Parent and Leader's Guide to White Stag

How to support your youth in applying their leadership skills

Read their Candidate Notebook

The blue notebook that campers bring home is not a diary. It is a leadership notebook. Please study it with your child.

• Read your child's notes in the Candidate Notebook. Ask him or her questions about what you read.
• Help them to talk about the activities and events during leadership camp.
• Read the eleven Competency Growth Agreeements that your child wrote in their Candidate Notebook. Ask them why they chose the things they did, and what they'd like to see different.
• Ask them about their ideas for improving their organization or activity. Encourage them to apply what they wrote down.
• Help them focus on reasonable and realistic goals for putting the leadership competencies to work in their personal life. You know your child best. Help them pick tasks that stretch them and help them grow.

Read their Leadership Growth Agreement

Every youth makes a promise to apply what they learn while at camp to a problem or situation in their personal life, at home, in their church, youth group, or school.

• Read the Leadership Growth Agreement they brought home. This should be a very specific, managable, and achievable contract for personal growth.
• Encourage your child to follow through with the commitment they made in the Leadership Growth Agreement by supporting them in attending meetings and completing tasks.
• Offer generous praise for any progress your child makes in completing their Leadership Growth Agreement. Comment on any changes you see that you think are for the better, however slight. Let them know you believe in them.

Support their Participation

• Encourage your youth to take an active role in their youth organization. Help them find a group where they can experience positive association if they do not belong to one.
• Attend meetings of your child's organization. Learn about what they want to get out of th experience.
• Get to know the organization's leaders. Ask the leaders why they serve. Learn about their organization's goals and purposes.
• Invest your own time in their organization as a way to stay close to your child.

Encourage and Support Them

• Help your child set reasonable, ongoing goals for personal improvement, things that he or she cares about, vs. things you think they ought to improve. As you show respect for what they care about, they will respect your desires for them as well.
• Don't do for your child what they can do alone. Refrain from completing projects for them.