Kids Activities & Politics

[DZoolander]

So, my daughter is now over 5 years old, and now I'm looking around for some after school activities for her. So far we've tried Karate, which she's lukewarm about (likes it when she goes, but now is saying she doesn't want to do it any more after we come home).

I've also been thinking about things like gymnastics, dance and the girl scouts.

Which leads me to my question... Sooo....the girl scouts.

On FB my wife made friends with one of the local Girl Scout troop leaders. My wife is pretty apolitical (doesn't like to get into discussions about it/arguments about it/etc). But, she noticed that the woman who's the troop leader was posting all of these pro-Trump pictures in reference to the whole grabbing scandal. Stuff like images of women wearing shirts at rallies saying "Trump can grab my"...and you can figure the rest.

My wife asks her about that - and if that's really the kind of stuff that she believes is empowering for young girls/etc.

The lady goes on this long winded diatribe about how so long as the women didn't claim rape, and didn't complain until now, clearly it was all consensual. Besides, her focus is "to teach the young girls to dress modestly, and not show skin".

Gotta admit. My thinking is "If that's all she thinks there is for a young woman to learn, and she holds those kinds of views, I probably don't want her 'leading' my daughter." But I hate that there's something else that ought be wholesome that's now off the list...lol

What do you think?

 

[mina]

I would not allow my daughter to be in that particular troop. Maybe find another troop whose leader doesn't share their political preferences with everyone? I don't know much about the girl scouts, but my brother works for the boy scouts and has his kids involved in local troops and they aren't allowed to promote their own political beliefs to the parents or kids. But, i'd still be uncomfortable having my daughter in a troop with a leader that espouses that in their personal life.

 

[DZoolander]

Yeah, the political part rubbed me the wrong way because I found the posts crude... But in a sense it was a starting point for the part I found almost even more concerning...which is to me being a self-assured young lady amounts to far more than just dressing modestly. If that's of the most important thing they want to impart - their views on child rearing are different than mine.

 

[WolfGate]

It's that troop leader, not the Girl Scouts. They are a decidedly secular organization. The material I've saw when my daughter was involved was apolitical in nature but if anything the viewpoints seemed to be moderate to slightly left of center - but I say that acknowledging it is open for debate and different interpretations. If someone wants their kid in a religious right type environment there are other organizations for that.

 

[Poppyseed78]

I can see why you're uncomfortable with your child being in that particular scout troop. Hopefully you can find a different one in your area, or a different activity that she will enjoy.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to check ahead of time the personal beliefs of every person of influence in our kids' lives. You never know what religious or political views teachers, coaches, etc might have. However, since you do know in this case, then you can make a decision accordingly.

 

[All4Christ]

Back when I was in Girl Scouts, it was supposed to be apolitical. Controversial topics weren't discussed. @WolfGate - is it promoting liberal beliefs, or just letting people decide what they believe on their own without a political agenda?

 

[Hetta]

I would absolutely and categorically not allow such a woman around my daughters.

 

[akmom]

Ah, Facebook. It's like performing in front of a big heterogeneous audience of everyone you've ever known, and even though you have a rough idea of who's attending, the limelight is shining in your face so you can't really see who is there when you "perform." It's almost unfair to characterize a person by their Facebook posts.

It's like eating lunch with your coworkers and telling a crude joke that they'll totally appreciate, and then realizing that your grandma is in the restaurant booth behind you. Oops. You might have seen her earlier and said hi, but then you've kind of forgotten she's there because you can't see her and you're drawn into the conversations of your colleagues. No, you didn't really mean to be crude in front of your grandma. But you kind of lost your "awareness" of how big your audience actually was. It's easy to do on Facebook, with most people having 50-100 "friends" or more. Unless she posted the Trump memes on your wife's wall, I think you should consider it "overheard."

These are the kinds of revelations we just didn't run into yesteryear. Because people adjusted their behavior for their intended audience. It wasn't one big giant audience all the time, like it is with Facebook. I think it's fair to assume these kinds of statements would not come up while teaching five-year-olds. Any more than a crude joke would come up when you're visiting Grandma.

(These kinds of Facebook indiscretions happen to everyone, really. It's hard to mentally recall 100 different people every time you encounter a post that is share-worthy. I've caught myself insulting a hair style, before remembering that a distant cousin is currently sporting that one. Oops. Sharing an pro-life post before remembering that one Facebook friend had an abortion years ago and is sensitive about it. Oops. Telling lawyer jokes, Pollack jokes, or blonde jokes and forgetting I have all three in my Facebook audience. Yeah, it's a lot to consider. A post like the Girl Scout leader's may have been shared with the intent of making fun of how something so irrelevant to national politics got the spotlight. Whereas parents of young girls might see it as indifference to sexual harassment. I don't think Facebook posts, particularly partisan political memes, should be any sort of indication of character or qualification at all.)

