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Saturday, January 14, 2012

I Have a Beef With Cookies

If you read my last post, then you know where this is headed.  Cookie season in Girl Scouts has got to be one of the most stressful things ever.
Cookies haven't even started yet, and already this has been a bumpy roller coaster ride.  From one low, into a loop de loop, straight to a huge, stomach tossing dip.   I found a parent to go.  I am so incredibly thankful for her.  After all the scrambelling and worrying I did over the last 24 hours, trying desperately to find someone to go in my place to the Cookie Lottery, I moved from stressed out to pissed off. I offered childcare to everyone in the troop, but she managed to get it worked out on her own at the last second.  She was going a little late, but she would go.  She is also the newest parent to all of this that I have.  She doesn't have any training in cookies, and has never been part of the process before, but she was able to go.  She did the best she could, and that is all I could ask of her.  What raises my ire is that when she got there, there were children at the event.  I was told specifically that there were to be no children, and we struggled with it, yet people were allowed to come in.  I had to send the only person i could, and our girls were seriously disadvantage by having someone with no experience go, in order to follow the rule.

The women there weren't even all that nice to the parent i sent.  In a fantastic display 0of immaturity, other women were taking up seats with their purses, just so no one could sit beside them and leaving no open seats in the hall for my parent.  The process has become so competitive that people forget we are all supposed to be "a sister to every Girl Scout".  That is something we have our girls say at every meeting. I know that in our troop in particular, we are very focused on that.  I want the girls to learn to be good sports, and compete to the best of their ability, but without a malicious undertone.  It can be done.  We try to focus on how cookies help every girl, and not just our troop.  We want them to see the greater good of the whole process.
The whole process, all of cookies sales, is what I dislike most about Girl Scouts.  So many times, I wish we could skip it, but there are valuable lessons to be learned if we choose to focus on them.  I am going to do my best to do just that.  In fact, I suppose I should make this a learning opportunity for myself.  I really need to learn to ignore all the bad behaviour that I see from other adults, not let it get to me so much, and focus on making this great for my girls.  For those who have lost sight of what cookies should be, well, Bless their Hearts, I hope they do great and get out of it whatever they want, too.

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