I did Brownies here in Aus, and then I switched to Scouts when I was old enough because my brother was a Scout and he had heaps more fun! I’m 21 now and still involved in Scouting. Becoming involved in Scouting was one of the best things I ever did. I’ve learnt some great skills and made some amazing friends.
Brownies was a little too craft-oriented for me, and we didn’t go camping nearly enough.
So, I would recommend Scouts.
I was a brownie for a little less than a year. I was the shy, outsider type and sticking with it would probably have been good for me. My mom had me drop out though because she felt after a field trip to the local power company where we learned about microwave ovens that I was being indoctrinated by the military-industrial complex. So if you have extreme political views a la my mom, you may find something to object to.
Mrs H and her mother were both GS leaders in Maine.
My observations:
Many of the other area leaders seemed to confuse teaching independence with politics, thus wanting the girls to attend rallies and other related activities. Paradoxically, this had the effect of discouraging independence in favour of Groupthink. The girls by and large were uninterested.
The local organization grew politically correct to the point that one had to walk on eggshells to avoid offense, not to the girls, but to leadership.
Eventually, they both gave up on it as being rather depressing, especially remembering fondly their earlier involments elsewhere (California and Arizona).
My conclusion:
The quality of your involvement with GS (or, indeed, any other organization) will vary according to the degree of overlap between your values and the values of the people in leadership and whether that leadership has an agenda beyond merely helping those individuals to grow up. To that end, I suggest you meet with the local GS leadership and see where you stand.
Excellent responses.
Thank you all for showing up and giving your experiences.
I am gonna let her go, she really wants to and thats fine. I just really wanted some more personal info in the organization as a whole and I received it.
I know that they wont ruin her even if it is a bad group. I just did not want her waisting her time. She already is in her 3rd year of Jazz and Ballet. My wife has been teaching her Tap since she could walk. She has also been in Suzuki violin with an excellent teacher for over three years and practices every day.
To be honest I wanted you all to tell me what a horrible program it is so I could have more fuel to tell my wife and daughter that she should not go. She is doing enough as it is. With school work, violin practice, dance classes, and play.
Oh Yea, She is six years old.
A friend of mine worked for the Girl Scouts in the national office and, according to her, it was all about the numbers. How many people you contacted, how many new girls you brought in, how many cookies they were going to sell, etc. Her particular job wasn’t directly related to getting new girls and she was still constantly asked about her numbers. The entire thing left a very bad taste in her mouth and her deciding that no daughter of her’s was going to join the organization.
At the same time, she said that she had met women who had been scouts for 50+ years and who seemed very earnest about it and how to make things better. I suppose it all depends on who is leading it at a local level and how much they’re willing to sacrifice.
I was a Girl Scout twenty years ago (I’d have been a Junior at that point), and don’t remember doing any real sewing or cooking. Nor, oddly, do I remember any lesbian sex going on. Maybe I shouldn’t have dropped out in seventh grade! Did I miss out on some super-secret Lesbian Sex Badge? (That would have been really creepy seeing as my mom was one of my leaders for a long time!)
It sounds like experiences vary widely. Personally, I remember liking it a lot until middle school, and dropped out at that point. If I had a daughter who wanted to try it I’d let her.
Unlike the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts do not discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual preference.
–Cliffy
I was a girl scout in the 80’s and also had some very good experiences. I learned things that I use to this day, simple sewing, some simple cooking, some camping skills. It was enjoyable for a short time. It also helped me get over a significant portion of my shyness.
I can’t understand why you would downright refuse to visit their site. If you’re going to join a club, shouldn’t you at least see what they have to say about themselves, and then compare it to reality? Visit it with a grain of salt, with a healthy dose of skepticism, but visit it all the same.
