Episode 20: Getting Parenting Support and Rhythms of Rest and Renewal

Danny Kwon

Welcome to Asian American parenting, a podcast from rooted ministry and the SOLA Network, where the gospel meets Asian American faith culture and parenting. Each episode, we explore how to raise the next generation with a strong gospel foundation in Christ while navigating the unique challenges of our cultural identity. Thanks for joining us. Let’s dive in. 

Welcome to Asian American parenting, a podcast of the SOLA Network and rooted ministry. I’m one of your co-hosts, Danny Kwon, and this is my co-host, Monica Kim.

Danny Kwon 

Monica is a psychologist and a biblical counselor, and I work for rooted as the Director of Youth Ministry content, but I’ve also been a youth pastor and a family pastor for 29 years at one church. And we’ve also raised three wonderful teenagers. And today we’re going to talk about this idea of parenting support and rhythms of rest and renewal. And it’s really a touching topic to me, and a very profound topic to me, because I always tell people that raising teenagers is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve always said, people might disagree with me, but when you have little kids, it’s a physical challenge, but when you have older kids, it’s a spiritual challenge. And so raising older teenagers, raising teenagers versus raising children, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And because it’s so difficult, sometimes we feel the need or want to find someone to vent our frustrations. We want to share all our difficulties. And so how do we find support and rest and renewal in a healthy way, because Monica, I’ve heard you talk about this a lot with teenagers in our youth group that they’re not the parent of their youth group, but sometimes their parents share their frustrations and struggles so much with their teenager that it almost becomes that the teenager becomes the parent. They feel responsible. Yeah, they feel responsible. But that’s not healthy. So why is that not healthy? 

Monica Kim

Well I do want to acknowledge the bit of the context, also in terms of, let’s say, within an Asian American context. A lot of the you know, teenagers that would talk about feeling so burdened for their parents because their parents are sharing a lot of frustration or hardship with them. Are those parents now… and I’m not saying that this only happens in the Asian American circles or the context. It happens in a lot of other racial, ethnic context, but within our context, this was quite common in the sense that the Asian American teenagers, their family context was such that their parents, having been immigrants, you know, being immigrants would find themselves just at their wits end or very frustrated with a lot of things that they were facing, that they were having difficulty with, and within that context, they would often expect their children to step up, teenagers to step up more than maybe the teenagers themselves are equipped to do. For example, being more emotionally resilient to be able to handle the parents expressions of frustrations and venting and all the difficult things that they were facing. That’s one. 

Another would be stepping up a lot more than maybe they had time for, because they also had to go to school. But wanting the teenager to take care of the family more. Doing a lot more responsible things, not just chores around the house, but actually being responsible to make the meals for the family. To be responsible for their younger siblings, because it’s too much for them. So we were in those kinds of situations. 

I do think that now second generation parents may have grown up in that and have, and we are second generation Asian American parents. Maybe there are third generation Asian American parents where we’ve grown up in a little bit of normalizing a role reversal. Right? Parents depending more on their teenagers for emotional support, and one of the challenges about that is that the teenagers actually need the parent support, and when there is a role reversal going on, we call them being parentified. You know, teenagers, where they are now taking on the role of parent, but if you imagine, they’re not equipped emotionally and they’re trying to even make sense of their own emotional the changes that are going on in themselves. On the one hand, they feel emotionally burdened because they’re emotionally more responsive, because their emotional parts of their themselves are growing up and developing soon and sooner. 

And then at the same time, the ability to kind of make sense of all of this is developing later. And so a lot of teenagers growing up in that kind of context, where there is a role reversal, will find themselves later on, either doing the same thing and expecting their children to step up and be more responsive with all the emotional venting that they might want to do, or they may realize that something had gone awry and they need to work through making changes in that. So I just just wanted to identify, first, that context in which a lot of the teenagers that I had encountered at our ministry were what kind of family context they were facing. Yeah, and then recognizing that there are negative effects of the role reversals that are expected in a family, and knowing that that ideally it’s not what God intended, that parents would be the shepherds.

Danny Kwon 

And so we’re just kind of offering a word of caution to parents that are, you know, venting to their own children, their own teenagers, about difficulties. That there can be other ways to you know, as God says in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I’m Lord” And grow closer in rest and renewal in the Lord, for example, you know you can find a friend or maybe a parenting support group, a circle of good friends, a close friend that can be a place where you can grab coffee with once a week to share about your difficulty as a father or mother or as raising your teenager. So I think it’s important that we seek out some kind of parental support from maybe other parents or a good friend. Just find a good friendship. 

