About the Book
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.
But how can we effectively pass down intergenerational knowledge in a meaningful way? Today’s thirteen-year-old is more influenced by his phone than his father.
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.
The Rite of Passage tradition has been an incredible blessing to our family, and now we want to share it with your family as well. This book will give you a firsthand account of one of our family’s Rites of Passage, explain the rituals behind the weekend, and give you the tools to organize a Rite of Passage for a boy in your life.
As fathers, we can either sit by as our sons stumble upon their own mistakes, or we can lovingly share our experiences with them and help them avoid making at least some mistakes for themselves.
About the Authors
David Arms
David Arms is a husband and father to four grown sons; Oran, Steven, Kevin and Michael. Together with his father in law, Richard, he helped to develop the Rite of Passage weekend to commemorate each of his sons’ 13th birthday. David is a Catholic Deacon in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Steven Arms
Steven Arms lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and is the proud father of two young children. In Milestone to Manhood, Steven shares his firsthand experience of his Rite of Passage weekend and reflects on how it shaped him into the man that he is today.
“The Rite of Passage that I organized for my son was a huge success! I could tell that it made him feel very special and accepted by the males that he knows and respects."
Mike B.
"After reading Milestone to Manhood, I now have an understanding of why a rite of passage has been a tradition across time and many cultures, a memorable example of how it impacted the life of a young man in our own time, and a step-by-step practical guide on how to plan a Rite of Passage for my own sons.”
Shane A.
"What David, Steven, and Bobo have done is powerful, and this book is a gem. Every boy should have something like this when they turn thirteen."
Scott P.
Social Media
