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?

Although making pancakes over fire (what our local scouts are doing this week) is probably more exciting than a 10 ingredient 30 minute dinner challenge cooked indoors (what our local guides are doing this week), I suspect being able to rustle up a meal from a random selection of ingredients at short notice is a more useful life skill

@goldenevilhoor
I'm assuming this was quite some time ago as our promise has not mentioned God since 2013.
I also hope youel escalated at the time.

@goldenevilhoor We are not a Christian organisation, or even a faith organisation. A belief in God(s) or making a promise 'to love my God' has not been part of who we are for over five years. We were not a Christian organisation prior to that. Too late now, but to anyone else this happens to, please complain as this is NOT who we are as an organisation and girls should not be treated differently on grounds of religion or lack thereof.

This thread is crazy.

Brownies and GG is not very prevalent in my area. Scouting is huge.

However my DS has done huge amounts of baking and crafts in his years as a Beaver, Cub and Scout (as well as the all the fire building and climbing etc).

Looking at friends across the Uk who experience really active Brownie/Guide units it seems pretty damn similar.

“I didn't take it further!”

.......

@goldenevilhoor while I appreciate the sentiment of not complaining about volunteers, our religious beliefs should not be brought into Guiding and we should not be discriminating against girls who do not share our beliefs. Hence why I advise anyone who finds themselves in this situation in the future to complain to their district or division leadership.

Because the group is breaking its own rules- and if they can do it to you they can do it to others. And there is enough false bulls hit being spread about guiding without allowing real bullshit to happen.

GoldenEvilHoor Was this since 2013 when reference to God was removed from the promise? Are you saying that there are units not following the 5 essentials? If this was recent it's a HUGE DEAL and has ramifications for the whole unit/District. Please take it further!
Before 2013 there was alternate wording available for those of different faiths but everyone else was supposed to use the love my god (small g)' to be whichever power or self belief applied.
It worked for most folk if they didn't particularly think about (which most 7yo didn't to be fair).

These threads are always interesting. Boys get such a bad rap constantly on MN and there lots of discussion around the sacrilege of female only spaces and how important they are.

Yet when it comes to Scouts all that goes out of the window - and the boys lose their boy only spaces.

My DS is now in a 50:50 ratio in his scout troop!

Crazy.

As you were.

“Yet when it comes to Scouts all that goes out of the window - and the boys lose their boy only spaces.”
If you check back in this thread you’ll see why that happened.

Guides and Scouts are not religious movements now but I thought they were originally - that's why they had God in the original promise.

They were never specifically Christian.

Firstly you should help out with volunteering at the Brownie pack or at least not be resentful that you have to attend the bowling if you want your child to go.

Secondly- if she doesn't like this group and won't join Cubs, then maybe you should do do activities like camping with her in your free time.

*Boys get such a bad rap constantly on MN and there lots of discussion around the sacrilege of female only spaces and how important they are.

Yet when it comes to Scouts all that goes out of the window - and the boys lose their boy only spaces.

My DS is now in a 50:50 ratio in his scout troop!

Crazy*

Why is it crazy? If there’s a big demand for ‘boy only spaces’, then anyone is free to open their own ‘boys only’ club. There clearly weren’t enough wanting the ‘boy only space’, as scouts numbers were falling

I know we're on the promise now, but who on earth is brave (mad?) enough to do sewing with Brownies?! I've got 24 and would be running around the hall answering calls of Snowy owl until I got dizzy! I'd much rather set fire to things!

People saying children can't go outside in winter should speak to our cubs. Wide games in the dark, night hike and navigation treasure hunt. All in winter all in the dark. Why does it work so well in this village? We have lots of leaders, we have lots of outdoor accessible space, we have lots of fundraising events so £ss to buy equipment. Both organisations can offer all of the outdoor activities discussed but only if they have the leaders confident to do it, the finance to do it right / get the equipment etc and access to safe outdoor space. Also we make it a requirement that an adult from each family helps out once a term minimum. Mum and dad busy send grandad /-whatever. Yes there are families that just can't but they help at fundraisers etc, its non negotiable.

Sometimes, it's not the group being rubbish, but the demands of the parents to do 'nice, safe, girly things' - I was an Assistant Guider and it was quite shocking how adamant some of the parents were that their precious daughters shouldn't be doing anything more taxing than a bit of crafting, decorating a few fairy cakes and perhaps, if they felt up to it after a day of school, a bit of skipping. As long as it was supervised to the extent of the Guiders turning the rope, so it wasn't too fast and as long as they kept going with their child until they managed to jump it once.

You should have seen the faces on collection when they found out we made Guacamole - 'What, touching chillis? [no, it was chilli free in case they touched their eyes] What about squeezing limes? They didn't have to actually cut the avocados themselves, did they? - never mind the day we let them out into the enclosed area that the toddler group used for playtime; we were quizzed on whether they had their coats and hats on, whether we hurried them straight in when it stopped being broad sunlight, whether they'd had sunblock applied, whether they could be seen through a six foot brick wall that hid the entire building and grounds from sight, whether we'd checked for poisonous plants in the toddler groups' play area and if we'd considered doing some drawing inside rather than risk them being simultaneously too hot/too cold/out in the sun/in the dark/etc..

I think it would be morally wrong of me to complain about people giving up their time to do something I am not prepared to do.

Except that you've done exactly that on an anonymous internet forum. Does it stop being morally wrong if you don't complain face to face and nobody will ever know it was you? Does it stop being morally wrong if you can tar everyone with the same brush?

DD's group go outside almost every week, last week they were practising putting up a tent in the snow

“I think it would be morally wrong of me to complain about people giving up their time to do something I am not prepared to do”

But fine to complain about them on a public forum and give the whole organisation a bad name?