Coming of Age

As I discussed yesterday teenagers have a challenge adjusting from their life as a child into the world of adulthood. One of the biggest challenges they face is the question of identity. This struggle often defines the teenage years and sometimes carries into young adulthood. I think it is important for parents to realize this and to do what they can to constructively address this issue.

Jewish culture has the bar and bat mitzvah, spanish culture has quinceañeras. However, in American culture the concept of coming of age is generally non existent. If you ask people when they become an adult you will hear a huge range of answers from getting a drivers license, their first car, a full time job, having kids or even "age is a state of mine, I'm never growing up". Without this social construct of being told that they are officially an adult kids are left with figuring it out themselves. While that isn't always a bad thing in this case it is leaving them directionless in the most profound identity shift of their lives.

I read a book many years ago, I have forgotten what it was, but it was about a father who decided to take it upon himself to guide his children into adulthood intentionally. I read it as a teenager and it struck me as something that I very much wanted for myself and what I wanted to do for my own kids.

When each of his kids reached their early teen years and he felt like they were ready for it he would have an event. It varied from kid to kid as to exactly what it looked like, but it was a planned event where he basically declared to them that they were now, unequivocally an adult. That they were no longer children and that from then on the way they interacted with the world and their parents would be different. He also used the opportunity to affirm the gifts and talents that he saw in them.

This distinct event served as an emotional pivot for the teenagers and allowed them to constructively shift their world view into that of an adult or at least an adult in training. That is how he (and again I'm sorry I don't remember the book) saw it. He did several things to solidify this change and to make it have longer lasting meaning. For the kids the old child rule book was thrown out. It was then rewritten along side the teenager. Where the teenager and the parents worked together to establish what kind of rules where needed, what they were, and what the consequences were for breaking them. It brought the teenager into the discussion where their input was not only tolerated but desired and used to shape the revised parent/child relationship.

It also served as a key pivot for the parents because it helped them to shift their thinking of who this person was from their kid to an adult in training who they were trying to help be autonomous. The whole concept is so much more empowering, positive, and constructive. When kids turn 18 and head out on their own you don't want them to have to figure out how to be an adult and what that means all at once and with no support structure. If you start it when they are 13-14 they have years to think through it and try and fail in a context where the consequences are much less significant than they would be without it.

I'm sure it will be a lot different than I imagine it as now, but I keep being told "they grow up so fast" so if I don't take the time now to help them figure life out they will be up and gone and it will be too late.

Do you think this is a good concept? Have you seen this done or things like it?