The right rites deliver safe passage to adulthood
A mom chum of ours arrived home the other day to a monster bash rocking her suburban spread. The hostess? Her 13-yearold daughter.
Claire (not her real name) picked her way through a path of empties, orphaned flip-flops, chip bags and pint-sized partiers that led to her bedroom door. Behind it, she found a shirtless boy. “Yo man, what’s up?” he grinned. He appeared to be dressing. In her bedroom.
She screamed at the kid to get out of her house — what was left of it.
“You wouldn’t know I’d taught anger management for more than 10 years,” the counsellor moaned.
Once she’d calmed down, corralled the kids, and called parents, she asked where her daughter was. (She’d sneaked out the back door). But mostly she meant, ‘How has my sweet girl turned into a sneaky, disrespectful teenager with a foul mouth and a fouler attitude?’ And what could she do about it?
In our line of work — we run leadership camps and workshops for young people across North America and overseas — we often hear stories like this from parents. They complain their children are drifting, purposeless and defiant.
Many young people lack meaningful rites of passage to adulthood that prepare them to take responsibility for their actions and consequences. As it is, Western rites of passage are often pomp and circumstance more than meaningful milestones.
Real rites of passage strengthen social connections, but they also help teens overcome internal struggles and establish an identity. Without formalized rituals to mark stages of life, children create their own in order to prove they can take on the world. The struggle for self-definition leads some kids to rebel against parents, hold housewrecking parties, shoplift for kicks or lash out with violence.
Meanwhile, communities on the other side of the world usher their young into adulthood through ritualized steps considered extreme in our frat-party culture.
Maasai warriors endure formalized rites of passage, including ritual circumcision.
In Kenya, we have witnessed the Maasai traditions. One teenager we came to know, Naabala, endured a trial by fire (ants), which dined on his skin without him flinching, experienced the unkindest cut of all, ritual circumcision, before being exiled to kill a lion. It was only upon his return that he was deemed a man with the strength to protect and lead his community.
Meeting Naabala raised questions. How does a community help a child become an adult? Is it appropriate to give a youngster challenges and responsibilities beyond her years?
Naabala’s journey from boyhood to adulthood took months. The period of adolescence in North America can take as long as 15 years. Age 30 is the new 15! We’re obviously not advocating you send your teen to Kenya to endure ritualized foreskin removal, yet Naabala’s story offers a valuable contrast.
In Canada, the transformation to adulthood is defined by a Sweet Sixteen bash, getting a driver’s licence, or earning a high school diploma.
David Baum, a New Hampshirebased psychologist who specializes in life’s transitions, explains that teens crave responsibility but are often treated like children. Such kids are on the receiving end of everything — homework from teachers, orders from parents, pressure from peers.
He advises parents to do more listening than talking when helping their teen transition to maturity. We also suggest finding the right rites by helping teens overcome an obstacle — a fear of public speaking, a gruelling math test or a physical challenge like wilderness camping or counselling. Celebrate life’s transitions by marking these positive milestones as a family. And finally, encourage both freedom and responsibility, in the form of a parttime job and their own budget.
For her part, Claire is frantically trying to connect her daughter to her community. She’s already signed her up to volunteer. We’re hoping that instead of telling her daughter what to do, she helps her choose her own path — one that isn’t strewn with empties.