What to do when

[Donk]

you are practising the Beaver promise with your 6 yr old ds for his investiture (tomorrow) and he refuses to promise to do his best "because I can only try" and refuses to promise to love God "because he's not real" (followed by long explanation about how he's not real)

HELP!
What can I do?
I refuse to go the route of 'just say it - its only words'

(NB DS has gone to Quaker meeting since he was 6 weeks old, so its not for lack of trying...)

Maybe he's not ready to make his promise

get him to worship the god of beavers

Science teacher - this may be true, but he DOES want to join Beavers...
So I am stumped.
What do humanists do if they want to be part of the scout movement? (please don't say 'lie')

He sounds cool Can you talk to the scout leader about his concerns? Do you have to promise to LOVE God - my memory of the guides promise is 'do my duty to God' - easier to fudge that one

I think, personally, that 'trying to do your best' is a different interpretation of 'doing your best' - ie if you try as hard as you can, you are doing your best at that given moment. Your best at 11pm with wine taken may not be the same as your best at 8am after 12 hours sleep. They are both your best for that moment.

Maybe not with that example though for a 6yo

fp - I had a conversation about 'doing your best' along those lines (but without the alcohol), and I am hoping that we may have cracked that part.

The promise "to love God" is a harder one.

The up side is (I suppose) that he is
a) thinking about what it all means
and
b) taking it seriously - and knows it is important not to make a promise that you don't mean to keep.

Your ds has a wonderful sense of integrity!

Could you tell him that God is just the way people explain everything that we believe is good about the world and which we aspire to, so that saying you love God is just a way of saying you want to do good and that you love all the good things in the world. Or something.

On the doing his best thing, I would think that "doing your best" is the same as trying. Perhaps he has an idea of "doing your best" which is more like an athlete's personal best, which he rightly feels he can't always live up to. Can you persuade him that doing your best just means trying to do the right thing?

Hope it goes well tomorrow anyway whether he goes with it or becomes a conscientious objector. I'd be hugely proud either way!

Sorry - slow x posts on the doing your best thing...

I also remember "duty to God" - quite surprised that they have to promise to love. It doesn't seem like a terribly good idea, as "love" for a 6 year old means the feelings they have about mummy and daddy, the dog etc, which couldn't possibly apply to such an abstract concept as God.

I was informed that for the scout movement you are only promising to serve the "God" of your country - can you use that arguement with him?

Am also a Brownie leader in real life. All the Baden-Powell groups have a promise (I think) which includes doing your best and loving one's God and one's country. (Duty to God was written out of the Brownie promise about a decade ago).

I think funnypeculiar's explanation of what doing one's best means is spot-on. The God part is (as always) trickier. It's difficult to answer your question about what humanists (or atheists) do if they want to join the Scouting movement because - and I'm assuming that Scouting and Guiding are the same here - the movement assumes that people have some sort of theist belief and so are willing to make the promise. In that sense, the movements don't cater for humanists or atheists. I have heard of some sticklers who won't enrol new Brownies, Guides or even Leaders if they don't believe in God and/or don't want to say the promise in full. On the other hand, I've heard of other leaders who let new members skip the God part of the promise.

I've just had a quick look at the Scouting website and it's obvious that the promise is a very big part of being a Beaver, just as it is for Brownies. How well do you know the Beaver leaders? Would they be willing to let your son skip the mention of God in the promise? I'm not advocating lying or crossing his fingers behind his back but, equally, I wonder whether your son is going to find the (non-specifically) religious aspect of Scouting uncomfortable. Is it too late to suggest that he might be more comfortable in the Woodcraft Folk?

We are miles from the nearest woodcraft folk...

Also, his friends go to Beavers - and he has thoroughly enjoyed the first half term.
As for the religious aspect of Beavers/scouting - he has coped well with going to Children's Meeting at the Quaker meeting to which I belong, although I suppose we don't often talk about God as such with his age group. We do talk about Jesus sometimes, and tell the usual clutch of suitable stories/parables from the Bible.

Arr! Am extremely slow typist.

Iorek's definition of God seems excellent to me and I may use it as part of my script if Brownies ask what the Promise means (in fact, it's very like some of the explanations in the Brownie books).

