Girl Scouts Deal With Real-Life ‘Growing Pains’ in Rap Session

There was no singing around the campfire or selling cookies. The Girl Scouts who gathered in Van Nuys for a six-hour rap session Saturday had to deal with a 1989 agenda.

They heard no scary ghost stories but frightening tales of truth: why a 21-year-old shot himself, why a high school sophomore spent an entire year high on marijuana and alcohol.

Saturday’s session, titled “Growing Pains,” was sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Girl Scout Council.

About 100 Scouts, Cadet and Senior Scouts ages 12 to 17, attended the classes at Mulholland Junior High School. They were joined by about 100 parents--mostly troop leaders--who went to separate seminars to learn more about the problems of today’s generation of Scouts.

“People wouldn’t think Girl Scouts would do this,” said Alice Spilberg, the event’s coordinator. “But we want to give them the tools to deal with today’s world. It’s not the same world as when we were Girl Scouts.”

Contemporary Issues

Since 1985, Spilberg said, Valley troops--and Scouts nationwide--have supplemented their weekly programs and weekend outings with contemporary issues.

It is a combination that the Scouts seem to value.

“When we have our meetings, we talk about self-esteem and express our feelings, even if they hurt,” said Jaime Wessiman, 13, of Van Nuys. “We need to have both the fun stuff and the serious stuff.”

The dozen girls attending a session on teen-age suicide discovered the serious stuff in a hurry. After instructor Kathy Stark, a psychiatric social worker for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, talked about why a teen-ager might commit suicide, a shy, petite 13-year-old in the first row spoke up.

She could hardly be heard. “I tried to kill myself,” she said. “My friends saved me. It was important for me to hear that they care and that they didn’t want me to die.”

After class, she said she had planned in June to eat rat poison. She said she left a note on a living room desk, saying goodby to her friends and family. Her father found the note before she took the poison and sent her to a psychiatrist. She said she realizes now that she left the note so that someone would stop her.

“I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t stand it any longer. Everything was too much, and it seemed like I had no friends,” she said.

She said she is better now that she has learned how to heal herself.

Parents’ Role

The day’s keynote speaker, Joseph Feinstein, host of the weekly television series “Teen Talk,” recommended that teen-agers try to communicate more with their parents when they are depressed.

“In a perfect world, that would be true,” Susan Hall-Marley, a psychologist for the San Fernando Valley Child Guidance Clinic, told her class. “Sometimes they are the perfect people, but sometimes they are the problem,” she said, referring to parents.

Hall-Marley, addressing the issue of child abuse, detailed various forms of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and emphasized the importance of a victim’s telling someone.

But, one girl asked, what if a friend tells you she was abused and swears you to secrecy?

“You break that promise,” Hall-Marley said. “You’d be breaking a promise but saving a person.”

Eve Ng can relate to being saved. She told the Scouts that she was drunk and high every day when she was 15. She left her family and moved in with her boyfriend. She was going nowhere in school and nowhere in life. Somehow, right before she hit bottom, she started a gradual recovery process. Now, at 18, she is back in school--at Grant High in Van Nuys--and sober.

“I just wanted them to know that as bad as things can get, you can get help and turn your life around,” Ng said. “I’ve stayed clean and sober for 20 months now, and that’s a miracle.”

Adult Insights

“Growing Pains” also proved useful for adults, including Diane Glen of Encino. While her 13-year-old daughter was attending classes with her peers, Glen participated in adult discussions about the same issues.

“I learned I have to back off sometimes,” Glen said. “My daughter is an individual with certain needs. When she is acting disruptive, instead of becoming mad, I have to look and see what she’s needing and take note of her feelings. Maybe I haven’t done that all the time. As parents, we all have blind spots.”

In mid-afternoon, after the Scouts and adults finished their classes, it was time to wrap up the conference with some fun. The Pepper Street Production Company, which put together the “The Perfect People of Pepper Street” musical in Burbank, entertained with some singing and dancing. The Girl Scouts cheered their approval.

“We end with a celebration. That’s usual for Girl Scouts,” Spilberg said.

Even on this unusual day.