Transcription
No young man should stumble his way into manhood. The best gift we can give as a father is a clear pathway. Every boy needs a moment where he is called out of boyhood and into manhood. Where his strength is tested, his faith is forged, and his father's voice calls him forward. That's why we created the Brave Co. Ride of Passage. It's a 30-hour weekend where fathers and sons encounter God together. We're going to break a wild horse. We're gonna push limits and leave forever changed. Guys, this isn't a retreat. It's not a conference. It's a right of passage. Join us February 28th through March 1st, 2026 in Jacksonville, Florida. Visit braveco.org to learn more about this.
We live in a time where masculinity is shamed and men don't know what it means to be a man. As a pastor and counselor, I've spent the better part of my life equipping and training others. My goal with this show is to translate my hard-earned experience into tools and tactics to help you become stronger as a man. This is the Brave Co [music] podcast. I'm your host, Jason Valentin. [music] Welcome back to the Brave Co podcast, men.
Uh, today we're going to talk about how to help your young men transition into manhood, specifically when they start going from that 16, 17, 18-year-old, 19-year-old stage and beyond. Um, I was talking to a good friend of mine this week and I've had lots of conversations like this uh where he was going, "Man, my son is 18 years old. He's starting to um get to the point in life where he wants to move on with his life, right? Like he wants to to grow and move up in in the world and but also home life is kind of hard like how do we navigate this season? There's not a lot of information and it's so fun um just jumping on a call with him and talking through it and just looking at how do we help our sons transition and what is really going on in him and and it kind of helps to understand the whole picture because uh raising kids is challenging, man. I don't often talk about it on this podcast, but um I talk about it a lot on my other podcast, Dates Mates and Babies, um with my wife. Uh, her and I lead that. But raising kids is really challenging, right? Because you go through these different phases in life with your children and no one's there going, "Hey, they just transitioned from this phase to this phase, right?" And you can see it pretty easily if you look at um the the grade schools. you're like, "Oh, kindergarten, preschool, uh, first grade, second grade, third grade, right? 8th grade to high school is a big jump." And you're like, "Man, my kids are growing up." But you, we don't always think about, well, what does that mean for me as a parent? How do I parent them differently as they grow up? What does it mean for them? Like, what are they needing more of? What do they need less of? And you kind of get caught, at least I got caught off guard as a parent. My especially in the later years, my kids made such a massive transition from 8th grade, uh, sixth, seventh, 8th grade to high school. in their freshman year, like where my sons were at and what they needed their freshman year of high school from me was so incredibly different from what they needed from me as a senior in high school. And those years go by so quick, right, that as a dad, I'm like I I wake up one day and my son's 17 years old. He's a senior and it feels different in our home. And so I think there's a lot of dads out there, probably a lot of parents out there who are going, man, how do we like what is the right move to make here? How do we help to transition our kids in a really helpful, powerful way? And uh and how do we feel successful in this season?
Um, a couple things to to keep in mind is when kids are young, right, when they're little, like in this [clears throat] this early season of life, you you really are like in this cop sort of phase, right? Like that I mean, even younger than 12, um, but really to to like 15 years old, you're in this cop phase, which sounds kind of hardcore, but you're there's tons of oversight. There's lots of setting boundaries, clear boundaries. You're trying to protect innocence, right? And also shaping discipline. And if you think about it, like our your kids are so innocent and that anywhere from from one years old all the way up to like that 13, 14, 15 year old, they have so much innocence inside of them and so much curiosity and a lot of purity and a lot of trouble too. It's not all perfect, but when they're young, you're doing so much. Um, you like your connection to them is one of the main things that you're protecting, but it's not the only thing that you're protecting. You discipline different, right? Like you'll ground a a 12-year-old or your I mean, the last spanking that I got from my dad that I can remember, I was 13 years old. I got spanked at 13 years old. I didn't get spanked at 16 years old. Right. We had transitioned from my dad going, "Wow, I'm really disappointed in the decision that you made. Um, let's talk through that. Tell me about that." To I'm 12 years old or 13 years old and I get an F on my report card and my dad's like, "Hey, I'll meet you in the bedroom." I'm like, "Oh, shoot." You know, that's a different phase in a different age. Right now at home, I have a three-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. And the my day is full, completely full from when they wake up to when they go to bed at night of like oversight. I'm con I'm overseeing everything from getting them dressed to dinner time to and it's a lot of instructing. There's like, hey, you're done with dinner. Take your plate up to the counter, right? Rinse it off. Good job. You're doing amazing. Hey, I don't think you want to go out of the house with your hair looking like that. Hey, come here, buddy. Let's put your pants on. No, get off the ground. No, don't eat that. Right. Like, that's my whole day with my littles. But I also have kids that are older. My oldest is 26, married with a baby, so I'm technically a grandpa. And my daughter, um, Riley is 24 years old, and my son Evan is 21 years old. So, I've I've like gone through and I'm in both of these phases in life. And there's such a drastic change, like I was saying, from where I'm at today with my three-year-old and my 5-year-old to when your kids start to get into high school.
