Brownies, a waste of time!

[Growuppeople]

My daughter has been with brownies over a year, they have been on one overnight trip. My DD wants to do scouts but she’s so shy around boys. She wants to do camping, building campfires, adventures! Not knitting or art and crafts! I pay nearly £50 for uniforms, £10 for the “new book” and now I have to go bowling with them. I thought they would learn independence, health and safety among other important life skills. Am I wrong in thinking I’m wasting mine and my daughters time, she is learning absolutely nothing, or is she just with a rubbish group? What do all your brownies do?

[MillicentMargaretAmanda]

@armchairtraveller I totally agree there are issues in the OPs group. I can't do anything about that. What I can point out is that sweeping generalisations don't help, I know of many units with a wonderfully varied programme, led by the girls, doing what they want including crafts, and point out how people maybe could make a difference (by volunteering). I am also a.l mentor so I try and ensure best practice in our trainee leaders.
My feather ruffling is at the sweeping, and often outdated generalisations, that always occur on these threads.

[Starlight456]

If I had a Dd she would be in cubs not Brownies.

As for your dd I always say after school activities are optional. So apart from swimming if they are not enjoying it change it

Also whenever there is a thread on here there is always someone who suggests volunteer. My Ds does scouts I am very grateful for the time they volunteer but doesn’t mean I want to

[3out]

Like PPs have said, the program content is led by the girls. They decide as a unit what it is they’d like to do that term.

I’m not too sure what you mean by ‘learning nothing’. It’s not school. As long as they’re having fun then that’s all I want. The GG ethos is very much about encouraging independence, confidence, etc. They’re maybe a bit more political? (At the older level) Campaigning against Period Poverty etc.

Different strokes for different folks. If you’d be happier having her in cubs then that’s no failing on the part of the Brownie unit, it’s just different.

[SalrycLuxx]

Our girls pick what they fancy doing at the start of every term. Our current group love all things to do with making and decorating food. In the warmer months when we can go outside, there’s more outside games and camping skills, but right now it’s indoors.

It depends heavily on the leaders. My joint leader prefers the Ed’s messy things. I’m pretty much there to get the glue and construction materials out!

[EvaHarknessRose]

My dd skipped brownies but rainbows and guides have been really fantastic for her and she hopes to carry on as a young leader next year.

They have fires regularly, a range of camps, and have done three different watersports every summer, some climbing.

The leader is great, we do struggle for parent help (I know what you mean about them wanting to have time without you there, but you do need to do your bit) and I think it works best when there are older teens as role models helping.

Being a girls only organisation is good I think.

[planespotting]

I don't get the brownies thing, I was raised abroad and I was Scout, brownies doesn't exist there. I did lots of camping outside, building, fires, survival, first aid, orienteering .
I much rather do that. I became a field biologist and I want DC to have those skills as well.

[Bibijayne]

Hated Brownies and guides. Was horribly bullied in the later and it was allowed to go on because the bully was the goddaughter of a senior guide leader (an example, she rumaged through my things at a scout and guide camp. Stole my heart and paraded it on a pole in front of the scouts in a nearby field. I complained and was put in a car by one of the leaders and dumped at a roundabout on the edge of my home city. They only called my parents when they'd left me. I was 12).

Scouts on the other hand was amazing! Far less regimented. Much better safeguarding. Zero tolerance to bullying.

Would never send any girl of mine to brownies or guides after my experiences.

[budgiegirl]

Also whenever there is a thread on here there is always someone who suggests volunteer. My Ds does scouts I am very grateful for the time they volunteer but doesn’t mean I want to

I think it’s just that leaders who give up hours (and often days) of their time to run these activities get a bit fed up when a parent just dismisses their efforts as ‘rubbish’. That can be pretty hard to take.

I appreciate that not everyone wants to volunteer with the cubs/brownies or whatever. But I do them think it’s a bit much to complain that those who do aren’t doing enough for their group.

[Wolfiefan]

My DD started at Beavers and hated it.
I took her out and she started at Brownies when old enough. She LOVES it. They do a variety of activities. The leaders are wonderful.

[Ragnarthe]

If you volunteer it doesn't have to be every week. Just offer to help at one meeting a term and you would be being very helpful.

