Make brownies for your kid instead of making your kid for Brownies......
The Brownies raise money for Girl Scout funds that donate to Planned Parenthood. I will never allow my daughter to join for that reason.
My daughter was in the Brownies about 9 years ago. It seemed pretty much like it was when my sister was in it when I was a kid.
Remember that these organizations for the most part are what you make of them. If you get into a group that's good, then it will probably be a good experience.
Yeah. If you put too much pot in them you can get really messed up.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
My sister was in the Brownies. The only thing that I remember was their annoying theme song.
On my honor I will try
Theres a duty to be done when I say I!
Theres a duty to be done and I will try
My honor is try and my duty is to love
I think it depends almost entirely on who's leading the local troop that your daughter would be in. This type of organization has extremely wide latitude in what individual troop leaders choose to do. If you know any parents of girls who are already in the troop in question, have a chat with them. Otherwise, have a chat with the troop leader.
The Girl Scouts as a National Organization are very politically correct. However, local units of the Girl Scouts are far more independent than local Boy Scout units are. If you are the one willing to lead, your unit will reflect your values.
We did it for 10 years. We started with 26 Brownies and graduated 5 Senior Girl Scouts last year. I'm pretty proud of the young women that graduated from our troop.
Well, my 17 and 14 year old has been in Girl Scounts now since Daisey's....and both are all about God and Country. They both love it still.
It really depends on the leaders and their ability to stand up against anything not right. My wife spent many years helping, camping and disposing of anything that was wrong from the head office in her opinion.
With anything now days.....you have to watch it yourself and it really depends on the leader of the group.
They ARE NOT what they used to be!
My younger daughters will be joining 4-H.
If her friends and their parents are in the group, and you share values and enjoy being around them, why not let her join too? It's a bunch of little girls doing crafts... the leadership is local. Let her join, and if you're interested in the content of meetings.. then go and contribute to the meetings. I would not keep my daughter from enjoying activities just because of some politics somewhere else. That's my .2 cents.
I agree though that you should make sure who is actually leading the group your child will be in and attend all meetings, etc....watch out for where the money goes also.
My daughter does the Girl Scout thing also. She loves it. I have not had any problems with liberalism and this organization so far. They meet on Friday nights for a few hours. I did get a flier in the mail and it said something about "it takes a village to raise a child". I threw it out. It is a local troop and very non political so far. She started as a Brownie and now she is a Junior.
Oh let her join,there is more good than bad in the organization.
Brownies are alright, but I hated the cookie sales and took my daughters out of it following cookie sales (two daughters-two trys). I would rather donate the money that the cookie sales would raise, than go through that again.
The simple answer is that these groups are not the trusted organizations of days-gone-by as many "progressive" groups have hijacked them for indoctrination purposes. In some places, however, the parents have made a stand against such drivel and kept it out.
If you are considering letting your child get involved in any such organizations, you, the parents, have to plan to get involved with the group itself so that you can monitor and decide upon what gets presented to the children.
Being with her friends is important.
Both my girls were in the Brownies and had a great time socializing with their friends.
They chose to quit on their own after a few years as other activities became more appealing.
As for nowdays, my sis-in-law was a troop leader for the past 3 years and she said it was still great. I think it really depends on the Leader.
Meet the leader that would be over your daughter's potential troop and get a copy of the handbook for yourself to go over. Talk to parents of Brownies your daughter's age as well.
Here's their US website: http://www.girlscouts.org/
Brownies as a national organisation are pretty leftist, but their is some latitude in how an individual troop is run. When my youngest was of that age, Mrs Mag and I had a troop, and ran it pretty much the way troops were run when she was a Brownie. To give you an idea how the organization was overall, they had no problem of giving our troop the number 666. We changed that immediately, of course.
IIRC there is an group similar to the old Girl Scouts, but I don't recall the name.