FamilyLife Today®

David Eaton: What would it feel like when you’re a sixth grader and you don’t want to go to school because you’re afraid? What would it feel like when you’re a sophomore in high school and you hear a chair fall over or there’s a bang out in the hallway and everyone’s on edge? What would that feel like? Because I didn’t have to experience that when I was in high school. That wasn’t the place I was in. So, how do we embrace our kids with that love and that care?

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Let’s talk teenagers. When we were parents of eight, seven, and five-year-olds and the teen years were on the horizon, older parents who had already gone through the teen years all said almost the same thing. Do you remember what it was?

Ann Wilson: Wait till you get to teenage years.

Dave Wilson: It was with this dreaded doom, it was going to be horrible.

Ann Wilson: Was it horrible?

Dave Wilson: Teenage years were probably my favorite span of parenting.

Ann Wilson: I loved it, too.

Dave Wilson: It’s weird. We loved it. But it was scary. And I feel like today, there are some things going on that we didn’t have to face. I don’t want to raise teenagers today.

Ann Wilson: I think it’s scary, and I think parents are wondering how we do this and we need help.

Dave Wilson: We need help, and we’ve got help in the studio today with us. David Eaton flew all night, ended up sleeping in the studio somewhere in this building because his plane was delayed. David, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

David Eaton: Thanks for having me on. Good to be here. I am so awake right now. I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Dave Wilson: You’re an expert on teenagers, not just because you wrote a book. I love your book called Engaging Your Teen’s World: Understanding What Today's Youth Are Thinking, Doing, and Watching. But you really have a passion for what we’re talking about today. Tell us why.

David Eaton: I love the rising generation. For all of you parents out there with teenagers, with all of you grandparents with grand-teenagers, or if you may have younger kids or older kids, I just want you to imagine not dreading having a teenager. I just want you to sit in that moment and just say, "Could it be true?" I just heard Dave and Ann say that they really enjoyed having a teenager.

Axis, an organization that I co-founded, exists to be a parent’s research assistant. We are there to be in your back office to help you understand what’s going on in teenager land. Whether that’s social media or cultural trends or screen times or mental health or sexuality, we are here to research and help you be equipped to have conversations with your kids.

I started Axis with three friends. I’ve got a picture of it. We were on a mission trip to Mexico, and it’s when I stopped renting my faith through my parents and I started to own it for myself.

Ann Wilson: How old were you?

David Eaton: I was a freshman, a sophomore, a junior, and a senior. I went four years in a row for two weeks. We mowed yards and raked leaves and did odd jobs. You had to raise money. This is before 9/11, so we hopped into a fifteen-passenger van and we drove across the border. It was just an amazing trip where I saw the Holy Spirit work. We did street evangelism. I feel cautious even saying that, but we were preaching the Gospel on the street corner.

I have a picture of three of my buddies preaching the Gospel on the street corner. Then they went off to college, and their faith imploded. They’re no longer following Jesus to this day. That got my attention.

The current scary stat from the Pinetops Foundation says that over forty million Christian teenagers in the United States will walk away from their faith by 2050. That’s untenable. When I was twenty-three, I was just out of college and I just said, "What could I do to help? What could I do to figure out a way to reach my generation?"

Axis does something we call culture translation. If you just imagine if C.S. Lewis and MTV made a baby, they would name their baby Axis. It just means we’re looking at the timeless truth of Christianity and theologians and philosophers, and then also thinking about what’s going on on TikTok right now. How do I have these conversations with my kids where I don’t freak out and they’re non-anxious?

The thing that I’m so excited about at Axis is when we started, it was just traveling and speaking at schools and churches. I do that a little bit now and our teams do that a little bit now, but really we realized that we’re not the hero the next generation needs. Parents are the hero. We’re not the missionary at Axis in the next generation. Parents and grandparents are the missionary. We used to think we were the hero. We realized the influence is just so small.

Ann Wilson: David, do you think parents realize that they are the ones that have that influence?

David Eaton: Parents have told me, my friend Brian has told me, he says, "I just feel like I’m always losing. I’m tired of losing." I had a dad out in Washington State who said, "I’m always three steps behind my kid." Or I had a mom named Sarah who said, "When I just come across something, it’s another thing that I’m behind and I’m embarrassed about, or it’s dangerous."

In your kid's backpack, you pull it out and you’re like, "Oh, this looks like a little thumb drive." Then you realize that’s a JUUL, that’s a vape device. You’re like, "I’ve seen things on the news. My kid's going to die. Their lungs are going to explode." That might happen if they’re vaping aftermarket vitamin E acetate, but your kid's probably not doing that. You always are living in these different levels of feeling like there’s an emergency.

