What do kids actually need before they get their first phone? In this episode, Amanda chats with Dr Fiona Ghiglione – mindfulness researcher, psychology professor and founder of Mothering Girls – about preparing preteens (and their parents) for the digital world, before the first phone arrives.

In this episode, Amanda and Fiona explore:

• Australia’s social media age laws and reframing the ‘ban’ as 36 months to get kids ready
• AI companions and chatbots – what they are, why kids are drawn to them, and how to open up the conversation at home
• inside Phone Savvy: short videos and conversation starters that get parents and kids learning together – plus ‘phubbing’, brain research and the small home tweaks that make healthy tech habits easier

Whether you’re a parent, educator or youth mentor, this conversation is full of practical, research-backed wisdom for helping young people build a healthy relationship with technology.

 

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Find Fiona at motheringgirls.com and on Instagram at @motheringgirls
• Phone Savvy – Fiona’s online program to prepare families for phones, before the phone arrives: motheringgirls.com/phone-savvy
• Curious about becoming a youth mentor yourself? Take the youth mentor archetype quiz at youth-mentor-training.com

 

full transcript:

 

Fiona: the speed at which it’s changing and the usage of say AI companions is quite alarming.

and so they’re using it as a therapist. They’re using it as a friend. They’re using it as, you know, relationships, um, you know. Sexual content. And so it’s, it’s problematic because there’s not a lot of guardrails around it…

Amanda: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Youth Mentor Podcast. Welcome, Fiona. I’m so, so, so excited to be chatting with you today. Um, I just, I’ve loved watching you grow Mothering Girls over the years, and I’m so glad that we got to connect a couple of years ago. I probably longer than that, um, I, I think of you as a, as a friend and I love everything that you’re doing. So, um, I’m thrilled to get to introduce you to the Youth Mentor Podcast community. Yay. Welcome.

Fiona: Thank you. So wonderful to be here.

Amanda: Yay. Uh, would you mind starting by just telling us a little bit about you and about Mothering Girls, your beautiful business?

Fiona: Yeah, I’d love to. I’m Australian born and raised. but I’m, I feel really blessed to have spent basically the last 15 years as a bit of a global nomad traveling around the world, working and living and raising my two girls. So I’ve got two girls who are 11 and 15, preteens and teens. Um, I was living in Sydney when I was doing my PhD 15 years ago. I actually pregnant with my eldest daughter. she was born surprisingly enough the day after I handed up my PhD. and then a few months later we moved to Argentina, where we spent five years and then we went to Singapore where we spent seven years and for the last three years we’ve been living in Spain. So it’s been a wild journey traveling around the world, and giving my girls these experiences. But professionally, I, I’m formally trained in psychology with a specialization in mindfulness, and currently I serve two communities. I wear two hats. One is as a psych professor, I serve emerging, well teach emerging musicians at Berkeley. And so they’re kind of like late teens, early twenties. But when I’m not teaching, my other hat is obviously I run this organization called Mothering Girls, where I support parents raising preteens. I feel like there’s a lot of resources out there for raising babies and toddlers and maybe even preschoolers, but there just seems to be so few resources really in the area of preteens, and it’s such an important part of our kids’ development as we’re coming to learn in the research. So, um, yeah, I work in that space to be able to support parents the best I can to help their girls or their kids through these years.

Amanda: So beautiful. and I’m just… love the life that you’ve led as well. Getting to trip around, slowly traveling the globe with your family as well. That’s so beautiful. And I actually didn’t know that about you, that you were teaching musicians. That’s so interesting.

Fiona: Yeah, it’s a whole new space.

Amanda: Wow. And what did you, what was your PhD? what’s the official thing that you got a PhD in?

Fiona: Yeah, it’s a really interesting, um, uh, kind of, it feels like a past life in a way, but it’s really informed everything that I do with my kids and in Mothering Girls as well. I did my PhD in mindfulness. I was one of the first PhDs in Australia. and the way that I got into that mindfulness research was through my own personal experiences. I was doing my honors year at In Psych at Sydney Uni, and was going through a very stressful time. at the time I was having a lot of panic attacks and high levels of anxiety, and I was seeing a counselor at Sydney Uni one day and he said to me, have you ever practiced mindfulness, have you ever meditated? This is a really important tool, especially if you’re going into psych. and so I found a course just around the corner from my house, MBSR, so mindfulness based stress reduction, developed by an American who had done a lot of research in this area. After the eight weeks, it’s quite an intensive course. So after this eight weeks of practicing, I really changed my relationship to anxiety, and felt so many changes in my body. Like I think that was certainly the last time I’d ever have a panic attack in my life. and as a good psych student, there I was thinking, what is happening? Like how has this thing worked? it’s so fascinating to have gone through this journey and think of it through that lens. And so I went back to my supervisors and I said, can I do my PhD in this? And of course at the time all my supervisors were looking at me thinking, no, what is this hippie stuff? But, um, but they ended up letting me, you know, do it. And I found some people who were specialists in the field to be able to kind of guide me through it. And basically what I was doing was trying to unpack the different changes that we have. I studied monks, I studied experienced meditators. I did some interventions getting people to start from scratch and seeing what changes that they had. And yeah, just basically got a really deep look at like how this practice works.

Amanda: No wonder it is really informing all of the work you do now with supporting families and supporting their girls. it’s incredible. And how forward thinking for the time by the sounds of things too.

