The Book of New Family Traditions (25 page)

Karly Randolph Pitman, decided that in their family, their two girls would have to be ten years old before they could get their ears pierced. And here is the beautiful part, at least to me: They couldn’t have the privilege until after writing an essay about why they should be allowed to take this step. “My girls wrote about why it was important to them, and how they would take care of their ears,” says Karly. “The oldest wrote about how having pierced ears would help her be creative. This all began because my husband said he needed persuading: He told them, ‘Write an essay, and persuade me.’”

Then the girls started asking for cell phones. You know the next part: They have to write essays and persuade their father that this is a good idea.

Coming-of-Age Rituals

First Period

The older our children get, the more vital it becomes that they help shape their role in any rituals they perform. That is especially true with coming-of-age rituals. After all, these rituals emerge from and celebrate a primal impulse to separate from one’s parents. We defeat the purpose and power of such rites of passage if we deny our children a voice in how they ritually dramatize their coming independence.

Especially delicate is the question of creating ceremonies to celebrate a girl’s first period. There are organizations around the country that stage group womanhood rituals involving girls and their parents. And this is fine, if the girl is comfortable with the idea. I’ve heard of some, for example, where fathers are present and make a crown to put on their daughter’s head and express their love. But most of the teen girls I know are extremely shy about this private matter. However you honor this milestone, be sure to include some frank talk about the responsibilities that go along with this new stage in life and try to set the stage for continued openness.

Let me add that I received a little push-back after including this in the first edition. Some readers posted in online reviews that the very idea of creating a ceremony around a girl’s first period seemed creepy. That’s fine: Obviously, there are families and girls who would never want to do something like this. But for others who feel differently, perhaps this will inspire a thoughtful, meaningful ritual all your own that will make your daughter feel proud and mature. For those who are interested in a global perspective, Wikipedia provides a list of how families in many cultures mark this milestone: In Japan, the family eats red-colored rice and beans. In this country, the Mescalero Apaches still put on an eight-day ceremony with exhaustive dancing to celebrate girls who started menstruating in the previous year.

Private Time

DeeAnn Pochedly let her daughter play hooky the day she got her first period and took the girl out to lunch for a private celebration. As a gift, she gave her daughter pretty, colored underpants “to wear on those special days.” DeeAnn says the event brought them closer: It was the first time in ages her daughter called her “Mommy.”

Bejeweled

Marilyn Clark and her husband have accompanied each of their girls to a jewelry store to pick out a ring as soon as they started their period. Wearing the ring reminds the girls that their womanhood is worthy of celebration, but no one else needs to know the significance of the ring. I know another family in which the girls get rubies, the red being symbolic of blood.

Circle of Elders

In one Kentucky family, an all-women dinner is held when a girl is about to start menstruating. The older women share stories of their periods and offer advice. The girl is given gifts, and expected to phone all those women relatives when her period actually arrives.

A New Name

The Gardiner family of Stanchfield, Minnesota, takes this milestone very seriously and has created a detailed coming-of-age program. This might be awkward if there were any boys in the family, but with all girls, it’s been lovingly embraced. Barbara Gardiner and her husband, Kevin, spend time with each girl before the period starts, reading and discussing a book called The
“What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Girls
, by Lynda Madaras, co-written with her

Tip:
The overwhelming favorite book at the moment, which covers not just menstruation but healthy eating, body image, and a great deal more, is
The Care and Keeping of You
(American Girl Publishing), by Valorie Schaefer. A recommended book that focuses more tightly on this big life change is
The Period Book: Everything You Don’t Want to Ask
(
But Need to Know
). It was co-written by Karen Gravelle and her fifteen-year-old niece, Jennifer.

daughter, Area. As a family, they talk about how the change to womanhood is also a time of mental and emotional challenge and encourage the girls to try new sports and other activities. Also, each girl is allowed to choose a new middle name, based on a sense of her emerging adult personality. On the day the blood comes, there is a special family dinner, Dad brings home flowers, and the girls get a special gift from Dad.

Flower Ceremony

There is a lovely first-period ritual for a mother and daughter in the book
/ Am Woman by Rite: A Book of Woman’s Rituals
by poet Nancy Brady Cunningham. On the same day the period starts, she suggests the girl and mother go to a quiet room after supper and light two red candles. Then the girl takes some red roses from a vase and cuts off the stems, symbolizing letting go of childhood. She lets the rose blossoms float in a glass bowl filled with water, “honoring her ability to bring forth life from her womb.” Other elements suggested by Cunningham include giving the girl gifts of a new brush, comb, and mirror, and having the mother brush her hair. To suggest that womanhood will bring both sweet and bitter experiences, the mother feeds the girl a series of things from a spoon: bitter tea, salty water, and last, honey.

Coming-of-Age Rituals for Boys and Girls

In Japan, there is a national holiday every year to celebrate adulthood for those turning twenty. America has nothing like it, though some religious and ethnic groups have deeply meaningful coming-of-age rites. These include the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah for Jewish children, the vision quest still practiced by many Native Americans, and the Quinceañera, a lavish celebration for fifteen-year-old girls in the Latino community.

Louise Carus Madhi, a Jungian analyst and editor of a compilation of essays called
Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation
, wrote: “The need for some kind of initiation is so important that if it does not happen consciously, it will happen unconsciously, often in a dangerous form.”

Look no further than initiation rituals for street gangs—or college fraternities. Or consider the drinking games popular with those who want to celebrate turning twenty-one, the legal drinking age in most states. One drinking game that is all the rage is called “21 for 21,” in which young people go into a bar at midnight and try to scarf down twenty-one shots in a row, while friends cheer them on. Some do not survive this “rite of passage.”