[Beamur]

DD enjoyed Brownies, but they don't tend to camp much. Bear in mind the age range is 7-10, they need a lot of Leader intervention and support. Guides on the other hand are 10-14 and put up their own tents, can cook their own food etc. DD's Brownie unit had one trip a year - always to somewhere with pre erected tents or a hostel/bunkhouse - anything else is simply not achievable.
Current Guide unit offers winter and summer camp, with other Scout/Guide bigger events such as ICE (international selection camps and trips to nearby 'abroad') international trips (went to Switzerland last year, Malta is an option for neext year) plus jamborees (USA coming up)
Another club option which is very outdoors is Woodcraft folk if you have any near you or Forest Schools.

[SmarmyMrMime]

There is variation in what the leaders organise for their units. Out of 3 in our neighbourhood, ours tends to be the largest and has a good retention of girls who stay on until their 11th birthdays because we have a varied, active programme including an annual camp, indoor pack holidays, activities at a nearby scout camp (yes, fires), walks in the woods... Even the local Group Scout Leader had to concede that we're a good unit

We are still distinctive from DS's beavers and have a good balance of "feminine" and adventurous. The girls do request things like pamper nights, and we work with trends like Frozen and unicorns in line with their interests.

The Girl Guiding programme is varied, both the old one being phased out and the new one being phased in. Dull craft and cake units irritate me because the girls aren't getting the full benefits of Girl Guiding and it gives us an unfair reputation. (Then we get moaned at for "poaching" because girls want transfer to us to follow their friends as they have more adventures...)

[IceRebel]

Scouts on the other hand was amazing! Far less regimented. Much better safeguarding.

Bibijayne your experience is not a typical one, surely you must know that.

I'm a leader at a unit and I can tell you we plan our activities and events with the girl's input, so it's not regimented as we don't choose what to do, the girls do. As for safeguarding, all units whether scouts or guiding have to follow strict safeguarding procedures. You should see the amount of paperwork needed for a night outside the meeting place, which has to be sorted in the leaders own time.

[NoParticularPattern]

Like others have said it massively depends on the volunteers but also on what facilities the group have available to them. I went right through rainbows, brownies and guides and we had the best time. We camped every summer for a week (once we were old enough!) and before we were old enough the place where we camped also had an associated youth hostel type effort that had proper beds etc so we stayed in there for a week while the older ones camped out in the fields. We were very lucky that our leaders were massively into the outdoors so we did lots of building campfires and learning how to cook stuff on them. We did often do crafty bits but it was usually stuff that was either to do with going on the summer camp or it was stuff that had a point if you see what I mean? We did sewing to learn to sew our badges on, baking for the Sunday school (we were a church group and used their hall for meetings, presumably in exchange for us doing things like baking etc). I don’t think our leaders can have been massively into anything that wasn’t camping or baking as we never really seemed to do anything more than the obligatory Christmas/mother’s day etc cards craft wise. They did once try to teach us how to knit but I don’t remember it being very successful 😂.

If you think your DD would be better off in cubs (scouts are more like guides) then join her up there instead? Or offer your time or skills to go and help the brownies out. It’s hard at this time of year to find outdoorsy stuff to do and I imagine sitting in the same hall every night just doing different things each time would rapidly get very dull. Hence the bowling!

[fluffyowlagain]

Brownie leader here (one with many other roles in Guiding too), and I agree with what other people have said about units reflecting the girls in the unit and the adult volunteers who run it. At the end of each term we ask the girls what they want to do the next term, and then plan accordingly. We ensure the programme meets Guiding's Five Essentials (such as girls work together in small groups, girls care for the individual, girls work to a common standard), whilst following a tight budget and trying to make everything fun. This term is what, five weeks old now and we've done just one craft activity. We have had a talk from the air ambulance and learned about first aid and what to do in an emergency, we have found ourselves washed up on a desert island and developed a new society and held an election for who is going to be in charge, we've looked as plastic pollution and made changes in our community. Every week we play games, a mixture of boisterous running around ones and quieter skills-based games. We do a residential trip ideally every term - this term we are going on a day trip to London and sleeping on a ship! When it comes to the late spring/summer terms we'll spend a lot of time outside, and we cook on fires, go on walks, play games. In my teens, I was a Scout and a Guide, as they offered me different things and I wanted to meet more people. I think it's great that girls have the opportunity to do both, and find units which work for them, as each unit is as different as each child is different.

