September 13th, 2007 by Jemaleddin Cole

Bullet has a great post up on Left Brain/Right Brain about her son that reminded me of when I took Jared to the zoo with my par­ents. In just the same way that Tom can’t abide walk­ing around the park to the entrance, Jared used to hate back-​tracking.

We were at the National Zoo wan­der­ing around with my par­ents and Sierra up ahead, while Kellie and I wres­tled Jared along. We came to a fork in the path, and my par­ents went right, so we fol­lowed. Then, they real­ized that the right fork led back around to where we had just been, so they turned around and headed back to the left fork.

Jared was not pleased.

He fell to the ground, tears flow­ing and scream­ing his lungs out, and Kellie and I real­ized that all we could do was keep going around until we got back to where we could get back to the path that would take us to my par­ents. When we caught up, Jared had stopped crying, but we real­ized that the left fork dead-​ended and we’d have to turn around. I saw that there was a little round flower box in the center of the path­way, so Jared and I walked around it 4 times and headed back the way we had come. Crisis averted.

Because Jared has learned to do so much since then, it’s easy to forget how much he hates sit­u­a­tions like that. Part of it is that he can now tol­er­ate phys­i­cally going the wrong way, but Jared still hates doing things the wrong way. Miss­ing out on an appoint­ment? Not an option. Skip­ping a stop in our rou­tine? Oh no.

So Jared brought home a flyer from the Cub Scouts the other day and said that he wanted to join. We didn’t know if he was seri­ous about it though, and we had our rea­sons not to get involved, so we held off on calling.

Why wouldn’t we want Jared in scout­ing? Well, partly because it’s dif­fi­cult for Jared to par­tic­i­pate in unstruc­tured activ­i­ties. Jared can’t go with the flow. He has to know what the plan is, in order to manage his anx­i­eties. He has to talk through the things that we’re going to do, and then they have to go accord­ing to plan. And expect­ing a group of other kids to stick to a plan is impossible.

The other reason is that the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica doesn’t like people like me. Athe­ists and their kids are not allowed to par­tic­i­pate in scout­ing. In addi­tion, gay men are barred from being scout lead­ers. And that kind of intol­er­ance isn’t some­thing that our family wants to sup­port. Of course, it’s the national orga­ni­za­tion that lays out those rules, and I’m sure that there are many local groups that use their own judge­ment, but the Bal­ti­more BSA has an Inter-​Faith Rela­tion­ships Coun­cil for a reason: pro­mot­ing under­stand­ing and coop­er­a­tion between the dif­fer­ent reli­gious faiths by cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­faith dia­logue and advo­cacy. Not some­thing I’m really excited about get­ting Jared into.

I know that Jared doesn’t under­stand reli­gion at this point, but he also doesn’t under­stand the con­cept that people have dif­fer­ent opin­ions. Thanks to some games at the Arthur web­site, he’s start­ing to learn the dif­fer­ence between facts and opin­ions, but that’s a con­cept he only under­stands intel­lec­tu­ally. To Jared there are only absolute truths.

What’s more, if some­body at Boy Scouts tells him about their god or that he has to go to church, Jared will believe it. And if their god hap­pens to be Cthulhu, I’ll have to take Jared to where he can wor­ship the great old ones. Oth­er­wise we won’t be doing things the right way, and we can’t have that.

Which brings us back to Tues­day night. Evi­dently, the help­ful people at Jared’s school had put out a notice in the morning’s announce­ments that the first Cub Scout meet­ing was Tues­day night, and Jared had decided that he was going to be a Cub Scout: he was in first grade, after all.

But we hadn’t made up our minds about what to do, and that didn’t fly with Jared. He spent an hour or so scream­ing and crying that he was miss­ing the meet­ing at 7, and every time we got him calmed down, he would look at the clock and start crying again. By the next morn­ing, he had accepted what we told him: that Tuesday’s meet­ing was an ori­en­ta­tion for par­ents (not exactly, strictly speak­ing, true), but he still told the bus driver that he missed the Cub Scout meet­ing as he got on the bus.

So I guess Jared is going to be a Cub Scout. I don’t like their poli­cies, and it’s going to be hell to keep Jared calm and focused at meet­ings, but I’m out of options. The school is going to keep announc­ing meet­ings, and Jared is going to expect to attend them.

Because it’s the right thing to do.