Psychologist Julie Tallard Johnson calls that a “street initiation” and says it isn’t the real deal. She explains that it doesn’t qualify as a real rite of passage because it doesn’t include a ritual to integrate the newly formed young adult back into his or her community and family. It isn’t enough just to endure a harrowing trial. This topic is a difficult one for parents to confront, but here are some examples of what intrepid parents are doing to help their kids mature in a meaningful, but safely mentored way.

Manhood Trip

The summer after they turned thirteen, the sons of John Fergus-Jean of Columbus, Ohio, were taken on a three-week camping trip out west alone with their dad. The destination each time was Yellowstone Park, but the route wasn’t pre-planned. Along the way, father and son read about Native American manhood rituals and talked about how boys don’t have a single milestone to signify maturity, as girls do. Each boy found a “secret spot” within Yellowstone and engaged in a physical challenge, jumping from the cliffs above Fire Hole River. They both smoked their first cigar with their father and talked about the ritual history of tobacco and the importance of handling its power in an adult way. John says the trips deepened his relationships with both sons.

Cutting Dad’s Hair

Richard Boardman, a guidance counselor from Wisconsin, wanted a hands-on ritual that would signify the passing on of power to his children. When they complete eighth grade, they give him “the haircut of their choice.” He literally puts his head in their hands. Naturally, the kids love it, threatening wild hairstyles for months in advance, such as a pink Mohawk. The rules are that their father has to wear the resulting cut for a week without revisions, though he can wear a hat in public. (And if they are with him, they can ask him to remove the hat.) He has attracted quite the stares in church after the kids’ cuts, the story goes.

To me, this is the sort of offbeat personal ritual that is truly unforgettable to kids. I also applaud Richard’s ceremony because it follows my precepts about the emotional truth at the heart of a ritual. As a guidance counselor, he totally gets it—teen years are about kids testing boundaries and taking on their own power and reconfiguring their relationship to the next generation. He created a ritual that includes that testing, but in a playful way, one that conveys clearly he’s open to the coming power shift.

African American Coming of Age

Charles Nabrit and Paula Penn-Nabrit of Columbus, Ohio, created an unusually rigorous and academic rite of passage for their sons. At thirteen, each of their three sons had to study scripture and African American history, reading sixteen assigned books and writing reports about them over six to nine months. Both a church ceremony and a party capped each boy’s efforts, and the ceremony included a speech given by the boy to family and friends about “the future of black men in America.” The Nabrit boys grumbled loudly while enduring this tradition, moaning that they had to rewrite their essays and that they didn’t get a lot of new power once they completed the initiation (I bet lots of bat mitzvah boys would say the same thing). But they were confident and poised young men by the end, and every one later attended an Ivy League college.

Vision Quest: Adapting the Native American. Tradition

When done creatively and with conviction, this ancient Native American tradition can translate powerfully into modern life. The basic elements of vision quest are similar to those of many tribal coming-of-age rituals around the world.

The ritual includes a period of preparation and learning with the help of a mentor/elder, followed by a difficult physical trial designed to push the initiate past his normal limits. Often, Native American questers go alone into the wilderness to fast for days, seeking a vision of their future (and a new name). They return, share stories about their experience, and are welcomed and celebrated as an adult by their tribe.

In our culture, it’s important that the teens be treated differently in some way after the ritual by their parents, perhaps given new privileges in the household.

One Mother’s Version of Vision Quest:

Before her oldest son turned thirteen, Diane Sanson of Malibu, California, decided she wanted to create a coming-of-age ritual for him and a group of his peers. The ritual took nine months to complete for five boys and their fathers. Once a month, the boys and men met in a “council,” discussing everything from what it means to be a man in our society to the series of challenges the boys would undertake. The challenges included camping and kayaking. Each boy had to perform some sort of community service, and each kept a journal about the process and his dreams and goals. Several times, the boys were taken to a cliff above the ocean at dawn and given forty-five minutes of quiet time to work on their journals. There was also a “sweat lodge” ceremony, performed by a hired Native American guide, in which the boys sat in a canvas “lodge” full of steamy heat. A big party was the final event, at which each boy spoke about what he had learned, and what sort of man he wanted to become.

Tip:
Vision Quest leaders aren’t exactly board certified, and if they don’t know what they’re doing, they can do harm. Check credentials of any you plan to hire very carefully.

Vision Quest Resources

If your pre-teen or teen is interested in exploring this possibility, you won’t find a better guidebook than
The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens
by Julie Tallard Johnson, a Wisconsin psychotherapist. Among the many authorities who recommend this book, it has been praised by the Dalai Lama. It is packed with advice on meditation, writing a journal, and spiritual ways of exploring nature, but the section on rite-of-passage ceremonies is particularly strong.

Julie suggests that teens start planning their coming-of-age ritual months in advance, and that they choose a “wisdomkeeper,” or mentor, “who represents the qualities of an adult that you aspire to.” Like many experts, she says it can be difficult for parents to mentor their own child when the goal of the exercise is separating from the parent. She says the most important aspect of the trial or challenge is that it be “bigger than anything you’ve done before ... Something that pushes you beyond your comfort level. By succeeding at this challenge, teens realize they are powerful and able to create their lives. They feel what it’s like to push the limits without harming themselves or anyone else. This proves they are ready to be adults.”

Here are some of the possible trials she suggests for an authentic rite of passage:

• sleeping under the stars alone

• running a race, a marathon, or a designated distance alone