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continued from page 20
Hills. Juggling the two tracks of her career seven years
ago, she started The Social U, a company that developed
proprietary technology to help student assess, manage
and clean up their digital footprints.
She’s celebrating 24 years of marriage to Mark Fisher
this summer. They have two daughters: Sarah just gradu-
ated from U-M and is moving to Chicago for a job and
Olivia, a senior at Emory University.
ON ENTERPRISE AND
LEARNING CURVES
ON JEWISH DETROIT’S MENTAL HEALTH INITIATIVE
Q: What is your role in Federation’s mental health initia-
tive for young people “We Need to Talk”?
JF: In partnership with Federation, I am developing
strategic plans customized for Jewish day schools in our
community. Working as an objective third party, my role
is to meet separately with school administrators, faculty
and staff , students and parents to determine pressing
issues related to mental health in each school. We then
create a workable plan that can be adapted to a school
setting with the goal to help everyone recognize the signs
and symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression and to
decrease those feelings among students.
Q: What do you see as the prominent mental health chal-
lenges that parents are struggling with today?
JF: Parents themselves are stressed out and kids feed off
their parents’ stress. When parents don’t know how to
June 14 • 2018
manage their own stress or anxiety levels, it’s hard for kids
to learn how to manage their own.
Another challenge is that we have a generation of
“analog parents” raising digital children. As parents, we
understand how to talk to our kids about sex, alcohol and
substance abuse because we grew up with that. But we
don’t know how to talk about technology, mobile devices
in everyone’s hands, the inability to disconnect from
social media, a 24-hour news cycle, the pressure cooker of
for a moment before it’s deleted, there’s no way of know-
ing who has seen it, saved it or how it will be used down
the road.
Q: What advice do you give to parents in setting ground
rules for the use of social media?
JF: Start early and talk often. If you can establish ground
rules before your kids start using social media, then you’re
off to a good start.
Be more concerned about quality of time spent on screens
than quantity. It’s about creation
instead of consumption. (And don’t
forget that if you have a gamer that
plays online or even with others in
a private game, it’s a form of social
media).
I always like to tell parents to fi nd
ways to say “yes.” Th is means that
you need to go on the sites your
kids want to use, navigate your way
through them to learn what they are
and how they’re used.
You need to have your kids’
usernames and passwords (which
is much easier to get when you start
talking about ground rules and
social media before they are online)
because you are responsible for their actions and safety
online just like you’re responsible for them offl ine. You
need to set reasonable expectations, as well as conse-
quences.
I highly recommend not using the “you’ll lose your de-
vice or ability to be online” as a consequence for bad be-
havior for every time your kid makes a mistake online —
even if it seems like an appropriate natural consequence.
Why? Your children need to know they can always come
to you when they fi nd themselves in trouble online. Th ey
won’t turn to you for help, if they think you’re going to
take away their ability to connect with their peers online.
As much as we would like to keep our kids out of
trouble online, our job is to teach our children how to use
digital media safely and wisely. Your children will need
an online presence by the time they are ready to apply
for college or for a job — that’s the reality of the world in
which they live. Social media and technology aren’t going
away. “Appropriate” use is subjective and can mean dif-
ferent things in diff erent families. Don’t expect your kids
to learn at school what you should be teaching them at
home about appropriate behavior online.
Be more concerned about quality
of time spent on screens than quantity.
It’s about creation
instead of consumption.
Q: Please give us a snapshot of the
MJ Fisher Group.
JF: Via the MJ Fisher Group, I do
much of the same work I did with
both BBFA and Th e Social U; I speak
on topics related to 21st-century
parenting issues with a focus on
social media and college admissions,
tech safety and etiquette — including
a whole category of discussion I refer
to as “How to Be an Analog Parent
Raising Digital Natives.”
Q: How and why did you start the
enterprise?
JF: About seven years ago at BBFA,
I started to see the trend: Parents started coming in with
requests for programming that had to do with technol-
ogy and social media. At the same time, parenting had
started to become a competitive sport — particularly in
navigating, helicoptering and snowplowing “tea cup kids”
through school and on to college. Parents didn’t know
what to do.
