Sep 08 2019
98

Girl Scouts Leadership Lesson #4

By Jeanne

If you read my first three posts about camping with the Girl Scouts, you know a couple of things about me. One is that I am not a fan of camping, ticks or mice. Another is that this particular weekend camping with my daughter’s troop presented a plethora of leadership lessons for me. I still use these lessons today, so there’s something positive that came out of it.

So let’s get on with it. After the commotion the mouse caused had subsided, we tried to reboot the add-to-the-story-telling activity. The girls had pretty much exhausted their attention span for that particular activity, so the story was getting dull.

The SUV convoy of camp administrators showed up just as we were casting about for something else to keep the girls occupied and uncomplaining. At first I was happy to see them, thinking perhaps they had rounded up our sleeping bags from the A-frames so we could sleep more comfortably in our shelter. Buy alas, no. We were told we had to leave and return to the A-frame area. That’s the location we were approved to use.

Now, I had a moment of my own at this point. One of those moments in leadership where it’s hard to contain your own reactions. I truly wanted to stay warm and dry in that big house covered by a nice snug roof. While the rain had abated, it was still coming down. I was fine where I was. I didn’t want to leave. Neither, of course, did the girls.

But it was immediately apparent that we were not welcome to stay in the house. So we packed up all of our stuff, piled the girls back into the vehicles and returned to camp.

At this point, everyone was ready to call it a day. The A-frames beckoned. It was at this point where the next disaster struck. Okay, that was a little dramatic. At the beginning of the trip, my daughter and I were assigned our own A-frame and I had looked forward to spending some time away from the troop. I was ready to be off-stage. But, you remember that homesick girl? Well, she had another bout of missing her mommy right at the point we were preparing for bed.

She needed to move to a cabin with a leader in order to calm everyone else down. Luckily, my co-assistant leader offered to take the girl in her cabin. Crisis averted. Almost. That left the girl’s cabin mate alone. So, she came with us.

I’ll admit I was bummed. I was still on stage and tired of it. But I needed to make the best of it. I ended up spinning another story, much longer than my normal bedtime story routine with my daughter. I talked of happy times and places, about an underwater city and a host of fishy characters. I made it up as I went along. The girls finally fell asleep, which meant I could too.

But I laid there thinking about all the things that went wrong, and all of the things we did to make it right, to try to salvage the weekend for the girls. Man, that was a leadership trial. We couldn’t go back, we had to go forward. When something went wrong, we had to make the best of it. That’s what leaders do. That and make it up as we go along.

Was that the last of my Girl Scout adventures? No, my daughter continued with the troop for several more years, until her sports schedule got too hectic and she had to make some tough choices about how to spend her time. I’m thankful for all of the opportunities being involved gave to me; time with my daughter, new friends, and lots and lots of leadership lessons.

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Tagsgirl scouts leaddership

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