities. It seems we're being hit hard by sporting activities at the moment. New sports clubs for young ones are popping up all over here, and typically clashing with our meeting night. Another unit opened in September too, but it was very much needed so I'm not worried there. The thinking day focus of growing guiding is going to be an interesting topic to cover.

So I'm planning a fun and activity filled term to kick start 2017. Starting with flat Olivia as that worked really well last time, and I'm hoping to drop a line to some of the groups we had last time too as a catch up.

Maybe a trip or two if I can find somewhere local enough. There's some fab places about an hour's travel away, but it's sometimes a lot to ask getting the girls' parents to travel on a meeting night. Work commitments and so on, or funding the bus. Although with numbers a mini bus is a possibility. We've done public transport on a day trip which was thoroughly enjoyed.

Back this week and shattered. There's a nice long guiding thread on aibu www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2825938-To-be-told-if-a-boy-is-sleeping-with-the-girls-at-girl-guides-camp

First meeting back tonight, went well despite us being down to me and two YLs (eek). It sounds trite but after being knackered at the end of last term and spending the holidays getting fed up of planning, having an hour where everything goes (more or less) smoothly and everyone has fun was a wonderful reminder of why I love it.