To say no to Daughter carrying someone else’s bag at DofE

[DrSeuss84]

My 14 year old Daughter is about to do bronze Duke of Edinburgh in a weeks time. This is the first time she has done anything like this. She is quite slim and petite for her age.

I read that they should only carry a certain amount of their body weight so have been super selective and spent a lot of money buying lightweight items and researching the lightest possible gear.

At the practice run a lot of girls had much heavier bags. Some were packing skin care and makeup and other non necessities.

she doesn’t know the girls in her group but they all know each other and are an established friendship group.

Tomight she got a message from them saying they had all decided and agreed that they are going to bring a bag weighing device and weigh each bag and whoever has the lightest bag will have to swap bags with someone else on the second day to make it fair.

it was quite a direct message in the tone of “everyone has already agreed and it would be unfair if you say no”

My initial instinct was ‘no way’ Everyone packs what they want but we didn’t worked hard to get your bag light only for you to lug someone else’s bag around for 11 miles!

DD she is worried this will have her outcast from the group and turn them against her making the whole two days uncomfortable and isolating for her.

I don’t know how to tackle this at all. What would you do?

One of mine was the sort to take make up and all kinds of useless stuff but it would be very unfair if anyone other than her had to carry it!

But on that topic, the school showed a photo of the camp and there was a queue snaking towards a picnic table.. It was only the queue for her vanity mirror!

In your daughter’s case, a casual “Sure, happy to share cooking equipment etc.” would be my recommended approach.

Just wow! When I did Ten Tors, I didn’t even have walking boots, just these uncomfortable boots I found in the back of my cupboard. It never would have occurred to me to demand to swap. How entitled of them! If it comes to it, just put a brick in the bottom of your DD’s bag for the weigh in 😂

OP: I hope you come back and update, allowing that might be weeks from now. Lots of good advice on this thread, including pointing out the ambiguities of the proposal (was it really a directive not a proposal, does the Leader know, did they mean to disrespect body kg differences & the 1/4 rule...) and the fact that ideally the participants sort this matter themselves.

It is normal in expedition for noticeably bigger people to carry more of the joint equipment (like more of tents, cooker, maybe even more of the food or water). It is common that during the expedition that more energetic people end up carrying bags of others some of the time just to help out the tired or slightly injured. it is common that there is some falling out & friction between them during the walk itself. They often take wrong turns and walk too far... All of this is good learning & builds bonds. My DS2 had to play peacemaker between two of his buddies who got angry with each other during their bronze. DS3 carried bag of the tiny girl for an hour (he later dated her, completely besotted, would have walked over hot coals I dare say to impress her). And so on.

No, that really is extremely bad parenting. White lies are for "is this spot really noticeable". You are teaching her that it is not OK to assert boundaries on how others treat her, that she needs an excuse to be respected and that disingenuity in relationships is appropriiate. It is fundamentally damaging to self esteem and to character.

The day long practice hike soon sorted them out.

Dd went from.need this and this and this and this to 'clean knickers, socks, spare knickers and socks and I'll walk and sleep in same things'. She's also tiny. They shared tent and cooker between them all. Her personal kit was the absolute bare minimum. Literally socks and underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, tiny bottle of shower gel and a travel pack of baby wipes half emptied out. Food was the ration pack things, and protein bars.

My DS has just done his DofE and he offered to carry the tent on the second and third days as he was the strongest in his group. No way would he have offered to carry non-essentials like make up though - we also worked hard to limit the weight of his rucksack. Just to ask - have you checked the weight once two full water bottles are attached? My DS had to have two full, 1.5 litre water bottles which really added additional weight.

Tell her don’t be a simp. It is very good lesson to learn that it doesn’t matter if people like you. However if she doesn’t mind maybe it’s harmless

I would tell her that they already see her as an outcast. Being taken advantage of will not make them include her. In fact, they'll respect her even less. In either case, they will not hang out with her, even if she does agree to the swap.

Weighing bags and sharing out the shared equipment between bags so they are all even weight is fine. Your daughter should say she's happy to do this but she will put any non essential items she finds in the bag that are not on the equipment list in the bin at the start of the second day (unless it's medicine).

At my child's DofE the teachers checked (and weighed) the bags to make sure they had the correct kit and didn't let them take anything silly.

