Guiding Your Family toward Emotional Health, episode 12
Top Twelve Tips for Cross-Cultural Parents
Christine Chow: The more we can disseminate stories that are relevant to where they're at: “Hey, I struggle like that too. That is so real. This is a common thing”. And it just normalizes the struggle. As people are sharing in real time way where and how they found help, it even normalizes the action of seeking help, bringing what we're struggling into the light rather than remaining in darkness, hidden.
John Yoder: Greetings everybody, Pastor John Yoder here. Welcome back to our series “Guiding Your Family towards Emotional Health”, and today we have our final and capstone episode. It's called “Top 12 Tips for Cross-Cultural Parents”.
For the past 11 weeks, we have been listening to the Voices of marvelous Christian counselors from around the world. Some of them are psychotherapists, some of them are pastoral counselors. They have been giving us practical insights to help parents who have moved to the US from other countries to understand how to better parent their American-born children. What we have for you today are some of the highlights of the past 11 weeks.
As we go along, I will share with you each presenter's name, their ethnic background, and the particular point that they are making. If you would like to know more about the biographies of each one of these presenters, or if you would like to listen to more of their content, I encourage you to go back and to listen to previous episodes.
If you visit our website, www.immigrantministry.com/ccp (that stands for Cross-Cultural Parenting), you'll find four things. You'll find this podcast. You'll find transcripts. You'll find a link to our Facebook group where you can engage with some of these counselors and others. And you'll find a link to directories of Christian counselors in many different languages and in many different parts of the country. Again, that's www.immigrantministry.com/ccp.
The first two tips that we have deal with the subject of anxiety. It could be something as extreme as a panic attack, or it might just be a daily occasion where a child or an adult is feeling especially anxious. These two tips are amazingly simple and practical.
Our first tip comes from Christine Chow. She is a Malaysian American of Chinese ancestry, and her tip is: To combat anxiety, breathe.
Christine Chow: When we breathe, it actually slows down the fight-or-flight and brings a calming to our brain, where we move out of that reactionary brain into more of a thinking brain. And the best is when we breathe in through our nose and then we hold it, and then we breathe out through our mouth, so that oxygen's really getting all the way in. And we wanna breathe out longer than we would breathe in. 'cause then it really helps us to slow down, helps our heart to calm down. So breathing is important.
John Yoder: Our second tip comes from a Cameroonian American by the name of Ajab Amin. And her tip is: To combat anxiety, move.
Ajab Amin: But I'm gonna share this one. It's called “The Five Senses Mindfulness Exercise”. And what you do is you just pay attention to your five senses. So I can ask you what are five blue things that you can see in the room? And so you're walking, you're walking your child through this what are five things you can see? What are four things you can hear? What are three things you can touch like physically and what are two things you can smell? What is one thing you can taste?
And as you're going through that exercise, you really have to focus on the exercise. Like you can't focus on anything else that's going on in your mind. And so that takes the person away from the anxious thing and brings them back to the present.
And you can do it while walking. Sometimes you're just walking down the street and you can say, Okay, what are four green things I can see around me? So you're just paying attention to your senses, which brings you to the present and takes you away from the thoughts that are making the anxious.
John Yoder: Our third tip is from Gisella Arias, a Costa Rican American, and her tip is: To combat depression, establish healthy routines.
Gisella Arias: I remember one of my clients, she was referred to me because she was a very good student, but she started being very disconnected and discouraged. Her support system was perfect, but she started feeling discouraged. So her mom looked for help. The only thing I did in the six months that I worked with her was just to fix the bed. Every time, every morning before she left home, she fixed her bed.
And that changed the whole thing, because every time she go back from high school, go to her room, she find her room fit [00:06:00] and she was organized and she feel proud of herself and she feel encouraged to do homework.
John Yoder: Tip number four comes from a second generation Mexican American by the name of Jacqueline Crake. Her tip: Model healthy social media habits for your children.
Jacqueline Crake: If our kids see us trying to have time alone in God's Word, but they see our phones next to us and we're constantly getting pinged. It's real for our children, but it is also so real for us. Anytime I sit down to read God's Word, if my phone is around me, and sometimes it's hard 'cause my phone is also a resource for commentaries and videos that I want to read alongside my Bible.
So if I don't put it on Do Not Disturb or put it in the next room, I can easily fall into, I'm responding to messages. I'm [00:07:00] looking up something that I thought of online. And so I think modeling it is really important.