Monica Kim

I think that’s really important. You can’t, what we recognize is that in the midst of life’s hardships and work, that parenting is really, really hard, and you can’t do it alone. And so we sometimes, again, want to go to our teenager for that support and sharing how frustrating or difficult it might be, rather than that being able to reflect and recognize when you’re starting to vent to your teenager, that that’s an indicator that you actually need some support, and being able to reach out to other parents, being able to perhaps even I know that there are some support group parenting groups online too, as Christians, and being able to find some of those groups that will be helpful for parents is really, really important.

Danny Kwon

Yeah. And you know, even in our own church, for example, in our church now, you know, we remember the mother who shared how difficult it is and raising her kids, she has to drive them everywhere for sports, and she has to miss some church, and she wanted to start a ministry online with a few other mothers in the church. And, you know, I think you know your own church, your own church is really a great place to you know, you’ll be really in a place of humbling yourself and asking for help but finding a church prayer and sharing group or partnership where you can meet somebody or a few other people, fathers or mothers on a regular basis, is really important, but I think you just have to be able to ask.

Monica Kim

Yeah and what we’re talking about today is highlighting or emphasizing the importance of this. I think we often not because we want to, but because it’s the path of perhaps least resistance to just go at it alone and find ourselves really overburdened, feeling more alone and then the next person near to you might be your teenager, you end up venting to them, sharing all your frustrations. 

And so while that may feel like it’s an easier method, we are trying to emphasize here today how important it is to be able to find other parents to support one another. And even though it may take some effort, like you said, to reach out, to even start a group yourself in the church, to say, well, we’ll commit to talking to each other and being able to support and pray together about all of these burdens and hardship and frustration as parents, we could understand and join together in so we just want to really encourage how important that is, and to go out and do it.

Danny Kwon 

And I think it’s a little different than our parents generation, who are immigrants and in a shame based culture, in a culture where people didn’t share as much openly, you know, now you can just reach out to somebody and say, Hey, would you meet with me once a week? It doesn’t have to be a full blown ministry. Just, you know, Hey, would you meet with me once a week on Zoom or meet with me for coffee once a week? Can we just share and can we just pray for each other? And I think it does take a little effort to initiate, be consistent, but it just takes one person you know, or you know scripture says where two or more are gathered in my name, there will I be also. And so, you know, it just takes you know, one more person to be able to do this. And I think it’s really, really important to find this support in that way and biblical.

Monica Kim

I appreciate how you brought up that theme about shame based culture. We have grown up in that kind of a culture where the idea of protecting our family unit from any shame, guarding against shame. And so the aspect of how we looked as a family within the collective church, and how to save face, was so important, such that privacy and secrecy was of utmost importance, that nothing bad goes out of the family and however, what oftentimes had happened was that anger, frustration, heavy laden issues became the contexts in which teenagers were would often grow up feeling then heavy burden themselves to protect the family and then. 

So if you imagine that shame based perspective, how that does then breed parents, teenagers who would later grow up to become parents who may grow up and do the same thing. And we’re really trying to raise awareness of guarding against that and being more open and humble and courageous to walk by faith and say, I need others outside of my children, to walk with me in the burdens of life, which points us to ultimately, Jesus, who said, Come to me all who who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest and take my yoke upon you. 

Danny Kwon

And another way, a different angle today we want to talk about is not only support from others, but also finding rest and renewal. Building rhythms in your life that bring about rest and renewal. I’m not talking about men going golfing every day, you know, and you know, you know, leaving your wife behind, or women you know, watching 20 hours of Netflix videos. I’m sorry I’m stereotyping. 

But finding some activities that you enjoy, that maybe help you feel re energized on a daily basis, that give you rest and renewal, that can fit easily into your daily life, going on a run, gardening, meeting a friend for tea, volunteering your time for an issue you care about, cuddles with your dog. How do you in your busyness of life and wanting to vent, can we talk about how to give yourself permission to practice self care? Well, not self care. I should say, rest and renewal.

