Adolescence is a modern invention, a time where our kids' bodies have grown up but their social lives and responsibilities often haven't. And unfortunately this stage of life seems to be ballooning larger and larger, with young men living at home and playing video games well into their twenties, with little or no interest in vocation, marriage, or anything smacking of responsibility.
I am of the opinion that adolescence is totally unnecessary.
As parents, we have chosen to erase this stage from our children's lives as much as possible. We have patterned our process after rites of passage used in other cultures and in earlier times where adulthood was thrust upon young men at a time of their father's choosing, usually being given a knife and a slap on the backside as they were sent to live or die on some sort of quest, and womanhood being simply apparent at menstruation.
Now before you call child services on us, we did not send our son into the wilderness with a match and a tarp to find his manhood, nor did we tie adulthood to the reproductive maturation of any of our children. Instead we decided to do it more like the Jewish do bar or bat mitzvahs for their thirteen year olds (though we opted to make age twelve the magic number), and to have the process be very similar for each of our kids, regardless of gender. The coming of age "child-to-adult moment" happens on a week-long trip with Papa (Dad). They leave home as a child, and return as an adult.
However, in devising this plan, I realized that it was sort of unrealistic of us, and maybe even unfair, to attempt to thrust them into "adulthood" at age twelve, without serious preparation. Therefore we introduced a pre-trip trip at age six, and then a bunch of other elements got added, and pretty soon we had a full-fledged discipleship plan for our kids, ages zero to thirty, pretty much up until they become parents themselves (Lord willing). Doing so requires Extreme Intentionality and Extreme Creativity.
This book takes you through our plan, and equips you to create your own.
