The tagline of my website is “Helping You Disciple Your Children So They Stand Firm In Their Faith.” We take our children to church and instill faith-based values in them when they’re young, with the hope that as they grow older they will take our Biblical Worldview and make it their own. As Christian parents we hope that our children will use the lessons we’re teaching them now and choose to live Godly lives, allowing Biblical principles to inform every decision when they are adults. But our culture is working against us. We are parenting our tweens and teens through issues that our parents never had to address so we’ve never seen parenting in this type of culture modeled before. But there is help. A few weeks ago a company called AXIS crossed my inbox. They create materials to help parents talk about difficult topics with their teens and tweens. I’ve been reviewing their program and I’m really liking what I see. So today I’m sharing my honest opinion (and a special coupon code for my readers so you can give this a try!)
This is a sponsored post featuring my brutally honest opinion. =)
They pay me to write what I want, not what they want.
Who Is AXIS?
AXIS is a non-profit, donor funded ministry which helps parents navigate tough conversations with their teens. For over a decade now, AXIS has been speaking directly with hundreds of thousands of students and their families. They’ve used those conversations to help them create resources designed to help families engage with our current culture through the lens of the Gospel. The fact is, our culture is loud and it’s sending very specific messages to our families. Teens often don’t understand that the Gospel is big enough to encompass and give insight about every area of life, even these weird, modern areas like entertainment, media, social media and the internet…
Without the voices of trusted adults (guided by Scripture) teens are left in the dark with only Google and YouTubers to guide them through a chaotic, information overloaded world. They need help discerning which cultural messages are true, and which ones are distorted. And the fact is, our teenagers’ world isn’t like it was when we parents were growing up. We need help staying abreast of teen culture and knowing “what’s out there.” That’s where AXIS comes in. With all this media competing for our kids attention, AXIS provides resources to help us as parents understand our teenagers world and be able to ask exactly the right questions about the things that matter to them.
What Does The AXIS Membership Include?
A membership to Axis gives you unlimited access to all of the resources that they have spent the past decade creating!
There are hundreds of written, video and audio resources included in a membership.
What I liked
The AXIS membership includes conversation guides that are specifically designed to help bridge the gap between parents, caring adults, and the next generation. We want our children to be learning their worldview from us and these guides help parents talk about difficult issues like anxiety, sexting, smartphones, and social media. The guides are on point, very well thought out, and make it super simple to talk about all the ramifications of various topics.
Axis has recently released an iPhone app, which makes it super simple to have these conversations on the go. As of January 2021, the app is not available for Android users, but hopefully that will come soon.
A Word of Caution
**Deep Breath**
Most of what I recommend on this site are things that can be done together as a family…. the whole family. Depending on your family, this might not be one of those programs. While I absolutely love AXIS’ mission and think the materials are very well done, in my opinion, some of the images in a few of the videos are not geared for younger ages. This program is created for Teens. So proceed with caution if you are including younger children in the discussions. In our home, we speak pretty openly, but there are a few images in the videos that I won’t be showing my pre-teens or younger teens. (I haven’t watched every video in the entire library yet but only a small percentage of what I’ve seen has been something that I might not want to show one of my children.)
Other parents may disagree with me. If your child is already being exposed to these images, then the AXIS videos are a fabulous springboard into healthy, Biblical conversations.
Axis shared some thoughts about this in a recent email. They had been approached by a parent who was trying to shelter their child and questioned about some of the images and topics in their resources. AXIS’ response was that they took a different approach. Instead of sheltering our children, their belief is:
Gen Z must be equipped to successfully navigate an increasingly complex world. We long for a world where teens feel comfortable enough to ask their parents embarrassing questions about sex instead of turning to google. Where no topic is off limits. Where parents and mentors are bold enough to talk about the Gospel’s message for every area of life.
I absolutely agree with that. So AXIS is working toward the same parenting goals that I am. Just like I would say for any other resource, take some time to preview it before playing the videos for your kids. This world can be an ugly place and there are things mentioned in the videos and conversation guides that I wasn’t even aware of, so just take some time to familiarize yourself before playing the videos with your kids. That’s a word to the wise about ANY resource you use with your kids. 😉
Discount for Happy Unconventional Life Readers