Sarah said whenever she comes across something that she's embarrassed about or scared about or angry about, she has two options. She says she either feels silent, like she's just going to ignore that. Actually, the phrases that come out a lot are, "They’re a good kid, but I turned out okay. They’ll turn out okay." It’s just, "I’m just tired of this fight, so I’m just going to ignore it." That’s the silent response.

Or the violent response was like, "Give me that. Give me your phone. Give me your laptop. You’re not going anywhere. You’re shut down. No more video games for you." It’s just this war. At Axis, we like to say, what if there’s a third way? Instead of just feeling silent or violent, what if you felt confident? What if you felt ready? What if you felt prepared? That’s what the team I work with does. We make parents prepared.

Dave Wilson: You and Lindsey have a nine-year-old, right? Shilo Abigail. In terms of teenage years, you’re not there yet. We’re not experts on parents. That’s what we’ll tell you. You’re the experts on parenting. I’ve got books that other people have written that are experts on parenting.

But as you think about Shilo turning thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, you’re not afraid. Why?

David Eaton: Of course, I’m afraid. There are just multiple times even just thinking about mental health. Thinking about she’s only as safe as her friend’s phones. Thinking about maybe back in the day, talking about this silent-violent dichotomy, one of the silent ideas is ignoring culture. It just says, "We’re just going to raise our kids like it’s the 1950s." I had a mom say that to me in North Carolina.

God has given us our kids not in the 1950s. It’s 2022, it’s seventy years later after that. We have to raise our kids for that world. So, on one level, I feel that level of anticipation and also what is the world going to be like four years from now when she’s an official teenager? At the same time, I know that Shilo is surrounded by a great community at our church and that Lindsey and I are thinking about her. I have started an organization that exists to be a research assistant for me as I’m traversing the minefields, but also just the incredible joy of having a precious daughter that I get to be the father to.

Dave Wilson: Before we continue, let me just say this to the listener. At FamilyLife, we really believe strong families can change the world. When you become a FamilyLife partner, you help make that happen.

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I think what happens is we as parents, I feel this even now sometimes, you just feel dumb. I don’t even know what’s happening in the world. My kids are talking a language I don’t even know half the things they’re talking about.

David Eaton: Just go to axis.org, A-X-I-S-dot-O-R-G, and every Friday we send out an email called The Culture Translator. It is parenting gold. It is gold. It says, "Here are three things that are happening in your kid’s life this week." I say read it twice a month. Read it every other week. If you read that, you will be eye-to-eye with your kid, maybe even be ahead on some of these conversations and you can bring them up.

Dave Wilson: Give us an example. Let’s say I’m a parent of a teenager and I get this email and I read that. Do I go have a conversation?

David Eaton: You actually do two different things. You either go in full spy mode and pretend that you just know these things and all of a sudden they’ll be like, "Mom, how’d you know that? Unbelievable." Or you say, "There’s this thing called The Culture Translator, and I love you and I want to understand your world, so I read it every now and then. It helps me understand what you’re feeling and thinking and doing."

Another one is Harry Styles came out with an album. You just go and you listen to the tracks. You’d be like, "I kind of like that." You figure out what you like about it, or that’s kind of interesting. You look at the album art, look at some of the articles behind it, and all of a sudden that song comes up on the radio or your kid is playing this from their phone in the car. You can have a conversation and know whether you should freak out about it or know whether you can be like, "Oh, that’s interesting. Here are some of the nuance and texture of that."

It’s really powerful. Or the Roe v. Wade thing happened. The Culture Translator actually spent an entire article or our entire email talking about how that is being talked about in culture and who are some of the big influencers. Then how can we think biblically about this? But also, how can we have incredible compassion?

Or there was a giant school shooting, heartbreaking. Normally we talk about three things that happen each week. That week, we just talked about one thing. Honestly, anyone who’s going to read The Culture Translator probably has a pretty good idea what they think about gun control. So, do we need to talk about that? No, I’m sure you’ve talked about that with your kids already and have some thorough debates. Instead, we want you to empathize.

What would it feel like when you’re a sixth grader and you don’t want to go to school because you’re afraid? What would it feel like when you’re a sophomore in high school and you hear a chair fall over or there’s a bang out in the hallway and everyone’s on edge? What would that feel like? Because I didn’t have to experience that when I was in high school a couple decades ago. That wasn’t the place I was in. So, how do we embrace our kids with that love and care?

Here’s the punchline. Culture translation is great. That’s cool. C.S. Lewis plus MTV, all that. But what’s really great are you moms and dads out there. We had this young lady, she said to us, "I’ve only had one real conversation with my dad." When we heard that, we’re like, "Oh, that’s not good. You’re having a thousand conversations a week on TikTok. How can you only have one real conversation with your dad?"

