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I gotta brag about my son's Scout Troop, formed two months ago to serve boys with special needs. When our Scoutmaster announced his intentions to start a special needs troop this summer, we immediately signed on. My son has Asperger's syndrome. Having been a Cub Scout, he has experience, but most of the boys in the troop have only been Scouts since October 1, when we started Troop meetings. So last Saturday they performed their first public flag ceremony opening the annual business meeting of the local Special Needs PTA chapter meeting. When you watch the clip, see that when freed from stigma, judgmentalism, and prejudice, these boys work together and function no differently than any other group of boys, and got their demonstration tent set up in basically nothing flat. Three boys have Asperger's, one has clinical autism, one has a birth defect with only two functioning heart chambers, one has epilepsy so bad he had to have the lobe surgery to keep his brain from shorting out and killing him, and we have more coming to visit in the next few weeks, including anxiety disorders, "authority" situations, Down's syndrome, etc. We welcome them all, and they all are becoming great Scouts.

http://ozarksfirst.com/content/video/?cid=205871" target="_blank" target="_blank

Scott, I never knew you lived in Springfield. Good stuff. My family is from the West Plains area.

Awesome what they have going on there.

Thanks for sharing this, Scott. My special needs son is now a Bear Cub Scout and has always enjoyed the activities.

Although I wasn't lucky enough to have kids, I am proud this is happening in the U.S.!

Scouting is a great program. I think it's wonderful when they form 'special needs' programs like this. Glad to hear about your son and others are getting so much out of the program.

Both of my sons were scouts years ago and it helped them mature and gain leadership skills. They're both engineers now (age 39 and 38).

I would vote for Bloke's post(above) as being his all-time best post on Tubenet. Thanks, iipopes, for sharing this with us. Scouting is a great activity which has been attacked for sticking by its principles. I am proud to be a former Cub and Boy Scout.

Thanks, guys. 2010 is Scouting's centennial in the USA. BSA has made the Scout Law into a banner for the centennial with the phrase "Twelve Words to Live By" in the middle surrounded with the Scout Law. And thanks for supporting Scouting.

Brag on!
My son has been in scouting for 12 years, since Kidergarten when he was a tiger cub. I did the den dad thing for the cub scout years and was an asst. scout master. We have gone on many fun camping trips together. He spent a week two summers ago at Sea Base in FLA where he and 20 of his buddies were the crew on a sailing ship around the keys and last summer the troop spent a week at a scout reserve in Canada (Haliburton, which evidently is near the Canadian Brass Summer camp!) Where else are you going to get experiences like that? Also we have performed many public service activites such as highway cleanup, scouting for food, xmas tree sales, parking for our local fair, and clean up after the fair, painting fire hydrants, cleaning up local historic grave sites, etc.
Unfortunately HS activites are pulling him away from being very active in his troop anymore but as bloke pointed out the tenets of the scout law are life lessons. And I am glad he learned them.

Best of luck to your son and his fellow scouts.

ken k

Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving All!

bloke wrote:Regardless of "special needs" or not, scouting is invaluable. Any boy who is encouraged by his parents to become a scout and then encouraged/supported to stay in scouting is very very fortunate. You're a great dad. Compare the values taught in scouting to those that are being imposed on us today.

People ask daily, "What has happened to our country?"

Are our nation's leaders ANY of these things...??

trustworthy X
loyal X
helpful X
friendly X
courteous X
kind X
obedient X
cheerful X
thrifty X
brave X
clean X
reverent X

Quite clearly, they are NONE of these things. Over and over, I see scouting belittled by American rulers and their minions who unapologetically and enthusiastically represent the dark side.

but...unfortunatly, I ended up stuck in a troop where it was basically run by people that didn't really demonstrate those values and I hated it...I should've changed troops but didn't...oh well...

Just like any institution, whether it be a church, business, foundation, etc., Scouting is made up of people. And as in these other institutions, most, if not the vast majority, are good, decent people who do reflect the values, aims and goals of the respective institutions. There will always be at least one here and there who does not, or lets the institution down from a conventional point of view. The way I look at it is these persons need the institution worse than anybody else, and even if they're not model members, think about how much worse off and even more of a negative personality they would be without it.