PMS: Mental Health, May 1, 2pm, Newton Campus. By Miltinnie Yih.
On May 1, Miltinnie Yih came to speak to us on the topic of "Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Health". The following in a brief summary of her talk.
How to Nurture Your Child's Spiritual Health
We seem to spend a lot of time trying to pass on to our children an earthly inheritance of money, property, and achievements, but the most important thing that you can pass on to your children is your faith and love for God. This is an eternal inheritance.
Why is this so hard?
Having children is a humbling experience, because it is so challenging. Why does it need to be so hard?
The Bible records in Genesis 3 that Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden by eating the forbidden fruit. A curse was laid upon them as a consequence of their actions. The woman faced this curse:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Gen 3:16)
First, the woman was cursed with pain in childbearing. This pain begins with the onset of her menstrual period, through the pains of childbirth, and continues through childrearing and beyond. Frustration develops between the woman and her child.
Secondly, the woman was cursed so that her desire will be for her husband. The woman will look man for her fulfillment. But this word desire also means dominate or control, and so she will try to control her man so that he will provide her what she wants. Frustration develops between the woman and man.
To start reversing the curse, bring your children to the Lord at a young age:
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deut 6:5-7)
Infancy to School Age
During this phase, you are busy and constantly craving sleep. You might not have had a complete thought for weeks, and you have little interaction with adults. Your job, during this phase, is to prepare your child ready for school, and for the world. Start with the end in view. What are the traits that you want in your children, and how can you get there?
1. Obeying Authority
During this time, you need to train your children to get control of their basic abilities or urges, learning to eat, sleep, walk, and go to the toilet not whenever they want to or feel like it, but when they are supposed to. You want your child to value what other people want (like parents), instead of only focusing on what they want.
They need to learn to obey authority. You are their first authority, but when they are older, they will meet other authorities, such as their teacher, their boss, the police, or the government. Ultimately, the highest authority is GOD. If you teach them to obey you when they are young, they will learn to obey other forms of authority later, even God. Conversely, if you do not teach them to obey you as the first authority, you set them up to disobey all other lines of authority, including God.
2. Accepting Discipline
Because of our sinful nature. Little children don't need to be taught to be sinful, they just are; they are naturally self-centered and anti-authoritarian. Left to their own devices, they will choose the sinful way. The Liberal way of child-rearing is that if we present children with many opportunities they will choose what is best. The Bible tells us otherwise. This is why we need to discipline and train our children. If your children learn to accept discipline from you, when they are older they will also be able to accept discipline from God.
3. How to spend time with your children:
Primary School (ages 6-10)
Children at this age are rapidly learning. They are meeting new people, making new friends. This is the age of competing influences. They check what you say with what they hear at school. They still think parents are the greatest, so this is the time to input into their lives.
1. How to spend time with your children:
High School Years
Your kids are in between childhood and adult, and as such, will be in a state of conflict. They want to be an adult but at the same time they want to be your child and to be safe and taken care of. At this stage, you have to learn when to let go and when not to let go.
Kids start to resent their parents, because their parents treat them like children. But at school, their teachers are asking for their opinions and their thoughts, and treating them as teenagers. Parents need to learn to ask questions that cannot be answered by yes/no. You must learn to ask them interesting questions. Train yourself not to become a broken record. Treat your child as an emerging adult.
1. Learning how to make mistakes
Learn to help your teen to evaluate, make judgments, and make choices. Allow them to make mistakes.
We usually don't give kids the gift of making a mistake; whenever something goes wrong, we rush in and fix it for them. But when kids make mistakes, they learn to forgive themselves, they learn humility, resilience, consequences, problem solving, and they learn what not to do next time. Freud said that the source of all neuroses is the inability to deal with failure. If we never make mistakes when we are young, we don't deal well with failure when we are older. We start to blame others, or we numb ourselves with drugs or alcohol.
Christ gives us forgiveness. God forgives us so we must forgive ourselves and we must forgive others. Kids must learn to forgive, and that only happens if they make a mistake. Don't try to fix it or cover up.
2. How to spend time with your children
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