Well, okay, I don’t mean the merely “shy and bookish”, I mean the overtly “geeky”, the nerd, the rank outsider, the one who perennially doesn’t fit, who says the wrong thing, falls over her own feet every day in the lunchroom, and is just generally a social pariah, and thus she retreats into books. For this gal, Girl Scouts is an ordeal, and her parents should not push her into it, thinking it will “bring her out of her shell”. Because, generally, it won’t.
I was a Girl Guide. I don’t think the two organizations differ much aside from location (Guides are in Canada, Scouts in the US).
It was basically about developing social and life skills from a female perspective. While in Guides we learned about making friends, teamwork, baking, sewing, arts and crafts, music, first aid, and wilderness skills. There was particular emphasis on respect and caring for others. I liked it and made a few friends while there. I was in it from about age 11-14, at which time I became too busy with highschool activities and left the organization. But I do recommend it for young girls.
I still even remember some of the songs after all these years. 
Oh, no, she wouldn’t like it at all. She’d be better off finding someone with common interests and going from there.
If she WANTED to, that’d be different. But don’t make a girl join if she doesn’t want to.
The worst thing that ever happened to me was getting yelled at by troop leaders for goofing off with my friends. Or getting in little spats over what seems like nothing now with my fellow Scouts. But that’s no different from school.
I was a Scout (up through 7th grade, I think) and my daughter is a 3rd year Brownie.
It’s about socialization. Doing fun crafts and fun other activities (outings to museums, for example). Service activities such as picking up garbage, singing at the retirement home, etc.
And as we found on one recent overnight, breaking and entering (one mom on the trip locked her keys in her car - 140 miles away from her spare keys. Another mom was able to pop the lock using a coat hanger).
The cookies are a way of earning money for the troop, to pay for those activities. Yeah, they’re pushed for a few weeks during the winter, but the rest of the year the girls get to enjoy the fruits of their labors.
I gather from this that you’re worried that your daughter’s engaging not so much in recreation as “wreckreation.” No amount of info about the Girl Scouts will really tell you this.
From Mom Central:
For the record, those cookies also pay the salary of people on the Girl Scout’s payroll. When I asked my friend why the cookies were such a big deal, she said “That’s what covers our checks.”
I’m not trying to be down on the Scouts though as I’ve no direct experience with them other than remembering that my sister used to be a Brownie. I was a Cub Scout and quit because my own local troop was a drag due to an unenthusiastic leader, not because of any problem with the organization as a whole. Point being, I’m just repeating what I’ve been told for the sake of contributing, not to complain about GS in general
I was also a Girls Scout in the 80’s…there was some lesbian sex, or so the rumors go…but I wasn’t aware of those rumors until later on. Anyway, I don’t think it is a major part of scouting anywhere. My retrospective analysis is that they were probably teachers that got outed and left teaching. In all fairness, I was more aware of lesbian sex in my HS in the 90’s than in scouting in the 80’s.
Girl Scouts is mostly about getting girls to think about new ideas and and try new things. I recently volunteered to help with a local troop because I realized this summer that much of what I know, I learned through scouts. Membership is a whopping $10. If she goes twice then leaves, you aren’t out much. The leaders really do make the troops, but you can also be an independent scout and participate in council and national events if your local troop isn’t great. Badges aren’t required of any scouts, but offer a good way for the girls to have directed learning, not just arts and crafts hour. A badge I did almost 15 years ago introduced me to a field that I am now making a career out of.
I’ll chime in as another satisfied Scout, from the 80’s and early 90’s.
We generally did what everyone else here did - meetings, learning new things, camping, crafts, and even some trips out of town (science museums, Niagra Falls…uhmmm…i forget).
I was shy and geekly, and didn’t get along too well with other girls (still don’t) but I had a fun time with the girls in my troop. We had 2 different “sets” of leaders in the years I was in it and they all brought different things to the table. We still had fun.
I also did some events with the regional scouts, away from my troop. Summer camp (a week of sleepaway) was usually themed and I had a pretty good time getting to know girls from other schools and learning something new (horseback riding was one summer - who’d have guessed I’d do that!). I also had a good time at the local summer day camps which was made up of more local troops (still not just the girls from my troop).
