Volunteering

I think that if you are involving your children in activities that are run by volunteers, you need to be willing to volunteer some time to help. Now I don't necessarily mean groups "requiring" a certain number of hours from every parent or that you have to volunteer somewhat for every activity your child does. But if you want activities to be available for you kids, you need to be willing to make that happen to some extent.

For example, I volunteer for Girl Scouts as both a troop leader and at the Council level. I'm donating quite a bit of my time to not only make Scouting available for my kids, but for lots of other kids as well. I'm not going to feel guilty for not volunteering to coach a sport that my child wants to play. If your kid is in my Scout troop, then my kid can be on your volleyball team.

This is a little OT, but nothing irks me more when someone shows up at a volunteer-run event then criticizes the event. Our Church sponsored a Fall Festival this year. It was all volunteer run. Including the people who donated their truck and trailer for the hay ride (and drove it in a giant circle for hours on end.) They had no idea the crowd they were going to draw. It was very well attended. One volunteer told us about a woman who was complaining about how they had to stand in line for the hay ride and it was cold, and this is ridiculous, and they should be more organized, yadayada. I told the mom she should have said "Oh Great!! Can we count on you to be in charge of the hayride next year?"

I respect an honest "no". I very much dislike a wishy washy "yes", or someone who says "yes" then doesn't follow through.