[Redissuereader]

To the poster who said Brownies have to

“Each time you take a brownie out of the meeting place you need a ratio of 1:8, a home contact and a risk assessment and that's before you sort the logistics to do with transport, chasing consent forms and costings.”

This is no different to beavers/cubs/scouts.

Volunteers and having hands available to help and parent involvement make the programme workable. If your Brownie leader has no help, how is she supposed to supervise children building fires or pond dipping?

My daughter goes to Beavers because we have as a family been involved in helping out the local group since my (now 30 year old) cousin first attended at 6. They know that if they need hands they can call on volunteers from the parents and also cubs and scouts further up the group are encouraged to help with the younger groups too to keep the circle going.

We aren’t outdoors too much in the winter, although there was a Christmas camp(at a hostel) where they go to do a bit of hiking then LOADS of crafts throughout the weekend. They also went to do a local Christmas activity at a National Trust property as part of it. My daughter who was very nervous about being at camp with a lot of boys came home thoroughly exhausted and delighted at all the tings she had made seen and done. LOADS of organising went it to running the event and it was arranged months and months before it was run but that’s what food volunteers do

[budgiegirl]

DD's Brownie unit had one trip a year - always to somewhere with pre erected tents or a hostel/bunkhouse - anything else is simply not achievable

It is definitely possible to take children of Brownie age camping - after all, we do it regularly with the cubs, and often the beavers too. However I agree they need more supervision putting up tents etc, but they’re generally willing to give it a go, and we usually ask for parents to help their children set up and pack away after.

[grasspigeons]

Its very volunteer leader dependent so you can volunterr and lead some of these more interesting activities if you want. I know that sounds harsh but volunteers do what they feel comfortable doing. Brownies isnt a paid for activity in the same way some clubs are, the leaders arent professionals running a service for a profit. Subs cover the hut hire and materials. So its very much an orgsnisation that each group varies quite a bit.

[Bibijayne]

@IceRebel I was not the first person put in questionable positions. This was a long time ago (I'm 34) but a lot of the people behind what happened to me are still heavily involved in guiding in south Wales. If they were not, that would be a different issue. It was a shame, as our group leader was lovely and we did a lot of varied activities (some outdoorsy, some not) but the people in charge at district level were awful.

[Bibijayne]

*stole my bra in PP.

Not sure what autocorrect was thinking then!

[birdling]

If you think you can do better, then give up your time and volunteer as a leader. Then you can be the one with ungrateful parents whining about what you have done your best to provide.
Your daughter is not obliged to attend.

[Beamur]

I meant with the unit my DD attended. But yes, I agree if you have the volunteer and Leader capacity for it. I couldn't see it working with DD unit.
The other aspect of this is owning and storing the equipment. Not every unit has either the financial resources or space. DD's unit runs from a school and they have no storage at all. Everything has to be brought in and taken out again at the end.

[cantbeb0thered]

I lasted about a month at the brownies and that was 20 years ago. It was awful. Boring. I was tbe first group of girls to join the scouts. It was amazing. I loved it. It was pretty rough and tumble and you wouldn't get away with half the stuff these days that we did. No one ever got hurt but there certainly was the possibility. Loved it. Really let me test my boundaries and build confidence

[Aeroflotgirl]

I was going to say that Brownies is dependent on volunteers, but so are cubs and scouts too. It is dependent on the leader though and how into it they are. DD went to Brownies where the leader was fab, making Pizza in Morrison's Kitchen, visit to the Fire Station, Bowling, Theatre, residentials including PGL and litter picking round the community. If you are unhappy, either become a leader yourself, or move her to Cubs.

[Hunter037]

@armchairtraveller
We do have sessions away from the meeting place to do outdoor things, but not at this time of year. This time of year we do trips to places like library, fire station, cinema, trampoline park, rock climbing.

In the summer we can do outdoor stuff but not every week as for each trip we have to do risk assessments and consent forms and have a backup in case of poor weather.