Parenting Rewired

By Deb Silverthorn
Three moms and longtime educators have pooled their expertise via social media to help parents and adults of all ages to navigate relationships during the pandemic and beyond.
Jordana Bernstein, Dorit Schonbrunn and Kim Zoller, founders of Parenting Rewired, are dedicated to helping the greater Dallas community with online information and support for better family life. At 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, Parenting Rewired will return to Facebook Live.
“It’s about learning to approach situations with calm, rather than fight or flight,” said Bernstein, the early childhood director at Akiba Yavneh Academy. “Helping parents is our passion and we’re helping to grow and nurture emotionally healthy people and we want to share this to as many parents, family members, educators and members of the greater community as possible so we can all become mindful together.”
In mid-June, Bernstein, Schonbrunn and Zoller, longtime friends who respect one another’s professional expertise, brought their skills and wisdom to the public forums of Facebook, Instagram and the web in the form of live events and almost-daily posts, most of which are free.
Zoller, founder of ID360, which provides professional coaching and training, said she was looking for ways to serve others during the pandemic. “I found it through my own clients who needed to exhale,” she said. “I was doing online webinars, sharing the mindfulness and meditation I was using for myself, and with the overwhelming response I realized this was something for the masses.
“Jordana and Dorit are my dear friends, and they are the perfect partners because they’re incredible educators and parents themselves who have so much to share,” she continued. “They show up and genuinely want to help make the connections and construct building blocks for generations to come.”
There have been thousands of views of some of their posts, which have included behaving around family while in quarantine, caution that children are always listening, academic support and even a road trip to deliver Bernstein’s son to college.
The threesome have eight children among them, now young adults, who have helped to build the template, the exercises and the ongoing practice of what they teach.
“Right now, we’re all living in a traumatic time, making parenting all the more difficult,” said Schonbrunn, the early childhood pedagogical coordinator at Akiba Yavneh Academy. “We’re coming together as a community to learn to breathe, to understand no one is — that no one has to be — perfect, and we can all learn from our perfectly imperfect mistakes.”
In August, Parenting Rewired offered a three-part live-session course on mindfulness which is still available on its website. Providing a data-driven approach to support the parenting journey, the course speaks to every stage of parenting and discusses why mindfulness is critical and how to make it part of daily life. The course provides continuously updated resources, articles and activities, an on-demand video library, expert interviews and resources.
“What works for one child doesn’t always work for the other, but I have learned so many tools, so many ideas, and this program has literally changed life for me and my daughters. It’s changing the brain and changing the mindset,” said participant Jami Nelson. “I learned how to approach a situation and that how I do that is something that will help them forever. They, at just 3 and 5, are realizing when they are out of control with a self-recognition I wouldn’t have thought a child was capable of.”
While it is called Parenting Rewired, much of the programming and advice is geared to any relationship and can be applied to personal, business and social relationships.
“For all of us it’s about taking the traumatic events in our lives and how to model resilience and handle our unpleasant feelings while focusing on what we can control, which is working to change ourselves,” said Schonbrunn. “No matter how old our children are, they need to be able to look in our eyes and see that we can handle any situation, and that they can too.”
For more information join the Parenting Rewired Facebook page, the ParentingRewired Instagram, or visit www.id360inc.com/parenting-rewired.