Steven Arms

Author

Making the leap from boyhood to manhood is the most important transition that your son will make. His happiness, self-confidence, and future marriage all depend on successfully navigating his teenage years. As fathers, we can either sit by as our sons stumble over their own mistakes, or we can lovingly share our experiences with them to help them build lives of purpose and meaning.​

In the past, societies from around the world held initiation events to mark the transition from boyhood to manhood. These gatherings created a situation where elders could bestow the “knowledge of life” and “family values” with the younger generation. This helped keep the tribe alive and well cared for.

To our sons’ detriment, modern society does not offer a similar coming-of-age ceremony today.

For that reason, our family has celebrated a special birthday weekend to welcome our thirteen-year-old boys into manhood. We held these celebrations to make it clear to them the exact moment that they became a man so they didn’t have to go through their teens and twenties wondering when manhood would finally “kick in.”

We called this weekend their Rite of Passage.

Steven Arms experienced one of these Rite of Passage weekends when he turned thirteen, and now he wants to share it with other families as well. He will give a firsthand account of his ROP weekend, explain the rituals behind the event, and give fathers the tools needed to organize a Rite of Passage for their own sons.