 

[WolfGate]

Back when I was in Girl Scouts, it was supposed to be apolitical. Controversial topics weren't discussed. @WolfGate - is it promoting liberal beliefs, or just letting people decide what they believe on their own without a political agenda?

The Girl Scouts are apolitical. I was trying to be clear in that but perhaps didn't succeed. My impression of the material they had, particularly with the revision they did about 5-7 years ago, is that their worldview would be moderate to perhaps slightly left. That was centered mainly around some of the role models they chose as examples for stories and some of the topics they covered. Hard to remember specifics at this point, but when they made the change and I was reading material it seemed that way to me. Wasn't a big deal for us so I didn't really focus a lot on it - but I didn't see any overt political teachings.

Our church switched to another Christian based scouting group. Since it had a faith background and not a secular background, it fit better in some ways with being able to actively promote and teach Christ. The downside was it quickly got inundated with people whose main objective was to protect their kids from the world and keep them isolated in a Christian bubble. Legalism in that group was an issue - for example we had a Father/Daughter dance as a community outreach project. They felt we needed to only play Christian music and enforce a dress code at this event. Also, they never really wanted to do camping and hiking and other things we thought of as scouting. They just wanted to do crafts and 1950s style home economics stuff. My daughter dropped out soon after. Not a problem with the other group, the problem was who it brought to us.

 

[RDKirk]

I can see why you're uncomfortable with your child being in that particular scout troop. Hopefully you can find a different one in your area, or a different activity that she will enjoy.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to check ahead of time the personal beliefs of every person of influence in our kids' lives. You never know what religious or political views teachers, coaches, etc might have. However, since you do know in this case, then you can make a decision accordingly.

You can figure it out easily and quickly enough.

I've been involved with kids--Scouting, church, and other activities--for decades. It's absolutely maddening how difficult (impossible, really) it is to get parents to get involved. Once when I was a Cub Scouter, I subtly threatened my kid's parents in a letter, reminding them that they "don't really know me" and inviting them to spend some time observing meetings.

But parents won't. They just dump their kids off and rush away. Always. Happens today--just two weeks ago our church middle-school youth leaders staged an event intended to let parents get to know them (activities for the kids, a meal and discussion for the parents). Again, parents just dropped their kids off and hurried away.

 

[akmom]

Ah, Wolfgate, isn't that how it goes? I frequented so many groups in college intended to bring people together to discuss faith and philosophy in an open-minded, respectful atmosphere, and instead it just gets usurped by the zealots with really narrow ideas who don't want to meet anyone where they are at or hear any perspectives. They just want to "conquer" another group and make it like a church function and declare a success. Then balk and blame Satan when everyone leaves.

 

[All4Christ]

The Girl Scouts are apolitical. I was trying to be clear in that but perhaps didn't succeed. My impression of the material they had, particularly with the revision they did about 5-7 years ago, is that their worldview would be moderate to perhaps slightly left. That was centered mainly around some of the role models they chose as examples for stories and some of the topics they covered. Hard to remember specifics at this point, but when they made the change and I was reading material it seemed that way to me. Wasn't a big deal for us so I didn't really focus a lot on it - but I didn't see any overt political teachings.

Our church switched to another Christian based scouting group. Since it had a faith background and not a secular background, it fit better in some ways with being able to actively promote and teach Christ. The downside was it quickly got inundated with people whose main objective was to protect their kids from the world and keep them isolated in a Christian bubble. Legalism in that group was an issue - for example we had a Father/Daughter dance as a community outreach project. They felt we needed to only play Christian music and enforce a dress code at this event. Also, they never really wanted to do camping and hiking and other things we thought of as scouting. They just wanted to do crafts and 1950s style home economics stuff. My daughter dropped out soon after. Not a problem with the other group, the problem was who it brought to us.

Thanks for clarifying! I definitely could see a shift between my Grandma's Girl Scout books to my Girl Scout books (she gave me her old books). It makes sense that there would be a slight shift again, if for nothing else than culture's middle ground shifting.

 

[DZoolander]

Honestly, the facebook post in and of itself wasn't the thing that bothered me. While I have definite political opinions, I grew up in a split household where one parent was markedly conservative and one was markedly liberal. So, I'm accustomed to the breadth of political opinions and can see both sides.

