Life (for kids) out of balance

Excellent.

Completely OT: Rod, have you seen the movie Koyaanisqatsi? It's full of nothing of vivid sounds and images.

I've always argued that Christian and/or US culture need a bar mitzvah. We often make high school graduation stand it for it, but that's way too late. Sometimes, it's 'driving', but there are physical reasons that needs to happen slightly later than we need this to happen. This needs to just crest the start of puberty.

And it has to be something that 'requires work'. Non-Jews often miss the amount of work that goes into a bar mitzvah.

And of course various tribal cultures have had actually dangerous (Although never as dangerous as they were presented) survival outings that the teenager did alone and came back a man. In addition to, as the story relates, general 'adult' skill usage.

We probably don't want to endanger children's lives, but there does need to be a challenge there. (Another reason HS graduation does not work.)

So, well, we need to invent something. I don't really have to an idea, much less how to sell it to the public, but we need something there. Possibly something they have to buy, that lets it be challenging but also lets parents 'cheat'. (We don't actually need to test their skills, we just need to act like we are.)

Heck, it could be something as simply as buying their own clothes. (Making it strangely analogous with the story above.)

I know I've only talked about men here, but, frankly, teenage girls seem to cope with growing up better than boys, in general. Barring crazy body-esteem issues like eating disorders, but I don't see how my ideas would help that. (Probably women need to work on the dysfunctionality of young women, and men on the dysfunctionality of young men.)

DavidTC, in recent years, some Catholics have tried to mangle the Sacrament of Confirmation into what you are describing, requiring service hours and such. Unfortunately, that's not what the Sacrament is about, so it doesn't really serve the purpose well.____My oldest daughter, age 11, really liked the original article, although she grimaced at the taking on more chores part of the bargain. Her daily chore is to load and unload the diswasher--gasp! sometimes twice a day!--she really grumps about it sometimes, but she does see that she is contributing to the family economy, freeing mom up to get the cooking done, etc.

How refreshing this was to read! It's nice to see an affirmation of actual parenting, as opposed to the good-hearted but wrong-headed attempt to make one's son or daughter into one's best friend.

In my life, growing up in a large family and being homeschooled in high school were the things that most contributed to my taking on responsibilities. I've read, even among fellow Catholics, this notion that parents shouldn't expect or ask their older children to do family chores, help out with younger siblings, cook meals, etc.--that this is "unfair." Not only is it not unfair, but it gives the child a great advantage--the advantage of learning to perform the basic tasks necessary to take care of him/herself.

Before we start focusing on rites of passage, though, I think we need to return to the notion that the job of a parent is to put yourself out of a job--that is, to get your children to the point where they no longer need you (however much they still love you and like having you around).

I actually thought about Confirmation as I posted, although it's interesting we've got one guy saying it's perfect for that, and one guy saying it's not.

I have to say it's not a very good solution, especially as I was looking for some sort of societal-wide solution, not Catholic-only.

We really need society saying: This is where you have to start being responsible. You will live with your family for another five or six years, and can have plenty of fun, but you, as of now, are expected to behave as if you are an intelligent thinking person instead of a random child, and as long as you behave as such you will treated as such.

Incidentally, it is about this time that parents should stop saying 'Because I said so' as a reason to do something. That doesn't mean letting them do whatever they want if they disagree with your reason, the point is you should actually be able to give a good one to them, and be able to shoot down their objections. (Whereas parents do not need to reason with ten year olds.)

And we really need them saying that before or right at the start of puberty, at least for boys, so around 12-13. (We can do it with girls at the same time, but that, obviously, is later in relation to puberty.)

And, yes, responsible parents who actually think about this can make almost anything into such a transition. Like I said, simply having the children earn money to buy a nice jacket for themselves could turn into a rite of a passage with the right mindset. Or their own cell phone, or whatever. (Sadly, like I said, while 'car/drivers license' would be perfect for this, it happens too late.)

The problem is that a good deal of parents don't think about this, and thus we really need some sort of 'tradition' for it so it happens pretty much automatically.

Let me put in a plug for the Bar Mitzvah. Yes, it typically happens at 13 (12 or 12 1/2 for some girls). I don't think that's too early, at least not around here in Chicago, where choosing what color jacket to wear to one's middle school class can be a life-and-death decision. I do believe that kids should be encouraged to do meaningful, useful work, at home and in the community. And they should get introduced as early as possible to the idea of the stringencies of the adult world, and the permanence of the consequences of many of the casual decisions they are making. I spent many years teaching college English composition, including remedial classes. And what really drove me nuts was the large number of kids who simply paid no attention to deadlines and requirements, on the theory that if the teacher was really serious, she'd give them a chance to do it over and get it right. If she wasn't, she'd just disregard the noncompliances. There was no room in their behavior system for a rule that really meant what it said.

While this may not be true for all Jewish denominations, certainly for Orthodox and Conservative Jews, the process of training for the rite of passage that is bar/bat mitzvah is one that begins very young - in early childhood. In order to have a bar mitzvah, children must become fluent in prayer in another language, have a full familiarity with the prayer service and its rituals, be able to read the Torah (Bible) in Hebrew (some denominations don't require comprehension, but ours does) and understand the moral context of their actions. I agree that a rite of passage is needed in our society at large, and probably in most religious faiths, but I do think it is a mistake to think that it is primarily about the rite - that is, it is about the process, the one that Lance described, that begins when children are very small, and continues until the day that they are able to take their place as adults. I don't disagree that the rite is necessary, but even more necessary is that we begin to parent in ways that lead to adulthood, and the ability to pass whatever rites we consider appropriate.