So, as a dad, what starts to happen is when your sons hit puberty, there's this naturalb born thing inside of them where they want to try, test themselves, make their own decisions, grow, take risks, learn. And that's a that is a challenging phase for a father if you're not ready for it because you spent so much time and even a mother. You spent so much time literally instructing your kids what to do, right? Um, even controlling what they do. I mean, so much time controlling what they do. And of course, as a parent, you try to make them as powerful as possible. Would you like to eat chicken nuggets or hot dogs today? Would you like to make this or that? But as they're getting older, I mean, you're not cooking breakfast for them or lunch necessarily. They're learning how to do those things. They really move into this phase um where they are getting ready to take on so much more responsibility. And you move from this cop to this instructor mentor, right? Where the goal shifts from controlling them to training them. um you you're now opening up the conversation of hey the more I trust you the more freedom you have but also the more responsibility, right? So the difference between a boy and a man, if you think about it like this, is a boy consumes more than he produces, but a man produces more than he consumes. We are showing our sons how to take on more and more and more responsibility. There's nobody in life that as they graduate in life take on less responsibility. I mean, just think about it. Like you don't go from um junior high to high school and now because you're in high school, you have less responsibility. You don't you have more responsibility and more accountability as well. The the decisions that you make have a much higher consequence. And then you go from being in high school to being in college or being out, you know, whatever out in the world doing whatever you're doing. Like me, 18 years old, I left the house and I got married right away. So I jumped into um I jumped into manhood like full force. Uh, my wife got pregnant 3 months after we got married and I'm going to be a dad, right? So, I jumped in full force into adulthood and now I have to figure out bills and how I'm going to take care of my wife and how do we want to um raise our our babies and how many babies do we want like all this whole entire world just happened for me so quick. I wasn't getting less responsibility. There wasn't less accountability. There was more responsibility. More accountability.
Why is this important? Okay, if you have young kids right now, you're starting to prep them for these stages. If you don't start to prep them for these stages, as they hit them, they'll be really shocked. If you do a great job, as they're starting to grow and make these transitions, right, 10, 11, 12, 13, you're you're already in that 10 10-year-old phase for a young man. You're going, "Hey, son, you're starting to grow into a young man. What that means is we take on more responsibility. You also get more trust, right? So you can do things that you weren't able to do at nine, 10 years old, you can start to do those things. More responsibility equals more purpose. A man feels better the more purpose he has in life. I mean, look at your life. If you're a man and you're watching this and you're listening to this, like if you don't love your life, probably the number one reason is you don't have any purpose. What is my purpose? What am I doing? Well, purpose comes with responsibility. So, when you have a lot of responsibility, you naturally have a lot of purpose in life. Think about the story of the parable of the the talents or the miners. Either one will work. When the master gave a sum of money to his servants, the one who stewarded his who took it from five to 10, what did he get? Well, he got put over he he he got put over cities, right? Well done, good and faithful servant. I'm going to put you over these cities. The one that that went from three to whatever five or multiplied his, he got put over. He got more responsibility. The one the the servant that hid his talent or hid his miner, it got taken away from him and given to the one who had more. But not only that, Jesus goes like, "Oh, you wicked and lazy." It's wicked and lazy for not investing, for not taking like for not doing what you were called to do, for not taking a risk. The reward for people who had done good, who were faithful, was more responsibility, not less responsibility, which goes against our western culture of like, I'm going to build and build and build and then retire and have all this free time to myself and and not take on anymore. That's not actually God's design. I I'm not like trying to pick a fight here. I'm simply saying God's reward for us growing older and and taking on on more responsibility and doing a good job with it was that you would get more. You'd be entrusted with more. And in return, what what happens is is you build a bunch of confidence and uh uh there's an internal reward when we when we do good and when we provide. Actually, there's a stat that I read in the book called Well-being that says a man who's out of work for a prolonged period of time. It's harder for him to go through that than it is a death in the family or a divorce. I mean, think about that, guys. Going for a long period of time without working is harder on you mentally and emotionally than going through a death in a family or divorce. That's crazy.
