First day at Beavers and shocked

[Lskz]

Hi all,
DS(7)finally got a space at local Beavers and today we had first trial session. Stayed with him and shocked by the children behaviour. 16 children in total, half of them do not listen, just run around, kicking each other, making animal sounds and etc. DS is active child but I think even he's shocked. They did the activity for 10 mins and 1hr trying to calm them down so they can do the activity. There were 4 volunteers which is good ratio I guess. I do understand there might be children with special needs and etc, but it looked most of them copy each other. Is this normal? Somehow I imagined this differently.

I remember taking DD to a taster Beavers session about 8 years ago. I was absolutely horrified, as was he! He refused to go back and I wouldn’t have wanted him to anyway - they behaviour shocked me and as an ex primary school teacher I am not easily shocked by behaviour.

Beavers are a total pain in the arse. Cubs is much more civilised.

*leader

Hate to say but it's no better at DDs Cubs troop. Utterly feral, boys and girls. Extraordinarily rude to the leaders and incapable of approaching any activity calmly. DD enjoys the badges and the camping but comes home most weeks complaining about behaviour (no prompting from me)

Our Beavers are little angels. Most of the time.

I do Cubs, and there are occasions where they do get over enthusiastic and wild... but most of the time they do listen. The Beaver leaders are strict but fun, so they are used to the expectations before they get to us...

I do wonder about the sanity of Squirrel leaders though (that's the 4&5yos) ... especially the ones that take them camping!

I’ve recently become a Cub leader (was previously helping in Beavers) and I am horrified by the children’s behaviour. They are rude, obnoxious, unable to listen, cocky and talk over me and my assistants constantly.

I will see the year out, but it takes up SO much of my time planning an engaging programme that simultaneously meets badge requirements and it’s just utterly thankless.

Dc2 & Dc3 love Beavers but it’s mad. I have volunteered on a few occasions now and I’m always a bit shocked at some of the behaviour. Their leader is really good doesn’t put up with any nonsense, but has had to implement a few things recently. Dc1 goes to cubs with the Same leader, that’s worse behaviour. A few kids parents have been asked to step in or leave the pack prior to the summer holidays and in the first week back. They do a good mix of activities too outdoors and in.

Beavers tend to be wild, it gets better as they move up the sections. There's a reason that it's oy on for an hour...

We were shocked when DS started Beavers too. All the boys were in the same class at school (small town) and beautifully behaved in lessons but on a Tuesday evening at Beavers they were feral.

I'm intending on volunteering to help at a Beaver group next year and will take DS with me. I'm a primary teacher so I have no worries about dealing with a large group of kids. It sounds like my skills may come in handy! 😆

This is so interesting but also so strange! Why do you think they behaved so differently? Did they see it as a place with no rules, was it that they were exhausted by the evening and so worse behaved, was it the leaders? I help run a children's activity thing with the same age and a similar ratio and we don't see this at all even though we're really very lenient with them.

I wonder if having the new squirrel section will help, then can be socialised into the group while they’re still at quiet/shy stage. I must admit my DD beavers section pretty lively as they are all so excited to see each other out of school. The leaders are great though and they have great fun

Depends entirely on the group/leaders/young people. I'm a scout leader. We had a group camp at the weekend just gone with all our beavers, cubs and scouts. The beavers were great! No issues having them from Friday eve to Sun arvo. Great behaviour and it was lovely watching them with the older ones.

Our beaver leaders are VERY shouty. The kids in general do behave.

Our beavers is on a Friday night and they are all bonkers and have a lot of energy. The leaders seem to focus on keeping the program fun and quite physical and strikes a happy balance between letting them run around when they arrive before focussing in. I've been debating putting my hand up to get squirrels off the ground as DS is desperate to join in but not sure how I feel about that many 4/5 year old boys...

