Episode 3: Parenting Through Anxiety As Asian American Parents

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. Hi. Welcome to Asian American parenting, a podcast of the rooted ministry and sola Network. My name is Danny Kwon, and one I’m one of your co hosts, and this is Monica Kim. 

Monica is a psychologist and biblical counselor, along with being a mother and my wife, and I’m Danny Kwan, and I’m a former Youth and Family pastor for 29 years, and now I work at rooted as a senior director. 

Today, we’re going to be talking about the topic of parenting from anxiety and Monica. When I think about this topic, parenting from anxiety, I think about I can think about one of the most anxious times I had as a parent of teenagers was when, you know, when my sons were teenagers, the SAT scores came out electronically, and when we were opening up their scores on their computer. I was so nervous and anxious to see what their scores were going to be. It was so anxiety provoking. Now, years later, we had three children, three teenagers, when our youngest was in middle school, it reminded me that they created this thing called the National Junior Honor Society. It was like honor society for middle schoolers, and you had to do the same things like build up your middle school resume and activities and hours and student government or community service. And I remember all these middle school parents suddenly calling me as the youth pastor, trying to get community service hours, trying to get church activities on their resume, and they were so anxious about National Junior Honor Society, I couldn’t help but laugh and tell them, Don’t be so anxious. It’s Middle School. It doesn’t count for anything. No college is going to look at the middle school resume of your teenager. But so many parents were so anxious about it, and just kind of just a funny story, but what does it mean for you as a parent, but also a psychologist and biblical counselor? What does it mean to parent from anxiety? 

Monica Kim: I think that’s a great question, because I imagine that a lot of parents could identify with the anxious feelings that come, especially when they’re parenting their teen child. And so what we can imagine, one thing we can imagine is that anxiety amidst parenting is normal, not and when I say that, I don’t want it to be dismissive. Obviously it’s not about saying, well, it’s normal, so get over it. Not bad at all. But actually give space for recognizing that living on this side of heaven, and you know, where we’re, we’re the kingdom is now, but we’re also the the kingdom is future, and that we’re still awaiting Christ’s return. And in that regard, we will be anxious. There’s, there are plenty of things to be anxious about. And I’m imagining our story about, you know, the National Junior Hunter society, right? Well, that is a little bit of a funny story. You can imagine that the parents are thinking way ahead, if they don’t get into National Junior, will they be able to get to the national honors? Or, you know, there’s this, all these. Kind of steps that they are trying to build up for their children and their teens and so anxiety makes them, first of all.

Danny Kwon: Say, your first point, I just want to say, I apologize. I don’t mean to offend any of our listeners and parents who have anxiety. As you said, that it’s part of life, living in a fallen, broken world before we get to heaven. And again, I don’t mean to make a mockery of National Junior Honor Society, because you know it is something you can be proud of your teenager.

Monica Kim: I’m also imagining that you bring that up because we’ve experienced anxiety as parents of teenagers in many ways, and right now, while they are young adults, we can definitely look back and see that there was plenty to be anxious about. Additionally. Just on one other note, I’m imagining also that, you know, we just went through the pandemic not too long ago, if you imagine, and that also heightened such anxiety for parents of teenagers who had to go through all of that. 

Danny Kwon: Are there any other aspects of parenting with anxiety? Again, you said it’s just we both believe that it’s part of our humanness. And, you know, you know, being creatures of God, you know, and post pandemic.

Monica Kim: I would also say another aspect of our anxiety is that we are sinners, you know, we the anxiety comes up because we are sinners and we are weakened and we and it’s a context in which, while it becomes a context in which we can cry out to God and press in all the more to find assurance in the Gospel of Truth that says today, we have been redeemed as believers. However, because we are prone to wander, prone to be anxious, we continue to wrestle with our sins and struggles as one who are trying to grasp believing and trusting in the Lord. So that would be a second one, that we as parents are fallen creatures waiting. The third one, I would say that oftentimes I’ve noticed that anxious parenting styles, or we become anxious because of our own experiences growing up, particularly as Asian Americans in our families, let’s say, for example, and kind of two aspects of that, on the one, on the one hand, how our parents modeled it as Asian American or Asian immigrant parents, and the second, how we experienced it, and what we started to digest about it and grasp of it and and interpret it. And so we have, you know, we’ve experienced both sides of that, and we’re we have started to kind of soak in that as we grew up. So let’s say one example.

Danny Kwon: We talk about like, again, you’ve used this term a lot, and you’ve done talks on the sandwich generation, where we take care of our kids, but also take care of our older parents, but also we have been influenced by our Asian American culture and heritage and parenting that we’ve received from our parents.

Monica Kim: Right? There’s this intergenerational kind of right? 

Danny Kwon: we passed down, then how we filter that and what we how we then pass down our parenting, right?