Okay. So, as we're preparing our young men, we're starting to have these conversations with him where we're going, "Hey, you are no longer a boy, a young boy. You're growing into a young man. This is what that means." I remember when my dad sat me down. I was probably 12 years old, and he said, "Son, you're going to start feeling like you don't want to hang around me." I didn't understand that. Like, I literally remember going, I told my dad, "No, I won't. I love hanging out with you." My dad was like my favorite person to hang out with. We'd go play basketball. I'd go to um after school I'd go to the workplace. Uh, he owned auto parts stores and I'd like I' I' he had giant hydraulic presses. Like I could put a penny under there and smash it. I put all do all kinds of experiments. I helped clean the shops. Like my dad was my he was my best friend growing up. So when he started to go like, "Hey, you're 12." We'd have these long conversations when you get home at night. You're 12. You're starting to become a young man. You're going to your testosterone is going to happen. Like your body parts are going to are changing. You're going to get hair under your armpits. Your voice is going to change. When that happens, it's normal, son, for you to not want me to tell you everything to do. It's normal for you to want to hang out with your guys more than me. That like that's normal. I remember the day that my dad and I were going to go play basketball. I was like probably like 13, 13 and a half. And I just remember being like, "Ah, I do not want my dad to come." I remember telling my dad one day, like, he was like, "Hey, you ready to go?" And I was like, "Yeah, actually, could you just drop me off?" He's like, "What do you mean?" I mean, we've been playing basketball together every single week for like years. My dad knew all all the, you know, we had like the guys down there that played. And I said, "Uh, I just want to play with with my friends." And he was like, "Yeah, no problem." Well, he dropped me off. He tells the story. He drove home and he cried like the whole way home. You know, he was setting me up to have permission to start to create, right, my own identity. Of course, I was a Valentin. Of course, I was Chris's son and Kathy's son, but I'm also learning who I am. I wanted to I I wanted to to start to flex my own strength and my own power and become my own man inside of the context of family. That's really normal. So, I was then making uh decisions. Some of the decisions weren't decisions that my dad would necessarily make. And that's okay. I remember at 15 years old, my dad had this key conversation with me. And the reason why I'm telling you these is because I think these are important milestones for young for fathers to have with their young men. 15 years old, I remember my dad sitting me down. He said, "Son, you're at the age where you should start you should be making most of the decisions for your life right now. You should." And and he said, "I want you to to make decisions, to take risks. I want you to do all of your failing here at home because you have mom and I to help coach you." Right? I had made a clear distinction from my parents being the cops. They make all the rules. They make all the right they're they're like giving me tons of instructions to oh my parents are mentors. I make decisions and they're guiding me when I ask. They're giving me you know they're helping me to to clean up messes. They're helping me make wise decisions. That was massive for me.