I was shocked at what I saw at beavers too,

Ds has additional needs and didn't behave anywhere near as bad as them. The cheek was they told me they would need to see how he goes over the month and might need to take on another member of staff to manage his behaviour when they hadn't met ds yet.

Leaders had no control over the kids. I did say they needed a member of staff but not for my son, for the rest of the kids.

Christ, as a parent to a Beaver with additional needs this is a depressing read. We spend a lot of time with the leaders trying to help them to support DS and stay and help out when we’re needed. DS loves his Beavers time and badges. How sad to see that he’s simply seen as a problem. Having seen his group, I’d say he’s not much different from any of the rest. But of course, special needs make a nice easy scapegoat.

I’ve been a Beavers parent helper for about 18 months and have now moved to up Cubs with DS and will continue to help, however the behaviour in both groups is absolutely hideous (except for the girls who are always calm and sensible).

The relentless disruptive behaviour, not listening, not following basic instructions without being micromanaged, wrestling each other, rolling around on the floor, talking over the Leaders, not being quiet when asked, running around the room like they are on a greyhound track - I could go on and on.

I do wonder why on earth some children even come to these groups as half the time they aren’t even interested in the activities and would rather run wild. Perhaps it should be pointed out to some parents that their child’s consistently disruptive behaviour may means they aren’t really engaging with the Beavers/Cubs concept and it’s perhaps not the right activity for them.

As pp have said, we have children who clearly have SN but we aren’t told about it and therefore how to best to manage certain behaviours or the best way to comfort a distressed child who isn’t coping with the environment. We are all volunteers - both parent helpers like me and the Leaders - we are not trained professionals and we do our best but it’s often difficult, plus we also get NT children copying behaviours and the resulting situation is chaotic. We spend so much time managing behaviour and less time doing the actual planned activities.

I do wish the Scouts would have a clear behaviour management policy for volunteers and parents, and that the Leaders could be confident about approaching parents whose children are consistently disruptive etc (excluding SN of course - I’m talking just deliberate poor behaviour here).

We had exactly the same experience at beavers. I was shocked at the behaviour, and rudeness towards leaders, parents witnessed it and said nothing to their children. My kids chose to leave in the end as certain children were just dominating the whole session each week with bad behaviour.

Mine were at Beavers 20 years ago and it was exactly the same. Bunch of wild animals. I hated being a parent helper as they were impossible.
I always thought my boys wete lively but it certainly opened my eyes to how many children were more difficult to manage than my own.
No special needs either.

As a grandmother beavers is run by one scary leader who boots out the bad ones. Rainbows on the other hand is a shambles. I was itching to help out with the little madams.

Yep, that is why I'm no longer a Beaver leader, their parents were even worse!!

Cub Leader here - when we get Beavers who have moved up we spend at least half a term giving them a hard stare and saying "we don't do that at Cubs" they either get with the programme or they don't stay very long. It does also help that the other cubs also give them the side eye when they're not behaving.

I’m a Cub Scout leader and agree with other scouting leaders that kids behaviour has become hugely worse since the pandemic. It can also be difficult because scouting often attracts the more lively children with high energy levels, and we do gets lots of children with special needs as well. We often don’t have as much volunteer or parent support as we’d ideally like. And it’s not meant to be the same as school, it’s supposed to be fun so we don’t actually want them bound by the same super strict rules they might have at school. Plus they’re already tired from the school day and their friends are there.

So yeah it can be a bit crazy at times! I’ve specifically sought out training on managing the behaviour of groups of children to try to help me with it. Interestingly some groups of kids are much easier than others throughout the years. We had one absolutely lovely cohort of kids once where all of them were just a delight and super well behaved, we got so much more done with them and were less worn out by it so enjoyed it more too. It can take just 2 or 3 disruptive children to derail the whole thing at times.

My son’s beavers was pretty feral at times. A shouty leader helped. Rainbows were feral too though, in a more screamy way. Both my kids loved them and one of them is quite shy.