So far I’ve been pleased with my daughter’s experience in Girl Scouts. They are teaching useful things like responsibility and helpful behavior; one of her first tasks was to make a promise to help me with some un-fun thing she doesn’t usually do, for instance. We ended up writing that one down together and putting it on the refrigerator until she kept it, and then I signed it for her to bring back to her troop leader. She was quite proud of that. I’ve also sat quietly in one of the halls out of sight and listened to several of the meetings, and in general it’s exactly what I hoped: the communal transmission of good social values, reinforced by peer pressure.
But this cookie thing… guys, this cookie thing is just wrong. I got a lecture about it last night during which I grew more and more incredulous, because the whole thing is weighted toward how many boxes one girl sells, rather than her troop. And that girl doesn’t even get a patch for participating before she sells 60 boxes.
So let’s get this straight:
1. At five years old, my daughter is not selling cookies. I am selling cookies. Which means I’m penalizing my daughter for my inability to sell things I can’t even eat. Or more accurately, it punishes both of us for me not having a workplace I can go to and find 100+ people to blast-email with a request to buy cookies.
2. At five years old, my daughter doesn’t need her sense of individual achievement/competitiveness fostered. She needs to learn to work together with other kids. But the troop doesn’t get rewarded for their group effort… individual girls in the troop get rewarded. Which means that some of them will get patches and some won’t, and in the end you’ll have a bunch of five-year-olds sitting around a table crying because some of them got stuff the rest of them didn’t, and they had no control whatsoever over whether they were able to get them.
So this patch for individual achievement can’t actually be earned by my daughter because she can’t sell the bloody things. And the focus is on individual achievements, rather than team achievements (which you’d think would be more in line with the Girl Scout ethic).
When I heard we’d be involved with cookie sales, I thought it would be a ‘five-year-old sells a box of cookies, gets a patch for participating.’ Not this cut-throat ‘you need to sell at least 60 boxes to succeed, and if you sell even more you get prizes!’
Honestly, I find the whole thing inappropriate and distasteful… and yet I find I still have to go out and find some way to sell 60 boxes of cookies, because if not my daughter will be sad that her friends have patches and she doesn’t.
I know there’s a lot to recommend the Girl Scouts. But the troop only formed in November, and two months of goodwill isn’t enough to offset the “you’re asking five-year-olds to do what?” factor. If I hadn’t already paid them for the year, I’m not sure I’d bring her back.
So not pleased right now.
It makes me feel like a grinch to say it, but I really dislike the whole Girl Scout cookie thing as well. I know many people love them, but IMO the cookies are overpriced and not very good. And as you say, in many areas it’s basically the parents selling them, so I can’t imagine that the kids learn much from the experience, and a lot of parents I know feel stuck between feeling like hucksters and not disappointing their kid. And apparently this year some troops were trying out direct email marketing. :-/ https://cookieclubpilot.littlebrowniebakers.com/