MotherBraggers

I have many terrible confessions to make. Here’s one: when I was eight years old I forged my mother’s initials by at least a dozen Girl Scout badge requirements so I could get more of those little round fabric swatches than any of my troop-mates.

There was plenty wrong with that, including the fact that I hadn’t made the connection between performance and recognition – I just wanted the rewards!

I wanted to hear my name called over and over and take home the biggest stack of badges in troop history. I didn’t care which skills hadn’t been learned or what good deeds had gone undone in the name of my deceitful, impossible achievement.

I assume the other girls knew better or were taught better, and therefore, no one came close to my impressive badge total. But no one in the room seemed particularly impressed with my accomplishment — or suspicious. (My mother was a bit curious, but as with all her fears about any of my questionable behavior, she let it go.) So I was chagrined and relieved at the same time.

And for now, I’m only offering a piece of an excuse. Back then, the big lesson about the true value of helping others hadn’t made its way much beyond Sunday School.

Fast-forward a few decades, and I somehow grew up to know better. Now I am the mother at awards ceremonies watching children collect piles of certficates recognizing impossible numbers of service hours, and trying not to wonder, due to my own crime-ridden past, how they had time to complete that many selfless tasks for their parents to initial.

Don’t get me wrong. The gradual growth of society’s emphasis on the value of service has been an awesome trend to be part of.

But volunteering is right up there with the poetry, sports, music and academic categories at every school awards presentation these days. It can earn your kids college scholarships, features on TV, even help them start a small business before they’re out of junior high – stuff the Ivy League just loves.

Through volunteerism, today’s children are learning about another road to success. And while they are doing a lot of good along the way, has community service become just another method for our kids to compete?

As two mothers leaned across me at a recent school awards night, I got my answer: “Do you know how many volunteer hours it takes to win that plaque? My Eric worked on projects all year and didn’t win anything. There’s no way that girl really did all that…no way.”