I forgot to talk about my recent Brownie Meeting this past Tuesday evening. As you may remember, my daughter is supposedly the loud, insubordinate, back talking, rebel of the Brownie Troop. She already has a two page police blotter on her behavior written up by Troop Leader J. You can read the letter here at this blog post

Before this meeting, I had a talk with my daughter about her behavior. As we were driving to the meeting, I reminded her and her friend to be on their best behavior during the meeting. She did express her concerns to me that she felt Troop Leader J doesn’t like her. I told her that you just need to kill her with kindness. If someone wants to find every possible thing wrong, they will. They are looking for you to mess up. Instead, you must be sweet, kind, and polite.

I told her that when she saw the Troop Leader to say “Hello Mrs. J, it’s so nice to see you again.” And like a good little Girl Scout, she did it and Mrs. J sucked it up.

Nothing annoys mean people more than when you are nice to them. In their twisted sense of self-worth, this diffuses them. You take away their power and in turn you don’t allow them to bother you. They can’t be hostile to a person being nice to them; it defeats the purpose of being mean.

Overall, the meeting went over well with out a conflict or a hitch. We had a guest coming in to thank the girls for some craft projects they had made for the veterans at the Seattle VA hospital. She was a good guest for the girls to meet because she was 40% blind, a US veteran, and very upbeat person. She showed the girls how she is uses her walking cane and let them try it out for themselves.

Now, my daughter’s behavior was fine this whole meeting. I did however have to step in and tell a few girls not to write on the white board and to stop playing with the puppet masks. I’ll be writing up those girls into my own police blotter. Shockingly, one of them was J’s own daughter! Curiously, J failed to notice her own daughter disobeying the rules during the meeting. Troop Leader J strictly enforces the rules with other girls yet turns a blind eye to her daughters own behavior. Clearly, I’ll have to write this own one down in my little police blotter.

My daughter’s overall behavior is nothing compare to some of the other girls in the troop. Some of them are loud and say things that are mean. One girl made a point to comment that she had more patches than my daughter. I overheard this and my daughter also told me about it. I told her not to worry about it. She might be pointing out a fact and yes, it was rude, but don’t let comments like than bother you.

I guess I could have said something but I don’t think it really would have matter. This girl says stupid things like that all the time. Her mouth has no filter. Besides, I’ll be using her as an example when I give my little introduction speech at the next meeting about being kind to others. I’m also going to talk about not writing on the white board after I told other girls not to write on it. All of this will be looped into Troop Leader J’s own comments where she’ll know that you really shouldn’t be so nit picky if you don’t want it to happen to you.

Remember, don’t step into the cow pasture if you don’t want to get your boots dirty.