In the Anishinabe culture, which I'm familiar with as a Anishinabe Métis, we go through rites of passage. For my daughter, when she had her first moon time, she was age 12. At around age 12 or 13, when they are going through their rites of passage, that's when you say they are starting to make their mature decisions.
Now, they're still youths. They still need the love and support of their parents and their community and their kokums and mushums, their grandmothers and grandfathers. But that's when they're starting to go into, as we say, the rapids of life. Those are their tough years, their teenage years. That's when they have to start making their decisions and learning from their mistakes. You give them in their younger years what you hope will be their values. We call them the seven sacred stones. You hope that they will make those decisions. It is up to us now to stand on the riverbank and yell words of encouragement. We don't get in the river with them but just let them make their way. That's really when they start to mature and learn. You have to let them make their mistakes, if that makes sense.
So it's usually around those rites of passage.