Why that's important. If you don't transition out of that phase, your kids don't learn how to problem-solve on their own. They're constantly needing you to micromanage them. And that skill set of of making decisions that grows as you make decisions and as you reflect, right? And so I remember I had a teacher um I was 14 or 15. I had a teacher that just didn't like me. She didn't like me and she was treating me unfair, right? The grade I would turn in a paper uh I would get a lower grade than the guy next to me. And literally like I read his paper uh his paper was almost the same as mine and I was she would give me a lower grade and finally like I I remember telling my dad like it doesn't matter what I do. This lady she just doesn't like me. And he was he was going to go have a talk with her. He told me like I'm going to go talk to her. And that night he said God told me like he has to win his these battles on his own. He has to fight his battles on his own. So, I remember going there and um my dad telling me like, "I can't win this battle for you because you're at the age where you have to start to win some battles. I'm here to coach you, but you're going to have to go talk to her." So, I went in there and I just had a conversation with her and I told her that I was really struggling in her class and that I was having a hard time and I really love some of her help. And instead of like, "Why don't you like me?" I actually invited her in and two things happened. one, it's like her compassion turned towards me. Maybe she uh maybe she humanized me. I don't know what happened, but she was all of a sudden really helpful. And then just through talking to her, I found out that she was battling cancer and that she was going through a lot and that her life was really tough. And I got to take an interest in her. And I'll tell you, like everything started to change. That wouldn't have happened in my life if my dad would have went and solved that problem for me. I started to get to this point in my life where I'm making decisions. I'm having to step up. I'm asking my dad like, "What would you do? What are what are some thoughts?" He's giving me ideas, but he's not solving the problems for me.
Okay. There also comes a stage when a man needs to leave his home, when he moves into this out of this mentor stage, right? And as a parent, you start to just move into a coach, into a guide. And that coach phase is, I think, is the hardest phase because you've been in this, you've been in this stage where you're still at the 15, 16, 17-year-old phase, especially 14, 15, 16. you're still really invested in your kids making the right decisions, the culture that they're creating in the home. Soon as they transition to like that 17 to 20-year-old age, they get to this place where really they should start be really thinking about being on their own, if not being on their own. And there's lots and lots and lots of reasons for this, but just developmentally, emotionally, uh, what 18-year-old wants dad and mom to make the a lot of decisions for them. They don't. What you eat, how you eat, when you go to bed, how clean you keep your room. And it starts to get to this this this phase. This is why I experienced a lot in my home with both of my boys. Um, was I would be like, "Hey, listen. Did you get your did you get the chores done that I that you know that you're supposed to do which was easy right is mow the lawn clean your room and more and more and more it got to this point where it's like uh yeah I'll go do it and I'm feeling like my young my men like these grown men are frustrated because they want to go have free time with their friends or they want to go to do this thing or they got work and they're going to be late but I'm getting frustrated because their room's trashed or the the lawn isn't done, the yard and I'm going to work every day. They're going and doing whatever they want with their free time. And these are men that really honestly are fully capable. They are fully capable of contributing. They just don't want to or they haven't created that habit, right? And so I remember starting to get into this phase with my adult sons where I'm like, "Okay, we have a problem. The problem is I can't feel like you're frustrated at me for wanting my stuff that actually belongs to me. That room belongs to me. This yard belongs to me when I'm feeding you, cooking for you, providing electricity. Uh, right. And so as a father, I had to start going, how do I get my heart in a good place? What do I actually need from my sons? It really transitions. When you're young, you're not requiring a lot. Like the your kids are not really responsible for your emotions and the emotional state and and [snorts] even as they're growing older, like they learn to uphold their end of the relationship, but that doesn't happen till they're much older. and and they have to learn and grow in that. As they get to like this older phase, it something changes when they get to that 16, 17, 18, especially 19 and 20. As you get older, like it's really painful if you don't feel like your sons are contributing, are contributing to the relationship, are upholding their end of the bargain, of the deal. And at some point you you end up enabling your your your sons and keeping them from the growth path that that God naturally have for them.