Monica Kim: How we how we try to make sense of it so, so let’s say, for example, in our household, and this is just in a general kind of understanding, as let’s say in Asian American contexts or Asian immigrant contexts, depending on the generation we might have grown up with immigrant parents who are coming without knowledge of the language or the system, and may have actually come from a lot of trauma or traumatic experiences of being refugees or from war torn countries and. So in the midst of that kind of challenge or suffering, they may come trying to live their best lives, but have so much that they’re trying to manage that they may that in the family, the children and the teens experience that pressure to have to survive and for us to get better. And so parents may not necessarily be, you know that phrase of Tiger parenting that Asian parents might be known for, but you know, there’s actually quite a lot of diversity in how Asian parents do parent. But you know, parents might not necessarily really try to be Tiger parents, but they may actually be parents who might feel so much of the pressure of life that when they come home, they are not be able to be as available emotionally, or they might experience a lot more conflicts in the home. So there might be greater conflicts that happen in the home, a lot more emotional, kind of aggressive or yelling might be going on because of the pressures. And so children or teens growing up in that kind of context may have normalized the idea of communicating.

Danny Kwon: You might have received that from our parents generation, right? 

Monica Kim: May be normalized, oh, that’s how I’ve grown up. That’s how I understand parenting could be right? So it’s a model of parenting, given the cultural context.

Danny Kwon: Lot of pressure, that’ll impact my parenting, right.

Monica Kim: How you’ve normalized a parenting approach will affect how you may without knowing it also, then parent in that style. The other part, the other side, I just want to quickly mention, is that children and teens growing up will start to try to make sense of how they’re feeling in the midst of it. They’ll try to kind of make sense of, oh, how am I feeling as I’m experiencing my parents approaching me this way, whether it is this pressure, or whether it is a lot more conflicts in the home, or whether it is more direct Tiger parenting style, where there’s a lot more demand for achieving certain kind of successful milestones, whether you experience, you know, a variety of that or not, you will also have a reaction as children and teens, oh, this doesn’t make me feel good, so I’m not going to parent this way. And sometimes, then that will also inform how you might want to also, in some sense, go the opposite way. So there might be this reaction, kind of approach to your experience of being parented as a child and teen growing so you’re.

Danny Kwon: Speaking to parents, and those of us who might minister to parents now, Asian American parents and them to be reflective of the kind of parenting that they received when they were teens and children from their immigrant parents or, you know, you know, and things like that. 

Monica Kim: And what we’re talking about when we’re asking the question, what does it mean to parent from anxiety is to raise a little bit of that awareness reflect on yourselves. Uh, God does call us to wisdom and insight, Godly wisdom and insight. And part of that also is about being aware of how we are thinking or reacting amidst being parents so so.

Danny Kwon: Let me give you one more example for you to kind of chew on a little bit. My parents were not Tiger parents, but I saw them working, you know, like 12 hours a day in the dry cleaner, you know, working hard as blue collar immigrants and so I don’t know, some kind of message for me that I needed to be successful and be a doctor or lawyer or, you know, engineer was suddenly passed on to me, and the idea of success and shame and failure on the opposite end of that. And then, generally, not just speaking about me, but then. To my own teenagers, you know, I could either respond by passing on that drive to succeed and excel and do well, or on the opposite end, I didn’t want to give them that experience of fierce my teens, you know, the experience of fierce pressure, or you have to succeed or and maybe feeling guilt and shame of failure. And so I know you have a term for that. I believe the opposite reaction of parenting with anxiety, kind of pressure to achieve gentle parenting.

Monica Kim: Going the opposite, right, right? I know that, yeah, folks have now her have heard of this phrase, gentle parenting, and all the different kinds of concepts of what might be helpful with that. I’m not here to promote one way or another on that regard, as in terms of like gentle parenting. Let’s do all that. I do think that Scripture does speak about the approaches that we knew need to take in a balanced way. And I do think that, you know, Scripture does inform all of Scripture does inform us of how we ought to parent. And then there are a little more specific verses that talk about that. And I think it’s important for us to be reflective of that, because here’s another piece in the Asian American culture that can influence our parenting, which we’ve gained from our parents, is from a very intergenerational cultural standpoint. A lot of us have been raised to value education. Yeah, education and success, yes, and I get it, then that’s all linked to shame and embarrassment or needing to succeed for the family. So there’s, there’s a lot involved in there. So I would say that that is something for us to remember, that in our Asian culture, we’ve actually from that, especially from a Confucian kind of standpoint, even though we may not engage in it as a religion or A way of life even, or even think about it, but those kind of inter generational values have actually trickled down. And that’s not to say that education is not valuable at all to go to the opposite end to it, but it that to recognize that it’s been so elevated that we may need to really think about, especially passages like for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?

Danny Kwon: Can I ask you? Then, on that issue, I was talking to a good pastor friend from LA he’s been there a long time doing a second generation, third generation, adult English speaking church, because LA, I think, is little further ahead, generationally. And he said that lot of his parents now have gone the other way, from parenting with anxiety, from it and from anxiety, the really gentle parenting and not stressing grades, sure, they just want to enjoy their life, and they don’t want to, like, put All this, you know, stress on their their children and what? How does that? You know, both sides of parenting from anxiety and parenting from just not one more gentleness or Right, right? You know, how does that play out in the lives of then our teenagers, our kids.

