Behaviour at Beavers

[KvotheTheBloodless]

I'm an assistant Beaver leader with a large pack (c.25). Kids are aged 6-8.

I'm really, really struggling with the behaviour of some of the kids - inability to listen, concentrate, stay still or keep hands/feet to themselves. When certain kids are there, the whole evening becomes focused on behaviour management rather than the planned activities.

The worst offenders, according to our records, have no SEND issues. Although I'm not a medic, I'd be amazed if that's the case, some of the behaviours are really extreme.

For those of you who volunteer with this age group, is this normal?

And those of you whose DC have behavioural issues due to SEN, do you generally inform the volunteer leaders that your DC have specific issues and provide strategies for coping with them?

I'm struggling to understand what's normal, and trying not to potentially discriminate against kids with disabilities, but it's sooooo hard sometimes!

Ex Beaver leader.... I was going to say this.

My kids go to Beavers and Cubs and the Cubs leader has a system similar to some of those mentioned here - yellow cards for bad behaviour and if you get several you have to miss a session. Red cards for serious bad behaviour which means your parent being called to collect you. There are a couple of kids with SEN for whom adjustments are made.

I volunteer in my Y2 child’s class (so similar age to Beavers) and I was shocked at how poor some of the children’s concentration is (and my Y2 is a summer baby so should in theory be one of the worst). The teacher told me that some of them cannot focus on a piece of work for longer than 10 minutes and I have observed how hard she works to keep everyone engaged and on task. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same children run riot at Beavers without her firm hand on the tiller!

Helper across all sections here
it’s been the first year we’ve had to really have sanctions for behaviour and a bit of a head scratch as to how to manage them. Biggest headache seems to be scouts, it should have been knocked out by now, but they’ve just skirted on the right side to get away with it as it’s fairly low level but adds up.
it’s now causing others to want to leave (including the leaders!). We’ve come up with some plans for this term, so I hope it will quickly resolve itself.

for beavers we always get young leaders to run energetic games first whilst they settle or come in. They seem to struggle more with tiredness this time of year.
You can also do the peg thing primary’s use where names go up and down according to behaviour - I’m on the fence as that needs managing carefully to be fair. Or sitting out of games might work better with your individuals.
good luck

In counterbalance to those with daughters who withdrew their children from Beavers in horror - we had a horrendous time with DD1 in Rainbows (I was disgusted, and really disappointed as I'd got a lot out of Guiding as a child/teen myself - and it was definitely not on as I ended up talking about it with my own old Guide Leader and she was horrified at it) who was basically bullied out by a leader who took a dislike to her. We moved both girls to Beavers and Scouting's been fantastic for them - they're now in the Scout section.

DD1 is suspected ASD/ADHD, DD2 has confirmed ASD, inattentive ADHD, dyspraxia - the leaders have been aware of this from the start and have always supported them both - but I've always been adamant that any support isn't to the detriment of the other kids. There's a handful of kids who've moved up with DD1's age group who are absolutely horrendously behaved - and it's parenting related, not down to diagnoses (I know this group of kids well and the parents are fucking obnoxious, entitled, think their kids are perfect and do as little parenting as possible). It's a hard core of like 4 kids who just try to actively ruin it for everyone - although one child has left so we're down to 3 pains in the arse.

I complained at one point, we had this gang of 4 kids who spent an evening walk actively and openly attempting to push both my DDs into any dog shit or mud that they encountered. One parents' response to being actually spoken to by the leaders about their child's behaviour was to screech "he's autistic" (he was targeting a child also who was autistic), threaten to sue Scouts for discrimination and then never show up to meetings again - so we're down to 3 pains in the arse among a group of generally really decent young people now.

Across all the sections the general approach tends to be getting them to run around like lunatics as much as possible, keep 'em as busy as they can so they don't get time to think about being pains in the arse and taking no shit - but this little group actually nearly broke the Cubs leader by how horrendous they are (they were the same in school as well to the point that we moved schools as they lost control of that whole year group because of this bunch).

Beaver leader here.
It's no different now than years ago, it's not specifically boys or girls. We have nearly 50% girls and they can bounce like everyone else.
We don't run our Beavers around to burn off energy at the start of a session. They are generally all tired from school and some even go swimming before Beavers. In fact we very rarely play running around games.
We have an activity when they come in before we start, that calms them down. Lego, colouring, modelling.
Start is quick then they are broken down into their lodges and they go off to start activities. We have a good number of Leaders so there are 2 leaders per group of 5.
We keep them busy doing stuff, they don't get time to muck about.
Try concentration games like Simon says to get them to listen and concentrate.
All their behaviour is communication of some kind. The frantic running around is often because they are actually tired or over stimulated. If you have someone who is a bit dis inhibited, maybe give them tasks to do like the register or taking pictures of the activities they are doing.