So a couple things are important in in my book. one, if they're going to live in your home, if your young men are going to live in your home past 18 years old, you have to have really, really clear expectations because again, this is the point in life where they are fully responsible for their life. They should you should be more like a coach than you are even a mentor and certainly more than a cop. If you're still a cop, you're you will hate this spot in your in your kids' lives. If you're still playing cop, for instance, they make really bad decisions and you feel really responsible to fix it, to solve it for them, you're going to hate that because you're not the one that's supposed to be. And also, they're going to resent you for it. So, you have to get out of this phase of do this or that, do this or that. When your kids are, it needs to be more almost like a contract. And I have lots of friends who um I have a couple friends I'm thinking about who when their sons turned um 18, 19 years old, they wanted to stay. They created a contract. Hey, let's talk about what are really clear expectations. What do you need in order to thrive, son, in this relationship? And what do I need in order to thrive? Because I don't want to as a as a father, I don't want to run around and go, "Hey, did you clean your room today? Did you mow the lawn today? Hey, why didn't you do that? Like, I don't want to be your landlord. I want you to do those things. And then clear expectations on meals and clear expectations on the on um contributing to to the family because again, the goal is as as our men are growing up, they should also be growing in responsibility. So, at some point, I'm not helping my son out if he doesn't if he's not growing in responsibility while he's living in my house. So, if he's not contributing financially and contributing emotionally and contributing spiritually and contributing to the well-being of our property and then really I'm keeping him from maturing and growing in and when he leaves my house, he doesn't have the skill sets that he needs to go and to grow. And so I've just found like the parents who are the most frustrated with their kids in in this phase, it's because they haven't clearly created healthy expectations between their son and you know and them. What do you what are we both okay with? What do we both need in this relationship? And um I had a a child move back in with me um a little while ago and it was awesome because um my sons, like I said, both moved out on their own. One of them moved out at 17 years old. He came to me and said, "Hey, listen. I feel like I'm ready to move out. I want to move in with my cousin. I feel like I'm in a really great spot. I want to take on more responsibility." For me as a dad, I had been coming up against this challenge of like every time I ask him to clean his room, I always have to remind him to do his responsibilities. Um, he's and he's not enjoying that. He's I'm not enjoying it and he's not enjoying it. It becomes this massive frustration. So when he came to me and said, "Hey, I'd think I'd like to move out." My first response to him was, "I think you should. I totally think you should. If you don't want me, if you don't want to live under the standard that mom lives under, that I live under, that we have for our house, then I really think that you should go and create the standard that you want to live under. And that became this really awesome journey because I got to move out of this role of coach and move into this role of mentor. If you want my input, come get it. And so he would do that financially. Well, I told him like, "If you need any help, we're here to help. If you need like my freezers open, you had a whole bunch of wild game in there." My son would come and just like load up on wild game, go home. And I was cool with that. Like that's just a way that I got to support him, that I got to love on him, that I got to believe in him. He would get in financial trouble. So throughout the year, we would coach him in how to manage his finances. And honestly, it completely changed our relationship. Like because he was having to manage his world, his roommates, he would come home and be like, "My roommates are terrible. They don't cook. They don't clean. They don't clean up their messes. Their rooms stink." And I was like, "Oh, buddy, that's tough. Do you need any help?" Yeah. How should I have the conversation with him? So now, instead of me having the conversation with my son about keeping his room clean and about mowing the lawn, I'm h helping him. I'm coaching him, right? I'm instructing him. I'm mentoring him on how to have great conversations with his roommates. Guys, it radically transformed my relationship with my son, both of them. And then there came a point where he uh he needed a little bit more help. Actually, we had a dream. I'm intentionally not telling you guys which one of my sons just to cuz it's really not about them. I just want to give you an example. We had a dream u my wife did that we let our son come back in for a short amount of time for 6 months so that we could really pour into him and he was in a stage of life where he needed a little bit more help uh financially felt like he was constantly uh up against the wall in debt and then he had some physical uh health stuff and so we just told him like hey we had a dream he had been out of the house for 2 years we had a dream that um we invited you back in for a little while. Is that something that you'd be interested in? And um this was a while ago. So anyways, he took us up on it and we created this this