Crucial to the success of a Rite of Passage is the addition of other male role models, not just the father. It’s no surprise that most preteen boys don’t want to listen to their dads. Therefore, the addition of other men might help you to get through to your son in a way that he might actually listen. Hearing advice coming from another man may make it so that your son is actually receptive. It may be the same advice that you have been trying to tell him for months, but hearing it come from a man who is not his father may help it to finally sink in.
The presence of other men also helps to solidify the importance of the weekend in the boy’s mind. It’s one thing for a dad to tell his son that he is a man; it’s another for a group of five men to take him away for a weekend and tell him. That’s the kind of thing that he will not easily forget.
The first step in inviting men to attend your son’s Rite of Passage weekend is to identify the appropriate men. These men should be members of the family or close family friends and have a good relationship with your son. They should be over the age of thirteen (i.e., older siblings and cousins) and should be someone who you trust passing down their values to him. Once the weekend begins, you cannot control what other men might say, so you want to make sure that you only invite men who you trust to influence your son positively.
Once you have identified the men who you want to invite along the weekend, you will need to explain the concept of the Rite of Passage weekend to them. Email is typically the best form of communication to organize a weekend, because it allows you to invite all the men in one mass communication, it gives you the space to properly explain the rituals, and your team can look back at the emails when they inevitably have questions.
Our family has been organizing these Rite of Passage weekends for the last nineteen years, and we’ve decided to share these emails with you to make it as easy as possible for you to organize a weekend for your son. We have written out all five of these emails in template format and put them on our website here. These templates are free for you to use, and we won’t even ask for your email address if you want to use them. You can simply go to our website, copy the text, and paste them into your email.
The first email is to the men that you would like to go along the ROP weekend with you. This email will briefly explain the concept of a Rite of Passage weekend, and ask the men to save the date on their calendars.
The second email explains the rituals in depth to your group so they know exactly what they are signing up for. This is especially important for men who have never attended a ROP before.
The third email is sent to all the adults who you want to write a letter to your son. The letters should not just be requested from the men who are attending the trip; they should be requested from all the adult role models in the boy’s life, both male and female.
The fourth email is sent to your group of men and lays out the final details, such as itinerary and addresses.
The last email is a follow-up to say thank you to your team. Pulling off a successful ROP weekend is no small task, and the presence of the other men are key to its success, so it is important to say thank you after the weekend.
Before you send the emails, you will need to adjust them as necessary, such as adding names, dates, and addresses. We can’t do that part for you, but we have tried to make organizing a ROP as easy as possible. Organizing a weekend is not easy, but we decided to share the emails with you in order to make the process manageable and practical. Sending each email is one small step toward pulling off a successful weekend for your son.
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