Cookies Anyone?
“It’s For the Girl Scouts”
This CNN story says, “Sharin Newman Calderon has time to sell Girl Scout cookies. Her 7-year-old daughter, however, does not.’My daughter has soccer, Hebrew school, karate,’ the 39-year-old working mother said. ‘She’s busier than I am.’So, against the subtle recommendations from the global Girl Scouts organization, Newman Calderon — and many parents like her — made a choice: She would sell most of the cookies for her daughter, who then would take the credit.”
Have you ever felt solicitated by an adult to “help” her daughter sell Girl Scout Cookies? Personally, I think that parents that do this on behalf of their children undermine the purpose of the activity and badly skew the intended competition with fellow students or peers.
Growth Excersize
A big part of the purpose of selling Girl Scout Cookies is teaching young people how sell, and EVERYONE is in sales. Girl Scouts is all about developing young people to prepare them for adulthood.
The Girl Scout Cookie website states, “The activity of selling cookies is directly related to our purpose of helping all girls realize their full potential and become strong, confident, and resourceful citizens. Girl Scouts practice life skills like goal setting, money management, and teamwork—and they have fun!
Doing the selling for her teaches wrong behavior at a young age. It teaches people to shirk responsibility and hampers her growth.
Some of the most important lessons I learned about selling and dealing with people was at 16 years old at a part time job selling milk, bread and butter at a drive in dairy.
Help your kids grow up. Let them sell their own cookies.
February 6th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Hello everyone,
This is part and parcel of ‘helicopter parenting’ for the Y generation where a simple bit of Internet research will show you that Gen Y is mothered all the way in all aspects of living. I could not even begin to represent the phenomenon, so exhort one and all to look it up. The examples of helicoptering you will come across will amaze and amuse and possible anger, but you will react I am sure. But then, moms and dads have been ‘helping’ with homework and projects forever it seems and for the word helping read ‘doing’.
It is a pity when it goes over the top to the extent that moms are now selling the cookies as a given OR any action that takes away the chance of personal development, growth and character building from their children and as you say Ron, competing unfairly against other ‘kids’. Its part also of what’s wrong with the world. Has anyone come across a theory of what will happen when the Boomers (people hitting retirement about now)have died off … say in 2035 or so, given that we still have a world not sunk into the sun? An unrelated question from cookies to the future, but if humanity eschews the skills that has served it well for so long, how will humanity fare? Oh lulu, I am getting tongue-tied now sand taking myself too serously … so I think I will stop typing.
You are right though Ron, what a pity! Maybe new rules need to be put into place, when the ‘unsold cookies’ go in for counting. Maybe an honour pledge needs to be signed by the Girl Scout to say she sold them all in order for her to compete. Perhaps an addendum to any competition, an extra bonus or prize could be offered for the funniest or best story on “How I sold my cookies this year - and what I learned along the way.”
Cheers
Celeste
Johannesburg S A
February 6th, 2009 at 9:55 am
C’Mon Ron; why be so stiff about this? I would much rather give my “Cookie Business” to that hot Mom than the brat kid any day.
February 6th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’m with Ron on this one. I hate seeing mothers walking around the office with their hands out asking for donations on behalf of one of their kids selling this and that, raising money for that and this. I sometimes wonder if the kid is really selling them or not. It looks like an easy way for mom to make a few bucks on the side.
I actually doubt that’s the case, but it is NOT the way to bring kids up, teaching them that it’s okay to let someone else do their jobs for them.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:37 am
And I’m also with Ron on this. At the age of 9, my family had a medium-size garden and more produce than we needed; corn, beans, tomatoes, okra. My mom loaded up my little red wagon and told me to go door-to-door and sell. My father was a Navy officer; so it wasn’t because we needed the money. It was because my mom knew I needed the lessons. And so I encountered call-reluctance with every doorbell I rang. I’m now 63, still in sales, and will always be grateful to my mom for that lesson. And that is exactly what Girl Scout moms need to do for their daughters. And if the daughters are “busier than their moms” then the moms should help the daughters with other tasks - but don’t take away the valuable lessons to be learned from selling at an early age. Those lessons (or the lack of them) will last a lifetime.