And I think sometimes there's a lot of fear in parenting, and that's valid because there's so much unknown. But God has given you kids and we wanna be good stewards of them. And so just saying Hey, from this time to this time, no screens. And mom's doing that as well, and dad's doing that as well. And so you can go outside, you can read a book but we're not doing screens for this amount of time. And I think that teaches our kids, oh, mom and dad really value. It may be hard to get used to at first, but mom and dad really value face-to-face time.
John Yoder: Tip number five is once again from Christine Chow, and her tip is: Create opportunities for your kids to build deep relationships.
Christine Chow: See, parents are on screens a lot on your phone. You are not gonna be able to get your child off the screen because oftentimes it's what we do rather than what we say that our children follow. When you've got a habit already going, you might need to think of a way to break that is more encouraging. Because it, it could easily get locked into a power struggle, which actually destroys connection even more.
We could come at it with rules and just say, I said that you can only have two hours of screen time and that's it, and I'm gonna take away your devices, no ifs and buts about it. And then the teen’s really angry with you.
So it might be important to tap into families with other youth and invite them over. Because a teen usually would wanna come out when another youth that, especially if it's someone from school that they're friends with, or someone from church that are in the same youth group with them that they really like and get along with, start there.
And then begin to work in a habit into it. Hey, I really enjoyed that dinner time with our friends. Let's have them over more often. Let's have family dinners together more often, like slowly work that in to change a habit rather than coming at it with rules, but coming at it with more action.
John Yoder: One issue that especially stresses parents is discussing sexuality and pornography with their children. Some parents never discuss it at all. Others would prefer to wait until their children are older. But every year, the age at which children are first exposed to pornography becomes younger and younger.
And if children do not learn about this from their parents and other trusted adults, they will learn about it from their classmates and their teachers. Tip number six is from Dasha Cochrane, a Russian American counselor, and her tip is: Start the conversation about sex and about pornography at a very early age.
Dasha Cochran: These conversations, they need to start happening really like in elementary school, right? And oftentimes at first exposure, like you don't even know what that is. So if you use as a parent in terms like pornography, they're not gonna know what you mean by that, right? So you can, so be more specific, looking at naked people, in, in so and so forth.
In the way I raise my children, I assume they're gonna be exposed to pornography. As we a transition into, early puberty, I would say like late early elementary school, early middle school, these are great times to start the conversation about sexuality. And I would actually not isolate pornography from just the more general conversation about what is love.
What it feels like to have a partner? Why did God wire us for sexuality? What does that mean? I feel like if we frame it in a bigger picture about what sex is for, then the conversations about pornography are a lot [00:11:00] easier to have, because then you can say sex is really for intimacy. It was designed between two people to grow closer to each other. It's like glue that brings us together in a marriage. Whether it's pornography, it's random people, and oftentimes it's not even real people.
But also as parents, we have to be vigilant because the amount matters. Just like with drugs. The amount matters. So I think we need to be checking their devices. We need to be setting filters. When they go in the sleepover, check and see, how did it go? Did you guys have devices with you? Did you see or hear anything that was uncomfortable to you?
John Yoder: Tip number seven is also from Jacqueline Crake, and it is: Help your children understand that they have been made in the image of God.
Jacqueline Crake: But if we teach our kids from the get go, the importance of finding our identity in Christ, and even just discipling them on the way that [00:12:00] God made us. And in Genesis in the creation account, he creates man and woman and he says they are very good. And God created humans and he delights in his creation.
You quoted earlier, Psalm 139, he made us, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Thinking about it from that perspective of the God of the universe who is in charge of everything, who is a sovereign, who created all things, said that you are good, that is a good kind of home base to, I think start to integrate really just discipleship of teaching them what creation looks like, teaching them who God says they are.
John Yoder: Tip number eight comes from Monica Vang, a second generation Hmong American. Her tip: Form a support network with other parents.
Monica Vang: If the child is not trusting their parent to tell them what's going on, right? Whether they're using substances or watching inappropriate things or something like that, right? Is there someone else that they can turn to? Is it a neighbor? Is it a church member? Is it another friend's parent? Because my hope is most teenagers will not wanna tell their parents things, but my hope is that the child will at least trust another trusted adult.
Even if it's one person, right? Maybe it doesn't have to be multiple people, but if they have someone who understands the culture, the American culture, or even just the culture of the child's school or their neighborhood, right? It is so important to continue learning, right? No matter how old you are, we are constantly learning and information the better and the more support, the better.[00:14:00]
John Yoder: Tip number nine is from Michelle Frauenshuh. She's a Caucasian American who, like myself, spent several years in China. Her tip: Find a village elder.