That's not true. There's one around 3 years

Had a similar issue when I was co running beavers. We invited the parents 10mins early one evening and sat everyone down - kids and parents - and explained that the behaviour was becoming unmanageable and that we need to keep people safe whilst having fun. We stated what our behaviour expectations were AND that children who persistently ignored the be safe/be kind ethos would be asked to leave, and we expected parents to work with us and support us in this. It did help and behaviour improved. We made it part of our first day of term session thereafter to make sure parents and children didn’t forget. We also insisted that every set of parents volunteered to help one evening a year minimum (which means they get to see exactly what goes on!)

You get the odd day/activity where you accept the kids will get over excited, but it should be a rare evening - and one where you look back and work out ways to structure it differently next time - but it shouldn’t be 2 hours of hell for the volunteers where you dread it each week, or where the kids are ultimately less than safe.

I disagree with the let them run off steam approach, it's setting the wrong expectations from the beginning and it's a lot harder to calm them down afterwards. There should be a calm and peaceful start to the session. This doesn't mean there's no physical activity, just later on.

I totally agree with this. We have definitely found that behaviour has improved since we expected the beavers to quietly take their place in the circle as soon as they arrive instead of allowing them to run around like headless chickens. A physical game after the opening ceremony is fine, as expectations have already been established. This way of doing things has turned things around for us, and meetings are now much more fun for everyone (kids and leaders!)

10 or so years ago I used to help run a Rainbows group.

All the shy, crafty, outdoorsy in a quiet way girls came to Rainbows and the more extroverted, run-around ones went to Beavers. I have no idea what the shy crafty quiet boys ended up doing!

Then the local Beavers groups switched day and a group of 3 friends moved to Rainbows. Oh my God. The chaos. Those 3 girls decimated our group. All instructions were ignored as they sprinted around the hall, completely oblivious to any direction from us. We tried introducing more movement to the start of each session, tried to get a parent volunteer rota going and cancelled planned activities that would now clearly be too dangerous. We asked if the girls had additional needs (they didn't). We asked a Beavers leader what the fuck we should do and was told this was basically normal and we should seek simply to contain them and provide activities they could dip in and out of as they chose.

It was hell.

My own DD no longer wanted to attend and I had just decided to leave the group and let it fold for my own sanity when Beavers opened a second group on the original day and they moved back.

Some time later my DS joined Scouts. I have no idea whether he was lucky, whether the age range made a huge difference, or if the group was just run particularly well, but it was always calm and well run when I helped out.

This surge does not happen until puberty. It is not hormonal

That is not true

My son didn't attend Beavers, but goes to cubs. He has ASD and is very shy and quiet and the leaders are great with him. I've seen some of the other boys struggle to pay attention or do the bare minimum of listening, very disrespectful, it must be so hard for the volunteers. The Brownies group my dd attends seems so quiet by comparison!

For those of you who are leaders or help out, I'd love to do something to show my appreciation and gratitude to the staff at our Cubs. Would something like boxes of biscuits or chocolates be welcomed, or generally is a donation better so they can buy something the group needs? I can't easily offer my time due to always having a child with me!

It is. That's why toddler boys need to expend energy

Where do people get these ideas 😂

Have you actually studied early childhood development?

Do you have a source for this? It does not appear to have any scientific basis.

I actually literally have, at a university 🤣

The difference between Beavers and school is that Beavers isn't compulsory. If they aren't respecting the rules and there's no SEN, then they obviously don't want to be there and you should ask them to leave so you can focus on the kids that do want to be there. Even if they do have SEN, it's a volunteer run club and if the resources aren't there to support a large number of SEN kids with behavioural difficulties, then that's not your fault.

It's definitely true that boys behave worse than girls but I think it has nothing to do with testosterone and everything to do with how we socialise them from babyhood.

You 'actually literally' did?

I felt very sorry for the leaders at Cubs when my son was there for this reason. We had several messages saying could we talk to our children about listening to leaders, o always made sure my son wasn’t messing around.

When he was leaving one of the leaders was saying how sorry he was to see him go and how well behaved he was. I know he’s not perfect and said something about how that was nice to hear but I know he can be a bit chatty and unfocused. He said you have no idea about some of the behaviour they have to deal with.

I think if you know your child has behavioural issues you shouldn’t just leave them at an activity and let volunteers who are giving their time deal with it. You should stay and supervise.

Buying a treat for the leaders is lovely. But while you can't offer to help at the meetings in person groups would appreciate all sorts of kinds of help: can you help with the accounts? Do they meant in a scout building that has a maintenance committee? Could you do their social media posts? Could you manage their waiting list? One of the most tiring things about Scouting and Guiding isn't the time spent with the children, it's everything else.

All of this. I volunteered as a leader and couldn't handle more than a year, it was absolutely awful. My own sons were nothing like the average beaver.

Probably similar to our group's reaction to being 'encouraged' to open a Squirrels section :/

Yes, the beavers are feral. But our leaders take them away for camp for 2 nights every year and work absolute wonders. Don't get me started on the value of beavers, and the rest of the scouting sections, I won't stop.

I'm also a Beaver leader and last term ours were starting to get OTT every week and not listening so I spent a good chunk of one evening setting them off in a game then sticking my hand in the air to get them all to stand still and stop talking so we could carry on.
None of them wanted to do it again the next week so they miraculously all started listening a lot better since then!