As a father of three boys, I know how challenging and difficult it can be to help usher our young men into manhood and the challenges of ushering them into adulthood with the idea that culture and society don t really want you to. In fact, much of society from government to education to academia and the medical community would love nothing more than for your young men to be perpetual little boys or inferior women. It is our job as their fathers, as men of neighborhoods and communities, to raise these boys into men who will be our future leaders, who will provide for themselves and their communities and their loved ones.
00:08:03.720And those are all really pivotal moments for boys anyways.
00:08:06.700When they get to be eight, they're turning from a young boy into a young man.
00:08:12.380When they get to 10, you know, now they're starting to be on the upper echelons of elementary school, maybe even moving in to middle school.
00:08:21.100At 12 years old, maybe a little sooner, they're starting to go through puberty and hormones are changing.
00:08:27.960At 14, they're already into puberty and they're moving from these little snot-nosed kids into men.
00:08:36.180And you can see it by the way that they develop.
00:08:42.800They start bucking the system at home a little bit.
00:08:46.100At 16, they start driving a lot more independence.
00:08:50.180They're going to challenge you as men.
00:08:52.120They're not going to be pushed around by their mother.
00:08:54.420And then at 18, eventually, the idea culturally is that they're out on their own and they're not subject to your rules and the way you do things anymore.
00:09:05.100And if you do this right, this is how it will work.
00:09:07.680So those are pivotal moments in their lives.
00:10:13.380What is the function of men and women's genitalia?
00:10:16.880You might be able to have that conversation.
00:10:19.420At 14 or maybe even earlier, you better start talking to them about not being alone with the young ladies because now their hormones are coursing through their veins.
00:10:29.580At 16, you can talk to them about getting a job, having responsibility, having their own finances, getting them a bank account.
00:10:37.880At 18, you might talk about them being out on their own.
00:10:40.680What does it mean to be responsible for rent and a car payment and insurance?
00:10:45.220But based on where they are in life, it needs to have meaning.
00:10:49.840So if I tell my kids, hey, run across the I-15 at 530 in the afternoon, yeah, that's a risk.
00:10:56.820But it doesn't really line up with their growth as men.
00:12:03.100I remember as my boys turn eight, you go on a camping trip and then they get a little lion figurine.
00:12:08.980They actually get two lion figurines, a lion cub and a fully grown adult lion.
00:12:15.260And it's a signifier for the growth that they've had from cub to lion or the growth that they're trying to accomplish.
00:12:22.280There's things, little mementos, little memories, little treasures, little awards that they receive.
00:12:29.240Also, another thing, when my kids turn eight, when they, my boys, when they go through that rite of passage, they get their first knife and they get their first firearms.
00:14:01.780And if you look at what cultures have done throughout human history is that when the boy goes out and he steals the pterodactyl egg and he comes back and brings it to the tribe, he's no longer a boy.
00:14:25.420See, we have to acknowledge this and we have to celebrate it publicly because we need to show everybody else as an example of what could be.
00:14:33.520And we have to acknowledge little Tim, not Timmy, little Tim for what he's been able to accomplish and what he should be proud of.
00:14:41.800Number seven, there needs to be some sort of a marking.
00:14:44.940Okay, now I'm not saying that you have to circumcise your kid if you haven't circumcised yet.
00:14:51.380I'm not saying that he needs to get a tattoo at eight or 10 or 12 years old.
00:14:55.720I'm not saying you need to brand him like they would do on Yellowstone.
00:15:00.820Okay, but there needs to be a marking.
00:15:02.320And that goes back to the little memento, the treasure, the item that little Tim has now at this point to help him remember, oh, yeah, that's who I am.
00:15:15.000And that has meaning and significance to me.
00:15:17.140And you better hold on to that forever because it does have meaning and significance.
00:15:20.600But there needs to be some sort of marking.
00:15:26.440Another way to quote unquote mark one of your children is to create, and this is going to roll into my next point, number eight, a slogan or a mantra or a token or a password or something along those lines where nobody else knows.
00:16:23.160And if we give them that password, then we know they've passed what they need to pass to prove to us that they're worthy of being in our circle.
00:16:50.400And I think all of you are capable of discerning that.
00:16:53.660I'm saying have some exclusivity with your boys.
00:16:56.560And then number nine, we talked a little bit about this in the ceremony process or the celebration process, is that you reintroduce them as a man.
00:17:58.880And then they reintroduced them to their mom, brought them back into the village, and then allowed them to take their training, their expertise, their knowledge, their know-how, their new wisdom,
00:18:07.640and implement it in school, implement it with their family, implement it with themselves to keep themselves safe.
00:18:15.340Three Ninjas is a really good movie for, I would say, boys under the age of maybe 12-ish or so.
00:18:25.160Anything older than that might not find as much interest, but that's a good movie for 12 to maybe 6, 7, 8 years old.
00:18:32.340Go check it out. Three Ninjas is my recommendation for the day.
00:18:35.320But at some point, you need to reintroduce them.
00:18:37.060But you reintroduce them differently, okay?
00:18:39.840Little Timmy is not coming back as Little Timmy.
00:18:42.780And we don't want people to start treating Little Timmy as they were before.
00:18:46.600Now, mom has to treat him differently.
00:18:50.000Now, he has to carry himself differently.
00:18:52.560Now, you're going to hold him more responsible because he has greater responsibility.
00:19:05.580It's them developing and building and getting better and getting smarter and wiser and able to impact their lives and the lives of the people they care about even greater.
00:19:15.300That's what needs to be included in a rite of passage.
00:19:19.680There should be no question about those nine things.
00:19:22.740I'll recap them here in a minute so you can write them down and I suggest that you do.