Michelle Frauenshuh: So how I've communicated my job over the years when I'm working with immigrant communities, is in the United States, because we are an individualistic society (which I'm not frankly a huge fan of), we do not have the equivalent of a village elder. And our family systems are not structured in a way where elders are respected in the same way. And so one of the not-so-great things about being in the United States is that you have to pay people for roles that would normally just met be met within your community, in your country of origin.
And so I am [00:15:00] simply no different than the village elder that maybe you might bring a lovely meal or a support in some other way as they help you navigate problems. And here in United States, we just use insurance to do the same process.
John Yoder: A particular struggle for many immigrant parents as they come to the United States is that they may have a lower level of education, and then their children go to school where they are taught different value systems that contradict a Christian lifestyle. But those teachers may have a master's or a doctorate, and it's very difficult for the parents to say, trust me and trust my value systems.
Tip number 10 is once again from Michelle Frauenshuh, and that tip is: Always trust God's Word and your instincts as a parent.
Michelle Frauenshuh: I also would go into those [00:16:00] counseling sessions with discernment, and if you find that your belief around the word of the Lord and the Bible is not matching with what that counselor is saying. (Now that can be a little tricky if you don't wanna hear something, you don't wanna hear about making change). But if you're finding things where it's really not lining up with your belief system, then I would just steer away from that counselor. It's completely fine to move in another direction.
John Yoder: Tip number 11 is from Pastor Moses Saldivar, a second generation Mexican American, and his one-word tip is simply: Pray.
Moses Saldivar: What I did have in my mom was a god-fearing woman. Who she knew that even though she may not be able to be as present as she would like [00:17:00] financially, maybe didn't have the things the finances to give us the things that she would have liked to give us or to provide.
But what she did have was the ability to pray. And I would say that a big part of the reason and why I ended up coming into faith was because I had a mom who was praying for me. Constantly still does to this day. And I know that for a fact.
And when I reflected back on on my life and even in those moments where I said, okay, Lord where were you? I had to go through this. I had to go through these difficult situations, suffering. Where were you? And what he brought to mind was my mom. Her praying for me. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and she'd be leaning next to the bed and be laying hands on me, praying over me. Just think of the impact that has on your kids. I can tell you the impact it had on me.
Those are things that I remember and it challenges me as a father on how I interacted with my kids. All that to say your kids are [00:18:00] watching all the things that you do and you do have the ability to pray. Even if you don't feel like you have the time and you do have the ability to influence in, in, in other ways but your relationship with the Lord, the way that you intercede on their behalf is probably the most important thing that you can do. And don't minimize that. It may not happen in our timelines, but he does hear you and he is faithful. He desires the same thing that you desire for your kids as it concerns them having a real relationship with him.
John Yoder: One of the struggles of connecting immigrant peoples with mental health resources is that those resources often do not exist in their homelands. They're not used to them, they've never met somebody like themselves who has met similar mental health issues and work through them. Our final tip [00:19:00] for today, number 12, is once again from Christine Chow, and that is: Engage others by telling stories.
Christine Chow: Oftentimes when we struggle, we think nobody else has this, so I can't really share this. And that's like the number one thing to get you to isolate. Then you really struggling alone. And then all your thoughts about the problem, about your, all your feelings about it is just evolving around you with no other input coming in to challenge that or to help with that, right? The more we can disseminate stories that are relevant to where they're at.
Hey, I struggle like that too. That is so real. This is a common thing. And it just normalizes the struggle, which really helps with the shame. Then as people are sharing in real time way where and how they found [00:20:00] help, it even normalizes the action of seeking help and bringing what we're struggling into the light rather than remaining in darkness, hidden.
John Yoder: As you listen to what Christine just shared, did anybody pop into your mind? Did you think of someone you know that is facing a struggle, but because no one in their circle talks about these issues, they suffer alone?
One of the barriers for our immigrant populations in accessing mental health resources is people back home don't do that. But another is that many of them only trust people they've met face to face. They're not likely to trust a podcaster or a blogger or a counselor they could meet over Zoom.
That's where you come in. You are an English speaker. You listen to podcasts, you trust people you've never met face to face, and there may be [00:21:00] someone you know that really needs to hear this resource. Can I ask you to connect them with us? For some, you might just send them the link, but for many that's not enough. They need your personal invitation to say, I heard the podcast, I joined the Facebook group. Will you come with me?
Our resources are at www.immigrantministry.com/ccp. There you will find our podcast, our transcripts, a link to our Facebook group, and you will find a link to directories of Christian counselors and other resources for immigrants all across North America in various different languages.
So please take just a moment to ask yourself, who do you know, who desperately needs to hear what you have heard in the last 20 minutes? And then take the time to make a personal introduction that might lead to a paradigm shift that can transform the life of your friend and of their family.
