In my continuing series of “Why I went to Wood Badge” I start it by saying people come to Wood Badge for different reasons. A lot of these people are coming to Wood Badge with little to no experience as a youth in boy scouts. This is especially true of the mothers who have signed up to be leaders and are then thrown into scouting.
When I asked fellow Wood Badgers for their stories some of the most eye opening came from women. I’d like to share with you one of those stories.
To give you some background, our son was a Tiger Scout, and is now a Life Scout. While I worked with him off and on as a cub scout, I really had no idea of what boy scouting was all about. Our older two girls were girl scouts, but the programs are pretty different. Not to mention that girl scouting has changed quite a bit since I was a girl.
Anyway, to answer your question, I was tired of not knowing what was going on in my son’s scouting program. Not that anyone was trying to keep anything from me, it was just different from what the girls were going through. And I was so tired of hearing things ‘second hand’ from other parents. So when my husband said he wanted to go to this training called Wood Badge I said ‘sign me up too.’ And we both went. We were both probably different from most, being Troop Committee, but we were accepted, and attended SR-865.
For me, it was like drinking from a fire-hose. My husband was an eagle scout as a youth, so for him it was a different experience. But I don’t regret it one bit.
I guess the main thing I can say, being a parent of a scout, is that being a part of Wood Badge enabled me to help my son advance, because I learned what would be expected of him as a scout. That’s what I tell the Mom’s in our troop. If you want to help your son to be a better scout, you need to learn what he will be expected to do and accomplish, and Wood Badge definitely will teach you that.
If you have little to no experience as a scout, man or woman, Wood Badge will definitely give you the perspective of a scout as you lead them to Eagle and adulthood.
It’s another reason why you should join Wood Badge. Sign up today before the course is full.