Interesting point about loving God, Iorek. I wasn't involved in Guiding when the Promise was rewritten but (as I understand it) it was felt that love was more appropriate and more meaningful for children than duty, which is a concept that means more to adults (and in any event is, arguably, outdated and more relevant to the Baden-Powell era than to our own).

Yes I suppose duty doesn't mean much to a 6 year old. I can still remember all the words of my Brownie Guide Promise, but am fairly sure I didn't consider the meaning very much at all.

I do however have a very clear early memory of a sermon in church about how important it was to love God and remember feeling quite anxious about it, as "love" to me was an emotion I knew very well, but not something that I could summon up at will, and certainly not for something as abstract as God.

So I'm sort of inclined to think that less meaning might actually be better in this case. However, all that doesn't help donk's excellent ds...

Quite.

I hope that Donk's admirable son can find a way of joining Beavers that he can reconcile with his conscience. I'm hoping too that Donk will come back tomorrow and let us now what happened.

know

Update on DS's investiture.

DS's objection to the existence of God was mostly predicated on the facts that

1. DS has never seen God. and
2. Since God is not a person (DS's words),and not a Spirit (and spirits are not real) and not and animal, and not an alien, then he can't exist.

I did not tell him that God exists - that is up to him. I did tell him that I believe that God exists. And that for other people that God is just the way they explain everything that we believe is good about the world. And that it is difficult to explain God (he wanted to know if I could draw God instead...! He must have a very high opinion of my mediocre drawing skills)

We also talked about things which exist (like radio waves, and the wind) but which cannot be seen directly.

I asked him what he thought people were doing when they went to Church/Meeting (answer from DS 'thinking about God, but he's not real, and thinking about Jesus - and he might have been real')

I then asked DS whether his legs/arms/body/head were all that he was. And what would happen to the bit that was specially DS when his body died? This made him thoughtful.

Eventually he decided that he didn't know whether or not God existed.

Then he got stuck on the word 'love'.

Spot on Iorek - he decided that he could like God (if he did indeed exist), but that love is what you do to Mummy/Daddy (a God of whose existence you are not sure being far too abstract a creature. 6 year olds are very 'concrete' in their thinking)

So I 'phoned the Beaver leader - and let her know that he had reservations about the wording. We agreed that I would bring him to the session - and we would see what happened.

The leaders then had a discussion (I was told later) - they had never had a 6 year old question the Promise! They 'phoned the district leader - and it was then referred to HQ.

Upshot:

1. the suggestion that Beavers was the wrong place for him. This was resisted by his lodge leader.
2. The Scout movement has a strong spiritual base and this was important (not news)
3. They didn't want to exclude a 6 year old who had problems saying 'I promise to ... love God', especially since it was felt that many 6 year olds would have no clue what this actually meant... so that he could say 'like' - BUT it would be an issue if he still felt like this when it was time to move up to Cubs.
4. The leaders would talk to him when they had a chat with all the candidates, and see what they felt was appropriate.

In the end
DS decided he could promise to 'like God' - and he has been invested!

I feel really proud of him for sticking to his guns with a group of very surprised adults (not least me!)- and for being able to formulate and articulate his reservations.

Wow! I am insanely impressed with your ds. He will change the world I am sure. Congratulations all round!

Wow again! Well done Donk's Son (and well done, too, to the leaders for reaching a pragmatic solution, although I am a bit surprised that it had to go as far as headquarters).

I have the very same problem, and we have been told that our 6 year old can't be invested if he doesn't say the last line of the Beaver Promise or a variation on it that acknowledges a higher being. I really don't want him too, it seems very young to be making these kind of promises.

I have been feeling really sad about this, he really wants to go and we want him to go but as a family we don't have a religious faith, and because of this we are being excluded.

I really, really admire you, juniorDonk and the leaders for coming to a good endpoint on this.

I can quite forsee that we will have similar issues when the time comes as DS is the product of a humanist and an atheist, and already a questioner.

1Maya2 and Cmot - I see your problem but, as I said earlier, I think the problem extends beyond the investiture ceremony because the promise is a theme that runs through all the Brownie/Scout/Beaver programme. I would never want to send anyone away from Brownies or Beavers but, if you really don't want your sons to make a promise to love God, then the Woodcraft Folk may be a more suitable group for them to join and more in tune with your family's values and ethos.