And as a parent myself, right now it feels like we're forming future adults in an environment where there's more distraction and disconnection than ever in human history.
From the cultural turbulence caused by uncertainty and polarization, to the endless social media and entertainment options, there's a long list of diversions competing for our kids' attention -- making it that much harder to connect with teens in ways that foster their healthy development as they move into young adulthood.
Research has shown this can be particularly challenging if those teens are male. Boys have been found to have higher high school dropout rates than girls, as well as higher suicide rates. They're struggling with technology, too: A 2007 survey found that young men are two to three times more likely than girls to feel addicted to video games.
In my work with families as a stress management and communication specialist, I've found that some young men have put so much attention on their digital devices that they've stopped connecting with their natural drive to become more responsible for their own well-being as a result.
How the Young Men's Ultimate Weekend began
It's a shift I first noticed 20 years ago when my son, Gabe, was a teenager. Even though Gabe was a good student when he decided to put his attention on schoolwork, he mostly just wanted to put on his headphones and listen to music while playing Nintendo and PlayStation. He was getting involved in alcohol and drugs, and it felt like he was beginning to sail away on a ship, withdrawing further away from me while my old-school style of parenting -- yelling, nagging and punishing -- didn't work.
In the summer of 1999, I heard about a wilderness adventure camp for young men in Vancouver, British Columbia. The leader of this event, Brad Leslie, invited me to serve as a volunteer while my son attended the camp as a participant. I needed the help of a village of men, he told me, to raise my son.
For generations, communities and tribes around the world have worked as a collective to raise children, with parents relying on other parents and local wise men and women to provide the needed resources to help their children grow into responsible adults. These parents and mentors together provide a social container that consistently instills virtues like respect, cooperation and loyalty, all of which help community members remain bonded.
Sure enough, after attending the Vancouver retreat with Gabe, our communication improved. I realized that by applying this long-practiced method of mentorship and a rite of passage in my own community, I could give myself and other parents an opportunity to strengthen and heal our relationships with our sons to better guide them into adulthood.
With the help of many devoted men and women in my area, I started the Young Men's Ultimate Weekend in 2000. Over the next two decades, I've worked alongside others to shape YMUW into a nonprofit that develops emotional intelligence as well as the life skills our sons need in order to successfully deal with the realities of the adult world.
The program gives young men important life skills
What makes the YMUW initiation life-changing is that it requires young men to think for themselves, outside in the wilderness, away from the distractions of technology and from parents who try to solve their problems for them. It places them in activities that focus their attention in ways that help them manage stress, achieve goals and have cooperative relationships with others.
For example, we give the young men a safe opportunity to let go of their past emotional wounds using a ritual called, "Letting Go of The Boy." It's a very physically demanding exercise that allows them to experience a deep emotional catharsis so that they can stop acting out their unhappiness in immature ways. I believe this kind of deep inner healing is hard to replicate with a talk therapy session, because many young men can't just sit down in an office and automatically become emotional about things that sadden, anger or frustrate them.
What makes the YMUW successful is that we operate like a tribe that uses a shared "way," or method, so that all of our mentors are teaching and modeling the same values and codes of conduct. Through community mentorship and discussion, we're showing our sons that they're not alone in their fears, concerns and worries about growing up. And by challenging them mentally, emotionally and physically, we're creating a rite of passage -- a formal line of demarcation to say, "You're not a boy anymore."
Parents can emulate this unity by clearly identifying, defining and enforcing the specific values they know that their son needs to learn in order to successfully adapt to the demands of the adult world. In my family mentoring work, I emphasize three main practices that parents and their children can do in order to have more caring and cooperative relationships. These tools are especially important now that we're required to spend more time indoors together:
- Learn how to relax within a few seconds of initial confrontation, using simple mindfulness-based stress management techniques so that everyone can remain calm, no matter how much tension there is.
- Know how to communicate in a way that respects everyone's perspectives, whether agreeing with each other or not. For example, let your children speak and be completely listened to without interrupting.
- Learn how to be grateful for key qualities of each family member, whether it be the physical strength or mental wisdom of a teenager or the money earning skills of a parent.
We're living in extremely turbulent times, but the world can still make the positive transformations it needs to in order to reach its true potential. When kids grow up in healthy households, they'll know how to work effectively to provide political and economic leadership that's based on love, generosity and cooperation, not on hatred, greed and domination.
I believe this can be achieved by embracing a system of community mentors, with able adults extending partnership to any parent who needs it. It's up to us -- as parents, and as communities -- to raise the kind of teens we can trust to take good care of themselves, their families, and the world.
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