Brownies, Hedgehogs, and The Importance of Not Taking Everything Literally
This post may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This is not a sponsored post, and all opinions are my own.
To earn the Friendly & Helpful petal, our troop talked about what being friendly and helpful means to them. Our second year Daisies demonstrated being friendly and helpful by sharing helpful tips with our new Girl Scout troop members, as part of our discussion. As this was our very first meeting of the official troop year, these helpful items included things like:
Where to find the bathroom and water fountain
Explaining a kaper chart
Some of their own suggestions, like camping safety tips
The second part of our Friendly & Helpful adventure was to read Hodge the Hedgehog, before creating a hedgehog-themed card to take home.
Don’t Break Into Your Neighbor’s House
This is a cute little story about a hedgehog who does not want to share his hedge with his animal neighbors, who want to be, you guessed it, friendly and helpful.
Now, the sweet message of this cute little story is not lost on me, but it did prompt a lot of questions from the Daisies in our troop. For one, they reacted with absolute disgust and abject horror at the idea that these animals would just barge into their neighbor’s home. Helpful or not, the idea of a friendly breaking-and-entering heist was met with a collective gasp.
This led me to appreciate what seems to be a great understanding of boundaries and did lead us to a great side discussion about what it might mean for humans to be good neighbors, as opposed to hedgehogs.
It also made me wonder if teachers across the country still read The Rainbow Fish and if that lesson has been modified since the 1990’s, but I digress.
Stories With Unclear Lessons are Nothing New
If you have Brownies in your troop or have looked into the Bridging ceremony from Daisies to Brownies, you may be familiar with the Brownie Story. Way back in the 90’s when I was a Brownie myself, I had a copy of the Brownie Handbook. An avid reader, I flipped through the colorful pages and landed on the Brownie Story.
If you’re not familiar with this story, its various versions tell the tale of two small and messy children and their exhausted father and grandmother. They learn the story of the Brownie Elves, who are magical, helpful creatures who sneak into the house before everyone else is awake, and help clean and do what needs to be done. The children venture out looking for these magical helpers, only to discover that they themselves have the power to be helpers.
The message is of course that Brownies are empowered to help others, and teaches them to have a helpful and caring spirit. There is probably also a lesson about cleaning up after yourself.
But what did I learn from this timeless tale as an 8-year-old reading ahead on my own?
“Sneak around before everyone is awake and clean up.”
And so I did. My plan was solid– Saturday morning, I would wake up before dawn, before everyone else, scramble to clean up whatever I could, make it noticeable because *magic*, and then sneak back to bed.
Did I have an alarm clock? No. But I did have willpower. So somehow I woke up at what I thought was unusually early and snuck downstairs.
I don’t even recall if the house was particularly cluttered, but no sooner had I started my plan of attack than I heard footsteps on the stairs– undoubtedly my father, coming down to get his cup of coffee since it was actually 7 AM. Alas!
I decided to play it cool, and grab a bowl of cereal, delaying my plan for another day.
Just kidding. I actually decided to wedge myself under some barstools and the broom and dustpan at the kitchen counter and hide, because I was obviously going to make this magical plan a success.
Stealthy as I was at 8 years old, my father did in fact, hear the sound of someone obviously scraping furniture and knocking things over, and then not answering when he asked who was there, and burst into the kitchen fully prepared to fight an intruder.
He was relieved, though not amused, and definitely confused, to find his daughter wedged under the kitchen cabinets.
Therefore, I leave you with this– remember to make your meeting lessons abundantly clear, and never assume that your implied point has been understood. Often, children’s books have an idealistic and sweet message that may not literally translate into real-life situations (see again, The Rainbow Fish, who is encouraged to break off pieces of his body to share with acquaintances who don’t even like him that much).
If you would like to purchase Hodge the Hedgehog to jumpstart your own conversations about being Friendly & Helpful, you can find it here.
Happy Scouting!