Monica Kim

And the reason why we’re trying to reword that is that a lot of the times when we may mistakenly think that care is we don’t want to focus care on going inward. But it is about inward rest to continue to move outward into caring or as parents. And so sometimes there might be mistaken perspectives on what self care is, and so we just want to dispel any kind of confusion about that. So that’s why we’re identifying it as building in rhythms of rest and renewal as parents,

Having said that,  for yourself, what have, I think the question is also, what have what have you found to be, What are activities that you found yourself personally that have felt restful or renewal,

Danny Kwon 

And I think the original question was giving ourselves permission to practice rest and renewal, because sometimes we’re so busy, and life is so hectic, and we want to even vent about it and complain about it. But giving ourselves that permission in the Lord to be still and know that I’m Lord God, and you know, I really appreciate that I can talk to you about that and say, Monica, you know, I need some time of rest and renewal. Will you give me a few hours to go, you know, to a football game. Or, you know, I stopped playing golf a long time ago, but, you know, 25 years ago when I played golf, you know, I said, Hey, can I go play golf for a few hours on Mondays, and you let me find rest so I could renew myself. So, you know, being able to talk about it with my spouse, and getting that permission was really helpful for me to be able to really rest and feel renewed.

Monica Kim

You’re bringing us back to that question of permission, and why one might not give oneself permission, especially within an Asian American context, I think that is something that could be an important topic or important theme to talk a little bit about, in the sense that I think a lot of Asian American cultures or contexts, often, is about go, go, go. What’s the next thing? What else are you going to be responsible? Especially in light of how we sometimes think collectively, being responsible for the family, being responsible for the kids, while that those are good things, there is this idea that taking a break or having permission to rest is something that is hard to even be able to lean into. And so I think that’s an important again theme to keep encouraging each of us, all of us who are Asian Americans, who find it really, really difficult to even feel at rest, to take a rest. Yeah, it’s just really, really hard to do that.

Danny Kwon 

And I think it’s important, as you talked about that it’s not about self care, but it’s rest to be renewed so you can, you know, go do other things and go back and serve your family and go back and serve your spouse. There’s a real selfless aspect of good rest and renewal. And I think as parents of teenagers, as parents finding that covenanting with my spouse in why I’m finding rest and renewal is a key part of finding good, peaceful rest and shalom, so I can then return to my roles and life and be renewed and refreshed in the Lord so I can be a better parent and spouse, and, you know, serve my family my spouse better.

Monica Kim

Yeah, there are lots of reasons for us to be able to lean into the permission that, in fact, it will go better for you. In addition to that, we also know that God called us to rest, and he rested. It is an aspect of what images our God, who worked, then rested, and being able to trust that when we rest, God continues to work on our behalf, is important. That God is sovereign, and will we trust in Him. So we have a lot of important reasons. Going to, lean into the permission for rest.

Danny Kwon

And you asked a question about how I find rest and renewal. You know, it doesn’t just have to be like going to a football game on a you know, Sunday evening, Aagles just played on Sunday night, or going to play golf for four hours. I just want to leave our listeners with this idea that you know, for me, sometimes rest and renewal comes daily in reading my Bible in the morning, I find rest and renewal in watching Pardon the Interruption ESPN show for 30 minutes a day. I find rest and renewal in making sure I have a few minutes of conversation with you every day, or a few times a week, we’ll sit and watch reality TV, like survivor or Top Chef or American Idol, those are the shows we like. But it’s not like it has to be like a golf outing for six hours, or, you know, a football game for six hours, or going to make pottery or something like that, but it can be found in our daily rhythms of rest and renewal.

Monica Kim

Yeah, I agree with that. So it is quite a spectrum in terms of, how do you build rhythms and on a daily basis, on a maybe even moment to moment basis, sometimes too in terms of how much work you do, and maybe in between a couple of hours of work, you take a coffee break just a couple of minutes, or maybe you take a moment to just, I like to do this. I love my dogs, so I’ll really enjoy their affection, and I’ll just show one of my dogs even now, who’s right beside me all the time, and and so we just are able to cuddle a little bit. And so here’s…

Danny Kwon

Okay, no more Katsu. No more Katsu.

Monica Kim

Having said that, though, what I did want to finally emphasize is that the way I think about rest, one rhythm of rest, which is, which are my Sundays, the Sabbath. The Sabbath rest, and how I think about the Sabbath rest, to be intentional about it. There are many ways that folks may want to build that rhythm in what does a Sabbath rest look like to them? One for a lot of us Christians, we go worship together, and during those times, I really lean into sitting with the Lord and praying and worshiping and listening and finding rest in that, especially being able to come to him with some of the more intentional burdens that might be On my heart and mind. I think being intentional about how you rest in service can be something to build in.

Danny Kwon

Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, thank you list for listening to this interesting episode on parenting support and rhythms of rest and renewal. Sometimes something we might not think about a lot as Asian American parents, but it is really finding that hope and joy in the gospel and believing that it’s true, powerful and transformative. And so thanks for listening to Asian American parenting. You can find our podcast on where you subscribe to your regular podcast and we’ll see you next time on Asian American Parenting. Thank you. 

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