I just received an invite to the Scouting Troop's annual Parents Party.
Yeah, I'm excited about it.
A fresh empty nester now, I'm looking forward to seeing some of the people most responsible for helping our bird thrive outside the nest.
Outside of family and a few teachers and coaches, no one put more talent and effort into uplifting our young teen into becoming a skilled and confident older teen than the parents we met through scouting. They profoundly influenced my son's development - and my own.
I look forward to seeing them again.
I realized also that there would be a lot of new parents I have not yet met. What would I share with them?
I knew very little about Scouting; we joined to fill a need for a structured skills program. We joined the troop with another family, but knew no one in the Troop.
Over a four-year period, these strangers became My People.
My wife and I, late parents of an only child, were very focused and committed to parenting and thought we were providing a broad range of experiences for our son. Scouts opened up much, much broader horizons.
While we had fond memories of club sports, the Scouting Culture was far more impressive. First of all, rather than a coach and small staff teaching a game, it was The Full Village pitching in collectively, continuously, collaboratively, sharing an amazing, impressive range of talents and example.
There was a different attitude here as well. In competitive sports, there is an underlying, unintentional, unsaid understanding that "your child's success may mean mine sitting on the bench." The parents knew this, and as the kids got older, they knew this. There was zero of that here. Here the attitude, stated aloud and backed up by example, was "part of my success is your success and part of your success is helping other's success. We ARE together."
So many skilled, talented mentors talking the talk and walking the walk (and swimming the swim: I was kind of shocked when, for the swim safety training, Fritz jumped right in the (cold) pool without a pause). Nothing halfway here.
"We provide an environment where we encourage kids to try and where it's safe to 'fail' (because it's the opposite of 'failing')." It wasn't just talk, I could see the walk. So when one of the parents was asking for volunteers and emphasized "no experience necessary", I double-checked. "No experience? Are you sure? Most of the Tenderfoots are more skilled than me." "Absolutely. Jump in."
I jumped, and I'm so thankful I did. For so many reasons.
- It helped the troop, which means it helped the kids. Mine. All of them.
- It helped me. I learned a LOT. New skills. Organizational skills. Additional lifelong outdoors skills. Applicable skills.
- The "Leadership Lab" rubbed off on me. If nothing else, I showed that I was not afraid as an adult to fail in this very safe environment - perhaps the most important lesson. Dare to be vulnerable. Walk the Walk.
- Working - a lot - with the other parents. Like many other things in life, diving "all in" is amazingly more enriching than tiptoeing around the shallows. Providing the infrastructure for the scouts to run the troop is a tremendous amount of work. ScoutMasters essentially have a second full time job. Committee members can put in many hours a week. Scout Camping trips take a lot of planning and time. The leadership of the troop have - not to take anything away from those who contribute in all the other ways - dedicated a great deal of themselves, their talent and their time to the kids. Character highly committed to deep valuable service - in their "spare time". These are some of the best people you could meet. It was a privilege to work with these people and I am honored to count them among my friends. Outside of the parenting benefits, these relationships are the most meaningful takeaways from my time with Scouting. I am humbled and enriched.
- I participated actively in the collective example of service to my son. Who knows how "effective" I was/am as a parent? I did some good things, some things I could have done better. Unintentional Consequences haven't all presented themselves. I think he'll be alright. But I do know that my wife and I were all-in with our time and commitment. There were clear visible benefits to the effort we put in with the Troop. All the effort by everyone was supported and recognized by all. My son's growth wasn't in isolation. He saw the scouts ahead of him grow, he saw and helped his peers grow, and he led in the growth of the younger scouts. He saw the parents grow. He saw the results of our efforts in our growth. All of this in the context of a large extended family of former strangers. He saw the benefits of All In. He knows that we began All In to benefit him because we love him, but he saw all the immediate, personal, and extended benefits permeating all around all of us. This lesson, this example, is unmatched in my parenthood, and a level of success I could not have imagined.
So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing the parents, especially those with a new vacancy in the nest. As for the newer Scout Parents: "All in, baby, all in. The water's awesome."