4 Responses to “Principles, Shminciples”

1. Thank you for link­ing up to my post :). I will qui­etly and dis­creetly point out that I’m female :D.
   Regard­ing your son and the scout­ing prob­lem, do you come to some sort of com­pro­mise and see if there are any sec­u­lar groups (eg in the UK there is a group called the Wood­craft Folk which I think is non reli­gious). That way he could attend meet­ings with no reli­gious ties.
   Regard­less of the out­come, no group leader is going to be going into a meet­ing com­pletely with no idea of what is hap­pen­ing, so per­haps you arrange for them to phone you up a bit before each meet­ing so you have chance to pre­pare Jared a little.

   — bullet September 13th, 2007 at 8:03 am #

2. D’oh - I thought I was smart for real­iz­ing that it wasn’t Kevin post­ing! I’ll cor­rect that. I was really impressed at the sen­si­tiv­ity of your post, and it should have occurred to me that you were a woman, or at least I should have done some inves­ti­gat­ing. Sorry!

   They won’t be read­ing about any other kind of scouts during the morn­ing announce­ments, so I think we’re stuck with Cub Scouts. We’ll have to do a lot of prepa­ra­tion with Jared, as you sug­gest, but I’m hoping that get­ting out of his rou­tine will be good for Jared. Silly, I know, but hope springs eter­nal.

   Really, the biggest prob­lem is that I’m lousy with my hands and we’ll prob­a­bly lose the Pinewood Derby and the Raingut­ter Regatta. :-)

   — Jemaleddin September 13th, 2007 at 8:21 am #

3. TB: Really, the biggest prob­lem is that I’m lousy with my hands and we’ll prob­a­bly lose the Pinewood Derby and the Raingut­ter Regatta. :-)

   S: You are prob­a­bly no worse with your hands than I am and your brother won the Pinewood Derby and the Raingut­ter Regatta tow times each.

   After ear­lier poor efforts I dis­cov­ered the secrets of a good car and boat for these com­pe­ti­tions.

   With the car there are three basic things that must be attended to if you want a com­pet­i­tive car. The scout can paint and dec­o­rate the car, etc., but it takes a parent to do these three things.

   1. Check and make absolutely cer­tain that the nails used as axles are per­fectly aligned. This is dif­fi­cult but is extremely impor­tant.

   2. Buy a tube of graphite and spray the center of each wheel before each race.

   3. Buy some lead fish­ing sinkers. Drill one or two holes in the top center of the car body. Place the car on a postage scale and add weights until it is just under the max­i­mum weight. Seal them in with wood putty and paint the putty to match the car. If you go over the allow­able weight turn the car upside down and drill a few holes until you arrive at max­i­mum weight.

   Aero­dy­nam­ics and appear­ance have no impact on speed. The above three things will make the car extremely com­pet­i­tive. You might also watch to see if one lane is faster than another and try to get in it if you can.

   With the boat there are a couple of tips that will bear fruit.

   1. Use a marker and draw an X at a spot about an inch up from the bottom of the sail and aligned with the mast. More about this in a moment.

   2. Attach strings to the tips of the sail and attach the other end of the strings to the top of the boat with push pins. This holds the sail in place.

   3. Make sure the boat sits upright in the water. You don’t want it list­ing to the right or left.

   All of the above help but the key is prop­erly instruct­ing the scout on the proper way to propel the boat with his blow­ing. If you can find a way to prac­tice it’s better but we didn’t have the oppor­tu­nity. The scout should turn his head so that his ear is just a few inches above the water and line his mouth up so that a line drwn from mouth to X is par­al­lel to the sides of the rain gutter. The scout should start blow­ing a little on the soft side and then increase the force of his blow­ing.

   The prob­lems I observed with most scouts is that they either blow too hard to begin with or they do not blow straight down the rain gutter. The result is that they either tip their boat over on its side or they blow it right into the side of the gutter. Either will result in a loss. For­tu­nately, your brother did exactly what I told him and won every race.

   I think you’ll both have fun and Jared has a great chance of win­ning iif you mind the tips above.

   — skank September 15th, 2007 at 7:43 am #

4. The only prob­lem with the raingut­ter regatta for Jared is that he is an incred­i­bly lousy blower. I mean, really bad.

   Bub­bles give him trou­bles.

   Birth­day cakes take 30 blows and every cake ends up a saliva spe­cial. “Who wants flow­ers with saliva? Who wants a corner piece with saliva?” We will NEVER get Jared the re-​lighting can­dles unless the cake is REALLY dry. :-)

   — Jemaleddin September 15th, 2007 at 3:43 pm #