by kc9901mom » Tue Sep 11, 2012 6:57 am
My oldest son who is now 12 (will be 13 in Nov) also has the goal in earning all 130 merit badges. He had this goal before he crossed over into Boy Scouts from Cub Scouts. He did not earn very many merit badges in his first year of scouting because the Troop he was in did not participate in very many local council events or merit badge universities/fairs/midways. We changed Troops in Feb. because of some issues. We are now in a much better Troop that does participate in most of the local Council events and goes to merit badge universities. This year we were able to send both of our boys to two Council-run summer camps and my oldest son earned 13 merit badges at each of the two camps. My oldest son set this goal for himself because he saw some You Tube videos of scouts who earned all of the merit badges available while they were scouts and he read about scouts earning all of the merit badges on the Internet. I provided and will continue to provide the support that he needs to achieve his goal. Together, we have formulated a plan, identified which merit badges would be a challenge for him because of personal interest and geographic location. For example, we live in Central Texas where the "winters" are mild (I tell people that in Texas - we only have 2 seasons Summer and Spring and 3 weeks of Winter not necessarily consecutive weeks either). He also does not have an interest in competitive sports and now he is home-schooled (luckily for us - a lot of people home school in our area and there is an organization that provides different competitive sports for home-school/private school kids). When my son gets discouraged - I encourage him. My son has been awarded 18 merit badges, earned 2 (but not awarded yet), and has 10 in progress. Five of the 10 could be easily finished in a week and he is working on those. He has the possibility to earn an additional 8-15 merit badges this year (2012).
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