Seeing both sides doesn't alter the fact that I think the GOP has really jumped the shark with this nomination...but I understand partisanship and can excuse a good amount of it. People simply pick a side and filter everything in the manner that most strengthens their arbitrarily chosen team. That really is the long and short of it. "I don't WANT to like Bill Clinton because he's a democrat, so I choose to view his indiscretions in one light. Trump is on my team, so I choose to view his indiscretions in another light". Same thing the other way around. 99.9% of all political discourse is just nonsense - because that's the line of thinking that it revolves around.

Rather, the thing that kind of galled me was the discussion that resulted from it. Like AKMom said, I'm assuming she'd be able to squelch her political opinions due to a different audience. What galled me was the stuff along the lines of "My goal is to teach them to dress modestly, and not too much skin".

...because that opens up a whole other can of worms.

Clearly she's an evangelical (based upon viewing her feed and other posts), and I'm pretty familiar with the whole "modesty is what matters most" crowd. That, I think, is not something that someone really would squelch, because it's intrinsic to their way of thinking.

That kind of thinking I don't want around my daughter at all...the whole "chastity is what matters most, modesty is of critical importance, the woman's job is to submit", type of stuff. It's just interesting how the "political" brings that other stuff out IMHO. lol

 

[mina]

Is dressing modestly even a goal of the girl scouts? I mean they have uniforms, and I'm sure they promote to dress to fit the occasion and professional dress for job leadership and all that, but it sounds like she's dragging a personal agenda into her leadership. I suppose that happens, but yeah, I'd be uncomfortable with that too.

 

[RDKirk]

Rather, the thing that kind of galled me was the discussion that resulted from it. Like AKMom said, I'm assuming she'd be able to squelch her political opinions due to a different audience. What galled me was the stuff along the lines of "My goal is to teach them to dress modestly, and not too much skin".

...because that opens up a whole other can of worms.

Clearly she's an evangelical (based upon viewing her feed and other posts), and I'm pretty familiar with the whole "modesty is what matters most" crowd. That, I think, is not something that someone really would squelch, because it's intrinsic to their way of thinking.

That kind of thinking I don't want around my daughter at all...the whole "chastity is what matters most, modesty is of critical importance, the woman's job is to submit", type of stuff. It's just interesting how the "political" brings that other stuff out IMHO. lol

Well. They wear uniforms. That ought to be all that needs said about dress at Girl Scout functions.

 

[akmom]

I don't know. It kind of sounds like you're fishing for a stereotype there. Social media doesn't seem to be very good at portraying individual personalities. Have you or your wife met her in person? Maybe she's obnoxious and pushy about those things you despise, or maybe she's sweet and inspirational, with only passively held views on modesty. I wouldn't rule out Girl Scouts without at least meeting her.

As a side note, I'm flabbergasted by how personally people are taking this election. Most people I know hate both major candidates. Yet anytime someone criticizes one of them, they're accused of supporting all the ugliest traits in the opposite one. I don't know many life-long democrats who have been crossing their fingers for Hillary all these years, nor any independents flocking to the Republican party because Trump got the nomination. Good grief! I don't align well with either of those two, but like many Americans, I'll consider one or two issues I find most important and pick the party I think addresses those issues best. That's all you can do.

 

[Dave-W]

As a side note, I'm flabbergasted by how personally people are taking this election. Most people I know hate both major candidates. Yet anytime someone criticizes one of them, they're accused of supporting all the ugliest traits in the opposite one.

The trick is to criticize both at the same time.

Something like saying you wished one of those deranged mass shooters would have broken into the debate forum and killed both of them.

 

[LinkH]

I heard the that the Girl Scouts has presented Margaret Sanger, the racist woman who started an organization to promote birth control to reduce the population of blacks and other minorities. She was the founder of Planned Parenthood, which can legally, according to US judge-made law, terminate many of the black lives that matter.

Girl Scouts holds a lot of 'left wing' women up as role models. So it is ironic that your troop leader would support the Republican nominee. Of course, he's not really conservative. (Who knows how to label Trump politically?)

 

[Dave-W]

(Who knows how to label Trump politically?)

Robber Baron industrialist.

 

[Velvetyrabbit]

Personally, I believe children should be told about politics once they reach a certain age (different for each child based on maturity) Information is power same as knowledge. However, I do not think it is ok for her to say these things around the children. She is not their parent and it is not her place. The girls scouts should not be her soap box no more than a teacher at a middle school. I would ask if you guys can try out the troop and see if she even likes it one, and that will give you a chance to see how the leader runs the troop. If she keeps her politics out of the group, I would be ok with my daughter joining. If she wears political shirts and such I would not join her group, it is not the place for her to state her opinions. The focus of the girl scouts in not voicing the political agenda of the parents and never should be.
She can like whomever she likes, but your vote is cast secretly for a reason, and I don't need or want to know, nor does my child.