The show today is a flashback to one of the top viewed sessions from the 2020 church Mental health summit called raising resilient Families with Dr. Danny Cheah.
Dr. Cheah is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in Melbourne, Australia. He leads a team of 70 mental health professionals but also lectures on Adolescent Development and Adolescent Depression for the University of Melbourne.
Podcast Links
5-page Guide: 8 Practical tips for understanding your mental health
The Care Ministry Podcast episode 6: 7 Keys to Resilience
Raising resilient Families is the foundation of good mental health.
Similar to Adam and Eve in Gen 3:6-7, people look to cover their vulnerabilities Eg. Achievements, homes, cars, and connections
- Life circumstances can cause these things to fall off and the resulting feelings of shame can be overwhelming and can make us vulnerable to mental health struggles.
- The foundation of our identity and building resilience is in Christ and our purpose to be in relationship with Him and with each other
Resiliency is our ability to bounce back and adapt to changes with the ups and downs in life. 
- Challenges aren’t failures, they are opportunities to grow and learn new ways of coping and develop.
Children learn more in what they experience and see rather than what they are told.
- When parents model behaviour and community and manage stress
- This is why modelling self-care, having a work-life balance and an appropriate amount of rest is important.
For children to learn grow and thrive they need security, safety and consistency
- Children do best when they are in an environment of kindness, nurturing and clear and consistent boundaries
- In order for discipline and rules to work you also need positive relationships and a sense of joy and shared delight
- The biggest factor in thriving children is the joy and shared delight in the relationship
- The model of unconditional relationship is modelled by God with us, his children.
- When there is a sense of security the children feel confident to explore the world and build friendships
The importance of emotional availability
- The ability to understand your child’s emotions and feelings and you can do that best when you can acknowledge your own feelings first.
- Utilizing self-care is essential so that we are not in a rush or feel pressured or stressed and be available to our kids.
- A parent’s ability to relate and connect with their children is the source of resilience in families.
Children express their feelings through behaviour because they have not developed the vocabulary or the ability to express it through words.
- As parents, we often focus on managing the behaviour, but it’s helpful to take the time to discover what are the feelings that are being expressed; knowing that anger is always a secondary emotion.
- Feeling scared, anger or sadness are often are connected and are rooted in other feelings and it can be helpful to use play and crafts to talk about these feelings
- One of the powerful ways to teach children how to express their feelings is for parents to model expressing the full range of human emotions in a healthy way.
A child’s life is much more complicated than it used to be.
- A lot of times we focus on avoiding mistakes and trying to achieve perfection.
- Learning excellence involves learning from mistakes rather than avoiding them.
- A way a parent can avoid this is by noticing and praising the effort rather than just achievements.
Building resilient families is about building relationships and understanding emotions.
CONNECT WITH HOPE MADE STRONG
Join the Church Care Ministry and Mental Health Facebook Group! In the Facebook group, we chat about how to care for others, what are your challenges as well as share tons of resources. This is a great community of pastors, clinicians, and those with lived experience and we want to get to know you.