My parents were the “cookie parents” for our troop, meaning it was their job to get the cookies for our troop from the local cookie mom distributor lady and then distribute them to our troop. My folks are pretty cynical people and they never seemed to have a problem with the cookie methodology. We solicited folks outside of KMart and stuff. I hated having to do it but it was fun getting the prizes and the $$ for our troop.
We didn’t do as many cool things as I hear some of my Boy Scout friends saying they did, and I wish we would have. But if I REALLY wanted to do that I could have joined Explorers or something.
fifty-six your daughter isn’t going to get brainwashed. She’ll have some fun. If she doesn’t have fun, she’ll tell you and she’ll quit. Happens all the time, nothing wrong with it.
Perhaps if she really wants to join Scouting, she could quit one or more of her other activities? That’s a heavy load for a six-year-old.
Well, if your concern is that your six year old is getting overprogrammed (which sounds like a valid concern), then you should talk with her about which of her activities she wants to drop. As women, we often feel the pressure to do too much, to be superwomen, but it really doesn’t work out in the long run. This is a perfect opportunity for her start to learn that she can’t do it all. Whatever she decides to try, the consequences will be minimal at worst. Therefore, I think you should talk with her about dropping one of her other activities to try scouting. If she doesn’t like it, she can always pick the other thing back up.
I think scouting would be an excellent thing for her in light of the other types of activities she does. Violin, dance, and even school emphasize individual acheivement and a certain kind of competitiveness. Scouting is just the opposite. It’s more about cooperation and fun and general experiential learning. It’s not like she won’t be promoted to the next level if she doesn’t master basketweaving or something. Also, it requires no outside practice time at all, unlike her other activities, which would open up some time to either relax or spend more time on something else.
Anyway, I could detail my own excellent Girl Scouting experiences–I did a lot of cool stuff–but I won’t bother. I’ll just give a shout-out to my most excellent troop leader, Rina Peck. Hey Rina! Wherever you are, thanks.
I’m a current GS leader and I just went to a training session yesterday, so all this is still fresh in my mind.
The Girls Scouts don’t get involved in politics. They are all inclusive and we had a big lesson on tolerence and respecting other people lifestyle, cultures, religion, the works. The whole idea here is every girl is welcome, no matter what.
As far as the cookies go, the individual troops do pretty well. I don’t know the percentage, but most of the money we get will go to paying for badges, supplies, trips, snacks and sometimes, we’ll pay the registration fee, $10.00 out of that money.
I’m very happy with the badges the girls can earn, they are just all over the place. We’ve got them in technology, science as well as cooking, sewing, nutrition, first aid, enviromental things, communications and even basic auto mechanics.
Here’s the thing that a lot of leaders don’t tell you. Cookie selling is not required, but it is encouraged. Remember that anything the troop does is at least partially paid for by the cookie sales. It’s also not a requirement to buy a uniform. If your family could not afford one, the GS offer a scholorship that will pay for everything, including the books.
Well I would like to thank everyone for their replies.
I really did not want to sound like an over protective parent I just had a few concerns about her activity level and if the Girls Scouts are worth her and the families all important time.
I did not know much about this organization. One poster asked why I did not read the website. I don’t know how I sounded but I did read it I just was not gonna base my opinion on it. I trust the members of this board more than the Girl Scout marketers.
I went to a parent only meeting last night and it was just fine. I can understand how some of the posters thought that I was crazy to even think anything was even “up” with them. It seems to be simple group with little or no pressure.
I was told that the entire organization is trying hard to de-emphasize cookie sales and not put the pressure on the girls to raise all of their own money. And door to door sales are actually discouraged. 10%of the sales do goto the troop. But I can not imagine this troop spending a whole bunch of money.
Only 2-3 meetings a month.
It seems incredably boring to me but it might be just what my daughter needs.
Low pressure low key activity and a little community outreach.
Thanks again