Monica Kim: Again, I’m not, I’m not here to be a proponent or against, you know, gentle parenting. I think there are a lot of good kind of concepts to understand, because I think they hone in on a couple of areas that are really important for us to know, which, again, from the standpoint of Scripture, it really highlights it too, in terms of really addressing a child’s emotional ability or capability to. Manage life’s difficulties or whatever is coming their way. So and in terms of our world, we often call it emotion regulation, right? If we think about it from the standpoint of Scripture, yeah, there is need for emotion regulation to be able to address that, and because the Bible talks about self control and the importance of patience and gentleness and love and so it takes a lot of regulating to be able to do that. With that understanding of that being highlighted in mind, Scripture does speak about that. So it’s not, you know, gentle parenting doesn’t actually have the hasn’t created the understanding of it. In fact, if you look at Colossians, chapter three, verse 21 this is the ESV version, but there are so many versions that I think really seem to capture this understanding. But in the passage, it says, fathers, parents, mothers do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. 

So there’s this focus on the importance of emotions and how to tend to them, to be thoughtful about that, to notice it in your children. Get to know what will be too much for them, because children are and teenagers are very diverse in their ability to engage and make sense of these emotions that are hard, especially in a fallen world. There are other kind of ways. It’s also translated, I like this too. This is from the Amplified virgin fathers, Mother parents do not provoke or irritate or exasperate your children with demands that are trivial or unreasonable or humiliating or abusive, nor by favoritism or indifference. Treat them tenderly with loving kindness, so that they will not lose heart and become discouraged or unmotivated with their spirits broken. So there’s such a kind of, like, an, you know, nuanced or extended version of that. Having said that, I’m just going to put that aside a little bit, yeah, to highlight how we in our Asian American contexts, often have overlooked tending to our teenagers emotions and being able to love them Well in light of that and know that that is important to tend to for them, to be able to raise up more ways of interpreting in a godly way and understanding how to make sense of this world, and then Be able to also build up Godly wisdom. 

Yeah. And so with again, with that in mind, I know for myself personally, while my parents were really good parents and wanted to raise me up in the Lord and taught me from the very from at a very early age the importance of faith and how to live that out. But they were also quite typical, you know, or, you know, Asian parents who did not tend to my emotional challenges. If I started to cry, my father would just say, Why are you crying? No need to cry. Wipe your tears. Get get going. So that then makes it really hard for teenagers to get the support they need to actually be able to digest what’s going on when they’re reacting in these emotional ways, because so much is happening, and they need, actually, more loving kindness of their parents to walk alongside to make sense of that and then be able to help them to correct any kind of behaviors and to know more about the ways of the Lord in the midst of it.

Danny Kwon: So, so let’s close with this last thought, what is the negative fruit of parenting with anxiety, and how does Scripture speak to parents and the church who are ministering to parents about. Parenting from anxiety. So how does our parenting from anxiety versus gentleness impact the emotions of our teenagers and children, and how does Scripture speak to parents? Parenting from anxiety?

Monica Kim: Um, I imagine to sum that all up, I’m not sure if I’m going to answer all of those questions, but to sum it all up, I think it’s so important, as Scripture calls us to to be more reflective on knowing our children from the vantage point of recognizing that they’re not simply sinners who need only correction and discipline, because again, parenting, how to parent, is seen in all of Scripture, it’s not just in those kind of strict ways, but be can also recognize that it’s important to be balanced as you get to know your children in loving ways, to Know how to tend to their need for emotional support and to be able to make it safe for them to talk about it. We see God as our Father, who throughout the Psalms, Psalmists and the people of God were given voices to cry out to God and and speak of all of these emotions, and we want to be able to model, but also to point to a God who is that for us?

Danny Kwon: Maybe we can exhort parents given exhortation that sometimes their anxiety and parenting with anxiety might be a hindrance to that?

Monica Kim: Yeah, right, especially in light of how we’ve been shaped. Growing up where anxiety is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere, even though it might look different in different generations. Secondly, that we then learn how to parent from that anxious kind of experience. We we form ways of how you want to parent and how you won’t want to parent, but we also then have these natural reactions that when something that happens, maybe much like our parents, we yell first, or we get mad first before we actually tend to our children’s difficulty as they’re expressing it. So being reflective of that and knowing that that’s how you may parent from that anxious experience is important.
Danny Kwon: That’s good word for parents and also for the church who are ministering and helping parents in this endeavor. And so yes, that’s great. I know next time we’re going to talk about conflict with your children, which is anxiety provoking in itself. We do want to just love and exhort parents and parents of teenagers, and also the church who were walking alongside these parents who it’s not easy, and we want to encourage them, and we want to encourage us all to embrace the hope and joy of the Gospel and believe that it’s true, powerful and transformative. Thank you for listening to Asian American parenting. We hope that you have enjoyed this podcast for more resources, visit the show notes, see you next time you.