My four year old can debug and repair basic circuits (tinkercrate level), so to be honest I am not the right person to judge what an appropriate level of “dumbed down” is. It’s a fine balance between getting them excited and inspired and empowered and spoon feeding… (but then the little jerk unplugs all the servo wires from your whiteboard drawing bot motherboard and folds them up perfectly and you blame everyone else in the house, first…)
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We used to have our meetings in the basement of her house. This was in military housing, on an Air Force base. They had this huge king sized water bed with a cool painting of a mermaid on the headboard – we’d all sit around on the waterbed for our meetings. I really liked the mermaid.
Turned out she and her husband were having sex parties with several other couples from the neighborhood, hosting them there in their basement. Dad was the chief of police. I guess it’s not something civilians would have gotten in trouble with the law for, but the military operates under different laws, and he arrested the whole bunch of them.
All I remember is that suddenly I didn’t have Girl Scouts any more, and a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood got new mommies or daddies, or didn’t have one or the other any more.
I kinda missed looking at the mermaid, but I didn’t miss being a Girl Scout.
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Oh my goodness! What a day that must have been. Sitting on the waterbed for meetings… aggghhh
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Wow. My Girl Scout leader owned a funeral home and I survived through one slumber party in their attached house. I didn’t last long as a Girl Scout, either, but for far less exciting reasons!
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The “dumbing down” is an adult requirement typically. 
Kids who are interested have little trouble understanding this stuff. I always tried to do a balance of things in Girl Scouts, but then we never did any real camping because meh for me. The issue is probably that the troops are largely at the mercy of the leaders and as stereotypical as it may seem, women seem to be more likely to do crafts and dancing and such with girls, even if that’s not where the girls’ interests are. I’ve never seen Boy Scout badge requirements, but I have to believe they are more robust. I tried to work in as much STEM as I could, but also do things that the girls weren’t as likely to do at home. I guess there’s only so much time in a day and the girls have broad interests. I’d like to think my girls had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but who knows?
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