Turns out her dad’s a pastor at a Christian university, president for two decades, and he was an Axis board member as well, one of my heroes. So, I’m like, "Oh, this is rough. How can you only have one real conversation with your dad?" And then the young lady smiled. She said it again. She says, "I’ve only had one real conversation with my dad, and we’ve never stopped having that one conversation."

It’s one conversation that’s continuous that lasts a lifetime. I had a mom who said this, her name was Tanya. She’s like, "My teenage sons are leaving the home really soon and they’re moving out and they’re starting to say things that make me really concerned that they don’t share the same faith commitments that I have and the same beliefs. I’m scared." She says, "My window, it feels like my window’s closing." She says, "How much longer do I have?"

I said, "Tanya, you have a sixty-year window with those boys. You have a sixty-year window. You are the most influential person in their life, period." Scripturally, that’s true. Sociologically, it’s true. You get to have that one conversation.

If you feel behind, that’s totally normal. I feel behind, most parents feel behind, culture’s changing rapidly. That’s going to be a challenge. But know that there’s no one who’s going to be there driving through Chick-fil-A, getting that spicy chicken sandwich before the volleyball game, and talking about sexting. That’s a scary conversation. Or there’s no one who’s going to be there when your kid is at eleven o'clock at night and all of a sudden they’re chatty and they want to talk and you’re like, "I just want to go to sleep." But the light's off in the room, you sit on the floor, you lean against the wall, and they open up their heart. They just say, "I don’t know if I want to be a Christian." You’re like, "Ah!" That’s scary. But you hold on to it. You realize you have one conversation. You practice your I’m-not-shocked face, which doesn’t even matter because you’re in the dark, right? And then you say, "Well, let’s talk about that. There’s nothing wrong with having those doubts. Let’s figure it out. Let’s chase this down as a family."

Dave Wilson: One of the cool things is we’re old enough where we’re making fun of it, but we’re old enough to know what you’re saying is true. That conversation doesn’t end. It started when he was eight and nine, really started when he was three, but all through. You’re right. That conversation doesn’t end if you stay engaged and intentional.

Because I think a lot of us as parents, and I had a tendency to maybe want to go there naturally, were like, "I’m just going to pull back. I don’t want to step into this crazy world they’re navigating. I want to stick my head in the sand and pretend they’re good kids and they love Jesus and they’re never going to struggle." Rather than let’s walk in their bedroom at midnight and have a conversation.

Ann Wilson: Ann would have this tendency where I’d say, "I think they’re struggling in this area." Dave would go, "No, they’re not. They’re great kids." I’d say, "I know they’re great, but I really think they’re struggling."

Dave Wilson: She was right a thousand percent every time she was.

Ann Wilson: I loved your belief in them because I would tend to freak out. Like, "What are they doing? What could happen?" I think the reason we loved the teen years is exactly what you’re describing, David. Those conversations where they say something and you hear and feel their fear or their insecurity or their hope or the fear of the future, and then to have that conversation.

I think what I would tend to do more than you, Dave, is I would tend to become fearful for them. As parents, we have this line of asking that question as they’re starting to share, to say, "Tell me more. Tell me more of what you’re feeling. Tell me more of what the kids are feeling at school." What I could do sometimes is I could get all judgmental about it. "Well, you shouldn't feel that," or, "What do you mean they’re talking about that or doing that?" That’s the part as a parent I really had to hold that back. As you said, don’t show your shocked face. Don’t freak out. We would go in the other room and just go, "What?!" But we didn’t do it in front of them. Later we’d be like, "Oh my goodness."

But you’re saying as parents we are important and the kids do want to know us and talk to us.

David Eaton: You are the most important person in their lives. We would never say that as parents of teens, most of us would not say that. That’s why you have to say it and that’s why you have to hear it and that’s why you have to believe it’s true. Especially through that eight to eighteen-year phase, because there are some times where it just gets rocky or hard. Fear is totally normal.

But what you have to do is you have to hold that fear, pretend it’s like a volleyball or something. This is your volleyball of fear and you hold it in your hands and you visualize it and you invite the Holy Spirit into it. Because if you are parenting out of fear, your kid is not getting the best version of you. If you’re parenting out of fear, you’re going to do some things that are reactive. You might become silent or violent. You might all of a sudden realize, "They’re making some of the same mistakes I made. I’m a bad parent or I’m a bad person," and start shaming yourself. Then you’re parenting out of shame. Those are places that we need resurrection, we need reconciliation. We need God to speak in that spot, let us know that we’re forgiven, let us know that that’s not going to be held against us, and that we don’t have to be the parent that parents that way.