u this contract, this understanding of like, hey, if you're going to come back in, like this is what I'd love to offer you. I'd love to offer you insight into your finances. I would love to offer you insight into um some of these things and and how to grow emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. If you want to do that and you want to be on that track, like I'm so happy to help you. If you don't, then I don't really want you to move back in because like this is what I can offer you. I can't offer you like a a free stay at home. And he was like, "Oh my gosh, this is incredible. Yes, I want to do that." Guys, I'll tell you like one, I'm so incredibly proud of my son. That season in our life was amazing. And we and Lord and I really got to pour into him and help set him uh set him up for success in the future. But more importantly than that, like my relationship with him has only grown so much deeper. And when I was talking to my friend the other day, I was sharing this story with him because he was in a spot where he's like, "My son's uh 18 or 19 years old. He's graduating high school. He's looking at college, but he's still at home." And like I'm having all these really hard conversations with him. And I'm like, "Cool. Are you like this agreement has to start changing, right? Your role in his life has to start changing. The what's the consequence for him making really bad decisions. It's like, well, you're not going to spank your son and you're not going to ground your 19-year-old son or your 18-year-old son. You're not going to be like, you're grounded. You have to stay in your room like he's 18 years old. So, you're really moving into that phase, right, man? where you're going, this is what I can do. This is what I can provide for you. This is what I'm good with. And this is what doesn't work for me. And if this doesn't work for for you, I think you should go like find a place that works for you like that and start to explain like he's in a phase of life where he's going from glory to glory, responsibility to responsibility. And if you don't make that transition, if you don't start to transition out of these different phases right in life and realize that your son is making transitions, he is going from these this cowboy phase in life that we talk about to this warrior phase of life where and then ultimately he's he's moving into the king and the sage eventually is right where we where where we we end up in life. And you can go beyond that, but my whole my whole point is he's no longer a cowboy. He's moving into warrior. And you treat a warrior very different than you treat a cowboy. The role as a parent is very different from cowboy to warrior when you're transitioning your young men. And if you don't make that transition well as a dad, you will find yourself so frustrated. You'll find yourself in a spot where you're taking on more responsibility than you should. You're trying to clean up messes that they don't want to clean up. And then eventually they're they you're feeling their frustration towards you. But they're probably messing up your world more than you're messing up their world. And it it's all because they need to be in a different you need to be in a different phase of life with them. You have to create a different structure in which your relationship can thrive. It's either, hey, here's what we can do. Here's the clear expectations. If you want to stay in our house, here's what that looks like. It can look like they pay you a little bit of rent. It could look like they cook some of the meals. It could look like you have an agreement about your bedrooms and and you know what you clean, what they don't clean, but you have to somehow have really good agreements that work for you and work for them. Otherwise, you're just going to be really frustrated. Um, and to me, it's not a one one size fit all. So, it's not like, oh, they have to pay rent or they have to do X, Y, and Z. To me, it's about your son needs to be excited about taking on more responsibility and becoming a contributor more than he is um a consumer. And if he's not excited about being a contributor more than he is a consumer, then he needs to go figure that out somewhere, right? He needs to go find a roommate where it's okay if he consumes more because it's your life. You can do whatever you want. But if you allow your sons as they're getting to that 18, 19, 20-year-old stage to consume more than they produce in your home, you're going to feel really frustrated. Um, probably resentful. You'll be battling that and ultimately wondering why did we not set our son up for success. At some point, they have to learn, right? they you didn't have everything that you needed to know when you left the home and they're not going to know everything, but they still have you. So, they can leave and not be fully prepared for everything that happens in life cuz they're still a part of this community and a part of this tribe and you get to pour into them. And so, I wanted to encourage you guys today. Hopefully, this helps you and gives you some insight. If you have a young man um in your world that's that's transitioning those stages, like set him up for success by letting him know ahead of time what's happening and what he's going to experience and and as he grows up like uh what he can expect. That way you guys are on the same page and you and you could really help move through those different phases in life. All right, man. I love you. Have an incredible week. We will see you next week on the Brave Co podcast.
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