Q: We know helicopter parents hover, what’s snowplow-
ing?
JF: “Snowplow parents” plow everything out of the way so
their child has a clear path without any potholes, bumps
or chucks of ice to step over. “Tea cup children” are es-
sentially kids without adequate coping skills and their
lack of resiliency leads them to break under the slightest
pressure.
Granted, these may not be the most pressing issues of
parents wondering where the next meal is coming from,
but if you live in Birmingham, Bloomfi eld or Troy — all
these places where we have hyper-competitive parents —
your level of stress and worry is real.
When BBFA closed and we shut down Th e Social U
website, I knew that I wasn’t “done” teaching and advising.
I needed to continue the work I had been doing with both
companies, as I still believe in their missions.
Q: What curricula are you developing based on the needs
you see in the community today?
JF: Resiliency/coping skills and stress and anxiety reduc-
tion for parents, students and schools, and parent educa-
tion on a variety of topics related to student mental health
22
sponsored
by our
community
partners
jn
— JULIE FISHER, M.ED.
life today — all amplifi ed by our overly competitive peers
and our goals to “succeed” in everything we do.
Q: What do you hear from our kids?
JF: “My parents don’t understand what it’s like to be a kid
today.” We hear that over and over.
Th e very notion of building a resumé starting in junior
high or high school was unheard of in my day. It breaks
my heart when I’m talking to sixth-graders and they start
telling me about how stressed out they are and what they
have to do to get into college. Th e pressure is coming from
all directions — from schools, parents, peers and often it’s
self-infl icted, too.
Q: What’s the diff erence between “stressed out” and
anxiety?
JF: We’re all stressed. Stress is normal. But the levels of
stress we see in kids and their parents today has to do
with overload … too much homework, too many activi-
ties, too little time.
Stress is a response to a threat in a situation. Anxiety is
a reaction to stress and often stems from fear and triggers
avoidance.
Q: What can parents do?
JF: As parents, we can start by changing the conversa-
tion. For example, when a child comes home after school,
instead of asking, “How did your test go?” try asking,
“What’s the best thing you did at school today?” Take the
conversation off academic achievement.
And instead of insisting that your student does nothing
until the homework is done, remember that kids need
downtime, too. Allow them the freedom to plan for them-
selves how they get their work done.
ON DIGITAL MEDIA USE AND ABUSE
Q: Let’s talk about leaving kids to their own devices.
What’s the fi rst thing you like to tell kids about social
media?
JF: Th e fi rst thing I like to tell kids about social media is
this: Th e moment you hit enter/post/send, you are giving
up control of your content. Even if you’re just texting back
and forth with a friend, the instant your content is on
another device, your privacy is out the window.
I like kids to think about their “digital footprint” as a
digital tattoo. Th ey need to know it’s permanent and fol-
lows them for life. I tell kids that when they realize they’ve
made a mistake online, try to delete it, but be aware that
even if they delete the post from their server, they can
never be certain that it’s “gone.” Even if a post is out there
ON PROMOTING RESILIENCE AND MENTAL STAMINA
Q: What is your defi nition of resilience? And how can par-
ents help develop or promote resilience in their children?
JF: Resilience to me means the ability to cope with life’s
problems, ups and downs. Parents need to release the
reins a bit and allow their kids to face adversity and learn
how to cope with struggles or failure from a young age.
We need to allow and empower our kids to make some
decisions on their own and to face the consequences
when those choices don’t yield positive outcomes.
We have to change our expectations — to step back
and allow our children to fall — and to be OK with their
stumbles and disappointments. Our job as parents is to
give our children the “gift of failure” because that’s the
way we all learn and grow. As parents, we need to allow
our children to have their own experiences — supporting
them, not by snowplowing their way, but by stepping out
of their way.
As I always like to say, “I want to be my kids’ best cheer-
leader, but I don’t need to be on the fi eld.” •
Vivian Henoch is editor of Federation’s myjewishdetroit.org, where a lon-
ger version of this article originally appeared.