Training Up a Child

J turns 13 this year, and I've decided we're going to make this a celebration of womanhood. We're currently going through the book Becoming a Young Woman of God by Jen Rawson which is a great conversation starter - it's meant as a youth group text, but I'm adapting it for the 2 of us. For J's birthday weekend in October, we're going to head to a hotel for a weekend to hang out, have fun, and have lots of deep talks. I got this idea from a couple of places. Firstly (don't judge) I was watching the Tyra Banks show and she told about her mom doing the same thing. While living in PA, I mentioned it to one of my friends, and she said she had done a similar thing with her daughter, only in her case it was listening to a book on CD while driving to New York. I think we'll do a more one-on-one-conversation approach, although J wants to go to Vegas so it would be a long enough drive to listen to some interesting stuff. So I'm planning to talk about what it means to be a woman and get into some more specifics about men and boys. We've had conversations about sex since she was pretty young - increasing the detail as she increased in age and maturity - but we're going to get a bit more graphic this time. Since 13 year old girls are getting pregnant every day and junior highers are engaging in oral sex on buses I want to make sure I'm the one that gives her all the real info instead of getting it from friends. If any of you know of some good resources for preparing myself for these kinds of conversations, I'd love to look into them. My knowledge of how men think is fairly limited, seeing as I'm a woman, and have never been in a romantic relationship for longer than a year and a half.
The other thing I'm considering was inspired by some people I met in Africa last year. They have 4 boys and their oldest is 14. On his birthday, they challenged him with the 12 tasks of manhood based on tribal customs (they live in Africa after all). Throughout the year, he'll be engaging in 12 activities that are meant to grow him physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. So far this year he has run in a 5K, worked toward learning the local language, done some manual labor (involving seafood - I'll let you fill in the blanks), and spent 2 nights in a local village to learn more of the culture. The year will culminate in a mountain climb at the end of the year with his dad. I really, really, really love this idea for many reasons. First I love that they are not babying him in any way. The things they are having him to do are things that some grown men would find challenging. I also love that it is a tangible way to celebrate his movement from boy to man and he will never forget it for the rest of his life. I can imagine that when he turns 15 he will truly feel as if he is a man of God. So I'm trying to think through whether this is the right time to do this with J - is she ready for this kind of challenge (and am I ready for her to grow up)? The other challenge is what tasks would I give to her? I'm thinking of things relating to a Proverbs 31 woman - there's a nice list on http://www.thercg.org/youth/articles/0302-vwalp.html. I'm also thinking that this might be appropriate if she goes on a mission trip with me next summer - becoming more mature is pretty important. I'd love some feedback or comments on this, and I'll probably post on this topic again - asking for more feedback as I focus on what I want to do.