Welcome to Boy Scout Troop 1434's website!
Mulch Delivery Drivers: Find the Google map with all 2023 delivery sites HERE.
We are part of the National Capital Area Council (Potomac District) and meet weekly during the school year at facilities provided by our Charter Organization, Seven Locks Baptist Church, Potomac, MD. Visitors looking for information about a Boy Scout troop to join can start with the "Info for Visitors" link in the menu at the left.
Troop members should enter Login username and password for access to the site. If you have lost this information, please use the reminder tools that are provided through the login link, or contact webmaster@potomac1434.mytroop.us.
“A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.” — Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of Scouting
Boy Scouting, in fact, is the ONLY place in our sons’ lives where we adults and parents aren’t programming and running their lives—they get to run their own lives!
Think about it. In school, the teacher—an adult—is in charge of what each student will learn, and the pace at which this learning will occur, in regimented rows of desks and a completely controlled environment. In sports, the coach is in charge of the training and the umpires and referees—adults all-are in charge of infractions and penalties. In churches and synagogues, the clergy—adults once more—are the authority figures, the ones in charge. Other examples include drama, music, and all performance arts: Who’s in change? Yet another adult. There is, in fact, no place our sons can be themselves, learn what they want at their own pace, and lead their own team except in Boy Scouting.
When your son decides to earn a merit badge, do you rush to sit down with him and lay out a plan for him so that he can complete all the requirements and earn it? If you do, ask yourself: Who actually just earned that merit badge–you or your son? Or—worse—do you tell him what to earn and when to earn it, and he becomes merely a task-follower with no goals of his own?
Or, when he’s about to go on a camping trip with his patrol friends; who packs his pack? If you do, and you forget to put in his flashlight, the result is that you get the blame, so that the only “life lesson” in that scenario is that parents can’t be trusted to get it right. But if your son does the packing and forgets his flashlight, the lesson learned is “Maybe next time I’ll make a list of what I need, and then follow it.” Which lesson do you want your son to learn?
ASK ANDY column July 24, 2014