As far as parents being important, you have to hear this. I’m going to say it out loud because I need to hear it for myself. There is a man named Christian Smith, PhD at Notre Dame, endowed chair of sociology. Got his masters and his PhD from Harvard. He has studied teenagers for the last two decades. He ran the national study for youth and religion. He is the guy. He is the guy with the team, with the endowment, with all this.

He wrote a book recently called Handing Down the Faith. I want to let you know, it’s a rather boring book.

Ann Wilson: Yours is better.

David Eaton: Well, I think they go hand in hand because what he does is he establishes the importance of one conversation with your kid. He lays the groundwork. So, whenever you’re in that moment saying, "I just want to quit," you can at least say intellectually, "I know that I’m the most influential person this kid’s life." Then Axis can help you with whatever’s happening that week and the week after that and the month after that, because that’s always going to be changing.

This is what he said in an interview. He said, "After spending two decades studying the religious life of American adolescents, among all possible influence, parents exert far and away the greatest influence. The empirical evidence is clear. No institution comes close to a parent, not churches, not youth groups, not faith-based schools, not mission trips, not summer camps, not Sunday schools, not youth ministers. What makes every other influence pale into virtual insignificance is parents, followed closely by grandparents and, if you live close to them, aunties and uncles."

The best kind of parents, the kind of parents that we all aspire to, is to have high expectations, which I’m really good at.

Dave Wilson: Who has higher expectations of the kids in your relationship?

Ann Wilson: Probably me. I’d say we’re both pretty positive.

David Eaton: High expectations doesn’t mean positive. It can mean demanding. So, you have to balance it out with warmth. You can get in situations where you can be super warm and be like, "That’s great!" and be like, "This is going to destroy you." So, that’s where you have high warmth but low expectations. You can have high expectations and just be such a stonewall and not emotionally available.

So, when your kid does come across something, instead of saying, "I would like to talk to Dad about this," or, "I wonder what Mom thinks," "Oh no, Mom’s going to freak out on me. Oh no, Dad’s going to take away my phone again. So, I better just shove that one down and ask my buddies what they think, or maybe I’ll just go to Google or maybe I’ll see what’s trending on TikTok in this area." That’s what we don’t want because everyone’s going to disciple our kids. That’s just the truth. It’s just who has the loudest voice, the most influential voice, or maybe even the quietest, most influential voice.

Dave Wilson: If Christian Smith is correct, which I tend to agree a thousand percent and he’s got research to back it up, so many are going to walk away from the faith. What are we as parents doing wrong? Because we’re the most influential and our kids are walking away.

David Eaton: It’s very tempting to outsource. We live in a world where it’s awesome, we can outsource everything. When our kids need to get better SAT scores, let’s do training for that. You can find all kinds of tutorials online. Parenting’s hard, so let’s just outsource it to the youth pastor. Or parenting’s hard, let’s just hope that the church does it.

The church wants to do it and the youth pastor wants to do it, but even more, what does the church want? The church wants you to do it, parents. They want to equip you and to be in your corner and help you out. That’s not what the model looks like, but I think everyone deep down knows that parents are the way.

Dave Wilson: I would just add as an older parent, now a granddad, I would say to the dad and the mom who’s listening: don’t outsource it. The church can help, Christian school can help, all great stuff. You are the biggest influence on your kids.

Your walk with God is more important than anything else that happens. It’s more important than the three Bible verses you share with them this week. Are they seeing an authentic man or woman really walk with God? Because here’s what we’ve learned as grandparents now: they’re going to copy what they see. If it’s real, that gets transmitted. If it’s fake, they sniff it out better than anybody. So, my biggest admonition would be looking in the mirror right now and saying, "What’s my walk with God look like?" because that’s going to be passed down to my legacy.

Ann Wilson: I remember saying to our sons, "Do you guys remember some of these great devotionals we did, or some of the Bible verses we memorized?" Here’s what they said: "No." But here’s what they did say. They said, "But Mom, I remember every day you had your Bible out. You’ve got all these books out. I remember you being on the deck praying on your knees when I would come out sometimes." They said, "We knew that you depended on Jesus for everything. That’s what we remember."

This is just such good stuff with David Eaton today. Every parent is eating this up. This guy understands your teenager’s world. In fact, that’s his book that you want to get. It’s called Engaging Your Teen’s World: Understanding What Today's Youth Are Thinking, Doing, and Watching. You can get it right now. Just click the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: And we’ll have David back with us tomorrow. If you need parenting help, we would love to help you. We have a site just for you: familylife.com/parentinghelp. We put some of our best parenting resources there for you. Please go there, get the help we offer. It’s familylife.com/parentinghelp.

FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating fifty years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.