Allowing Girls to Call Home
Becki
Junior Leade
Columbia River Girl Scout Council
Oregon
In a word, yes. I have always allowed phone calls home, as I have a young one myself who needs to hear from mom before she can sleep.
When a Scout expresses homesickness, either by a direct request to call home or by tears and unable to settle at bedtime, I take her apart from the group. We talk a little and I ask her what she needs to do. If she wants to call home, we talk about what the parents are doing at this time and I try to discover if she just needs a little reassurance or if she will feel worse after talking to them. If I think she will feel worse, I will try to comfort her or distract her for a time, hoping it will help. if she ends up needing to call home so be it.
I would never want to keep a sad
miserable little girl from talking to her parents. Only once have
I had a parent get exasperated with talking to her child, and
that girl is no longer in my troop (sadly) most parents talk
briefly and then the child is better. Only once have I had a
parent have to come get the girl the next morning, and it was
partially because she wasn't feeling well.
By having your girls do day trips,
then day into evening trips, then close one night overnights
prior to a two night or more "away" camp, you get to
know their psyches pretty well. in the past I have had unable to
separate girls, and their parents know this so mom comes along.
I would encourage allowing calls.
Gail BranumThe first year I was a leader I let a girl call home. Call it inexperience or something along those lines, but we had just had a minor scare, and I guess Mom was a better confidant than myself. In short, once Mom got on the phone, the girl went hysterical and blew the incident way out of proportion. Mom dashed over and "saved" her baby (took her home). The rest of the girls couldn't believe what had happened, and talked more about the girl's reaction and her mom's than about the small scare we had experienced.
In the 19 years since then, the only time I have let a girl call home was when she was feeling ill or something along those lines. Come to think of it, that's the only time since then that anyone has even asked to call home. Through other scares, homesickness, and the like, I have always tackled them head on since then, and tried to be very sensitive to each and every girl's fears and such. When and if a girl has called home, it was done after a LONG one-on-one talk with myself about the situation at hand, and then done discreetly so as not to bring on a wave of call-home-itis. I treat this "electronic umbilical cord" on an individual basis as the need arises.
In my experiences the girls that ask to call home are quite often the ones that have never been away from mom on an overnight before, those that are very sheltered and protected by mom, and those that are having a problem of some sort at home. The talk usually brings out what the underlying problem is...even if the girl doesn't reveal it verbally. From
there, it is a judgment call based upon your knowledge of the girl and your ability to deal with the child and/or problem.
Julia Gomez
Delaware Raritan Girl Scout Council: The only time I call home is
if there is a real need - illness, accident, serious behavior
problem. Especially at Brownies, you could easily fuel the
homesickness fire and have a very upset child on your hands.
Sometimes the parents say the wrong thing such as how much they
miss the girl which can make her miss home more or they tell them
about something that went on at home and then the girl feels the
need to be there too. I feel that the girls are there
participating in a group Girl Scout activity and should be
involved in what is going on with us, not at home. I have also
found with homesick girls that is they are given some one-on-one
for awhile with positive reinforcement about what a great job
they are doing being with us, it usually helps them calm down. I
try and divert their attention to an activity.
Sometimes I have kept them with me
or another adult I know they are comfortable with until they calm
down. But basically calling home is not on the agenda.
Donna McIntyre
Leader Brownie Troop #389, Council Trainer:
I ran into this problem last year at our troop camping
weekend. Only a couple of girls in the troop had ever been troop
camping. Some of them had never even gone family camping. If you
feel that the girls would sleep better and be less prone to wake
up at 3 in the morning to go home, I'd suggest bringing a
Cellular Phone and letting them call home. You can limit it to
only a couple of minutes not a long conversation home.
Of course, if you
can try to "convince" the girls that their going to
have so much fun there won't be time to call home that's even
better. You are right. Once one girl calls home there's a chain
reaction!! Maybe if just the one girl really can't go without
calling home, you can find a way to allow her to do it without
all the girls knowing??? :-) I don't mean that you should deny
the other girls the same privilege of calling home but if they
don't ask then you don't have to worry. :-)
I try very hard not to have the girls calling home when we go camping. I would never NOT allow them to call homr if they really were nervous or homesick. Sometimes they just want to know that if they really wanted to call home, that you would let them. It sometimes just helps them get through the weekend having that security.
Clare Zimmerman:
When girls
complain about wanting to call home (or even if they don't) I
suggested that she write in a journal instead. Wouldn't it be
neat to get a journal for each girl to use through her years as a
GS!!?? You could keep them as part of the troop "stuff"
and hand out after field trips, or afternoons when camping or
traveling. What a great legacy to give the girls when they bridge
to adults, change troops or even drop out.
Bev Crim: I make
it a practice that girls CANNOT call home. (save an emergency!!!)
When we went to Boston (because some parents wanted to know we
got there) we called one mom and if any parents wanted to know
they could call her.
This time (going to the songfest)
we didn't call anyone. I suppose they could have called Hershey
to see if we had checked in yet.
Calling home wastes time on your
trip and can cause a "homesick" kid to be more
homesick. (Speaking from experience of being an exchange
student).
Of course there's always an
exception that you might have to change your rule, but.....I
truly believe that if you set down the rules ahead you will have
NO problems.
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