Cheeky bitches, they want someone else to carry their load, she knows that your daughter probably has one of the lighter bags…..it was probably the girl who sent it that made the decision

These girls are not going to be in your daughters life for long so she shouldn’t worry about upsetting them….don’t respond to the message and at the event she needs to say that she cannot carry a heavier bag as she had a shoulder sprain a couple of weeks ago and that is why she deliberately packed a lighter bag

I would tell her that they already see her as an outcast

I definitely wouldn’t be saying this

Just get her to repeat to them that she is deliberately packing light and will only be sharing the joint things out equally. If they give her personal items to take, she just doesn't put them in her bag.
I'd try not to get involved if you can.

DofE done properly can really help a young person build life skills such as resilience. It is meant to be challenging for them. That is how they learn.

I’m quite surprised at some of the previous responses encouraging OP daughter to be deceitful to get away with carrying less than others.

OP I would suggest your daughter does silver somewhere else. I have been involved in Bronze mentoring for quite some years and comment as follows:

• putting your Dd as an ‘only’ with a large established group is not great - any bullying should be stamped out very early on.
• we did 4 months of team building and learning sessions to help our YP gel …. If there were obviously clashes - changes were made before the expeditions if they couldn’t be worked through beforehand
• all of the group have to carry some of the essential communal kit - tent, stove, pans, first aid kit etc - no one wants to but it has to get shared out - some is bulky, some is heavy
• bag pack actual swapping is a huge red flag
• re-allocating the communal kit after day 1 is acceptable but into their own back packs - a wet tent outer is very heavy!

We tried the weighing approach (YP & bag) but got so many parental complaints (their children didn’t want others to know their weight) that it was stopped and now just the back pack is weighed 2 days before the expedition excluding any water and food. The YP are asked to bring all their bags / spare clothes/ essential toiletries, sleeping bags etc to the DofE centre and the communal kit is distributed amongst them as fairly as possible. The bags are weighed and would vary between 10-13kg. Yes account was taken of the physical size of the YP, but that could also lead to difficulties.

What they choose to put in thereafter is up to them, but they soon found that there was little space for luxuries.

I hope it goes well but I would suggest she goes somewhere else to do silver.

Distributing shared equipment and helping out those struggling is one thing, but pre-planning for others to carry your personal extras is not good teamwork. Good teamwork is planning sensibly for yourself so you are up to the task and can fully pitch in on the expedition.

DS carried another girl's equipment plus his own on the final day of DofE because she was struggling badly and he was happy to do it. Very different situation to agreeing to carry others' needless excess weight from the get go.

Bags weighed with communal items only for distribution. Personal items added after. Seems the only fair way. I was in a similar position as your daughter many many years ago. It worked out ok

Why not? They clearly don´t see her as part of the group. Don't you think that she should know the truth?

Is it really wise that she is the only person outside an established group?

by carrying someone else's uneccessary stuff?

By sharing the load of the team.

Shared necessary items yes. personal unecessary items no. And being required to carry someone elses actual back pack pack unless the person has nothing unecessary in it and is struggling, also no. I injured my back permanently as a young woman and I know wherof I speak. I did D of E too back in the late 60's, bronze only.

get her to take a big stone/brick/few extra bottles of water in her bag. You can get fold up bottles so that once they are empty they don't take up any space.

Presumably they'll do the weighing before they start off. Her bag actually weighs as the heaviest! Or at least not the lightest.
Then she can dump it/drink the water as soon as they start walking.

Or just message them back now. 'great idea but I feel guilty if one of you ends up having to carry my bag! I just packed it and my dad could hardly pick it up! No idea how I'm going to cope so if you are volunteering to help that would be so kind!' Might make them think 'Oh shit this might backfire on us' and they'll 'forget' to bring the bag weigher and say 'let's all just carry our own!'

Is there no other group she can go in? being the outsider in an established friendship group sounds a bit shit.

I think I would have a quiet word with the organiser. If they were to suggest that any group found breaking the rules on weight limits may be disqualified, that might be enough.

When I heard about the rule on weight limits, I thought it sounded a great way to protect smaller kids who might not want to be seen as wimpy.

Sometimes you're in a team with people who are weaker than you and they're a heavier load to bear. Sometimes that's their own fault, sometimes not, either way, we all need to finish across the line because we are a team with a unifed goal. It's a good lesson to learn.

Very sensible answer

the shared group equipment needs sharing out. But the rest is down to each individual. They don’t need to be packing crap.

I would never tell a child she was an outcast anyway there may be a lot of other girls in the group ( the ones with the lighter bags) that don’t agree with this and I hardly think they see her as an out cast….it’s probably a few bitchy girls got together and decided this to benefit themselves not the whole group?!?!