If you’re like most Jewish parents, you’d do just about anything for your kids. But what if you don’t know what to do? Or what if your own meshugas — we all have it — gets in the way?
Parenting, especially parenting teens and tweens, is no easy task. But thanks to 4Front’s Parenting Unpacked, a new platform for parents of teens, there’s hope for Baltimore’s bewildered, befuddled and bedeviled Jewish parents.
Established in 2016, 4Front, housed and managed by the JCC of Greater Baltimore, is the comprehensive community teen initiative of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore.
“We exist for the Jewish teens in our community,” says Diana Solomon, 4Front’s co-managing senior director. “We’re here to help them explore their Jewish identity, help them become the best versions of themselves, to really thrive. And we’ve realized a really important piece of the puzzle is making sure the adults who care about and support teens are also supported and taken care of.”
The idea isn’t entirely new, Solomon admits. “4Front has always worked with parents in some capacity. But over the years, we have seen more and more of a need to serve this demographic more intentionally,” she says. “When COVID-19 happened, the isolation was exacerbated, and mental health of both parents and teens became a much greater challenge.”
That set the stage for the rollout of the inaugural Parenting Unpacked, a three-session series titled, “Are We Parenting or Simply Surviving? How to Care for Yourself and Your Children in a Pandemic.” It was facilitated by teen psychologist and educator Dr. Betsy Stone in the spring of 2021.
Last month, Parenting Unpacked continued with “What Parents Need to Know About Teens’ Mental Health.”
The next installment in the free virtual series, “Navigating the Emotional Roller Coaster,” will take place Nov. 18 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
Erica Hruby, a Florida-based parenting expert and coach, will lead the second program. Hruby is a tween and teen education specialist with more than 25 years of professional experience.
“Navigating the Emotional Roller Coaster” is designed to “help parents understand, what is that emotionality?” says Hruby. “Where do the moods come from? What’s my role in helping manage that? Or maybe [a parent should try] just sitting back a little bit and not always trying to solve every problem.”
The program will also teach parents to help their children become more resilient, she says.
“We’ll really talk about how we can help support our tweens and teens as they go through challenging times and help them build that ‘resilience backpack’ to help them not only during adolescence but also well into adulthood.”
Parents will learn about the importance of “allowing tweens and teens to experience sadness and failure,” says Hruby. “We’ll talk about how to support them in managing the emotions around [sadness and failure], but not protecting them from it. That’s a big challenge. Our first inclination is often to help protect them from pain and disappointment. But we actually make them less resilient when we do that because then, they don’t know what to do when they’re sad or disappointed.
“And there will be times when we can’t be there to help them or can’t be the one to save them,” she says. “So we’ve got to give them the tools to be able to navigate those spaces.”
Hruby has also developed a six-session series titled “PhD. in Parenting,” which will be offered in Baltimore this winter.
“People who want to keep learning with Erica will have a chance to go deeper, to do something more intensive,” says Solomon. “We want people to know 4Front really wants to be a resource to the community and a place where parents of teens feel that they can turn and come to us. We have relationships with wonderful educators and experts.”
Solomon says she is interested in learning about how 4Front can be most helpful to parents. “If something like navigating learning disabilities and ADHD is a topic that parents need assistance with, we would love to convene a group of parents around that and see if we can find a speaker, find some learning,” she says. “That’s really the type of resource we hope to provide to this community.”
Says Hruby: “Creating these parent learning opportunities is not just about the educational piece. It’s also about building community and helping parents understand they’re not the only ones dealing with [these issues with their teens]. When we do programs like this within a community, we’re also creating connections and a much larger support network. They can now become a resource for one another. That’s what it’s about.”
For information about 4Front and to register for “Parenting Unpacked” programs, visit 4frontbaltimore.org/parentingunpacked/.
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