Building Strong Families - a family oriented program at Bethel.
by Joanne Wong, Program Facilitator

I am thankful for a group of friends that we met 10 years ago who have taught me
to share things that are not normally shared in small groups. From them, I learnt
it is all right to share what is bothering them at that time - family, work,
studies, relationships, finance.
Now 11 years later, when we do meet or call each other on the phone, we don't
have to put on a pretense that we are doing well but we can share where we are
in our lives. We can share quite openly about in-laws, children, marital
relationships and even death in the family. I am especially thankful that when
some of the members are asked about their work problems they can share quite
frankly without fear of others not understanding, especially those who are
homemakers.
The kind of the openness that is still there after all these years have been
built through trust and acceptance of one another.
With the kind of background above, I became involved in a parent support group
program at Bethel church. The aims of the support group is to provide a
conducive environment for parents to help one another over issues such as
effective parenting, child raising, dealing with in-laws and maids and other
myriad issues in a family.
The joy of being able to connect with one another and knowing that someone out
there understand what we are going through at this time is often a great
encouragement.
For the past 2 years since the group started, I had on one occasion shared about
the difficulty of getting my children to sleep by themselves at night.
The parents who heard my sharing did not passed judgment on me and called me a
failure but rather shared their  own experiences on how they dealt with this
issue. Recently, I have a breakthrough - my children sleep by themselves.