Fiona: Yeah, and it’s actually really interesting. it’s the juxtaposition in a way of the fact that I was studying attention and how important it is in our life and then fast forward 10 years and now we are talking about how little attention we have, you know, about how the digital space has kind of stolen that attention from us and the impact that we’re seeing. Um, and I feel like when I bring these two things together, my work, it really gives me a tool to be able to help kids, you know, get that back.

Amanda: One thing that you’ve created recently that I’ve seen, I’ve been lucky enough to see behind the scenes a little bit of just how much work and thought into this over the last 12 months and 15 years really, hearing that journey from the PhD, is your new online program, Phone Savvy. Could you tell us a little bit about that? where did the idea for that come from and what does it include? Tell us all the things because I just think it’s so needed right at this moment and it’s so incredible.

Fiona: Thanks. Um, so I feel like it’s fair to say that we are living in unprecedented times. You know, there’s so much information coming at us and so much disinformation as well. and I, from the work that I do with pre-teens and, you know, and parents from my own experience as a parent, like I feel like our kids are very much overwhelmed. and I hear all the time that kids want guidance. They just wanna, they want answers. they wanna understand all of this stuff that’s going around them. Their brains aren’t really equipped for it. And they wanna talk to parents about it or educators. but parents also don’t really understand what’s going on. You know, it’s coming at us as well. We never really signed up to be parents in the digital age. we don’t really necessarily have all the information to be able to guide our kids. No roadmap, no guidebook. And I don’t think it’s fair for us to expect parents to have all the knowledge, but I feel like we can certainly be a place for our kids to land and to be able to be partners with them in being able to learn together and to answer those questions and to be able to also deepen their critical thinking skills at home. So I guess my program came from that problem, I wanted to create a solution for parents where I could give them, you know, the program online is a series of 15 minute videos. Some of them are six minute videos. You know, parents are busy people, they’re trying to manage a lot of things. And so these videos, they’re gonna give you all the basic information you need. it starts with parent videos where you get to get on the same page with your partner, if you’re parenting with someone else. and it gives you all the information about AI and sexting and porn and misogyny and body image and all the important big topics that we really need to have at least a basic understanding of what’s out there. and then we bring the kids in the later videos. and the beauty I guess of this program is that it’s designed to plant seeds. That’s all it’s designed for and it can open up conversation. And so I don’t think that there’s too many other courses like that out there in the sense that I present content, and often very fun and engaging content for kids. and then you get to pause the video and there’s a conversation starter on the screen. it gets kids thinking about things and, you know, it also opens up a platform for kids to be able to share their thoughts and opinions. And that’s when parents get a chance to be able to see where they’re coming from and what they understand and what they dunno, you know? So the whole purpose of Phone Savvy is really to be able to create connection, and create a space where parents can plant that seed.

And so many times… I originally ran this program in person. So the first few years I brought in dads and moms and kids of all ages within the preteens. and I sat them in a room and we had these conversations in the room with everyone else there. and it was a really rich experience because when do the kids really get to hear parents’ perspective and experience on these things? And when do they get to hear other kids’ perspective and experience on these things? A lot of the parents that came out of those courses would say to me, because of that conversation, two weeks later when they were at school and they were presented with something, you know, a friend was going through something, someone sent a sext and didn’t know what to do, those kids were in a position to be able to continue the conversation, came home and talked to their parents about it and say, hey, you remember when we had that conversation? This is what happened. How can I help? And the conversation continued. and I think that’s what I’m hoping with this program is that it’s gonna plant those seeds so that later the kids feel like they can come back and keep deepening, enriching it as they grow.

Amanda: Incredible. You’ve done everything possible to take that in-person experience into a really engaging online experience so that everyone around the world has access to it, not just folks in a town in the middle of Spain. And it’s for kind of ages that, those tween ages, right? if you’ve got kids between say like eight and 12, would you say?

Fiona: Yeah, that’s right. So it’s gonna vary. you might have some teens who are really keen to do it and you might have some younger kids that are also open to doing it. But one of the things I think is really important for parents to remember is that, you know, there’s this developmental process that kids go through when they’re in their preteens. Like they’re thinking very concretely, you know, coming from Piaget’s theory of thinking, and concrete thinking is very black and white. our kids see something online and they believe it. Right. You know, someone’s gonna come up and say, hi, I am a 13-year-old boy in Seattle. They’re gonna believe that, right? it’s only through conversation and experience that they start to deepen and understand the nuances and the kind of gray areas. and then they move into this kind of more formal way of thinking. And that’s what we want our kids to be able to move through, you know? Um, so it depends where your child is as well, and how open they are. It offers value to kids anyway through that age range.

Amanda: yeah, yeah. I can just imagine the conversations around the dinner table and things like that when you’ve gone through the program together, where you’ve supported the parents and then brought the kids in to start to explore all of those things. and just imagining some of the things that the kids might open up about that parents might go, oh wow, I didn’t realize that you knew about that, or, I didn’t know that happened with your friend at school. it must be really enlightening for parents too. What have you found, because I know some people have come through the online program with you already. what’s been some of the feedback from that?

Fiona: Yeah, so, um, it’s given, I think it’s given support to families because there’s an online community as well. so they’ve really valued that being able to pop on and share what’s working for them and then other people seeing what other families are doing, like that community sharing. and also it allows kids to see that other families, they’re not alone in this, you know? Um, I think it really normalizes the fact around delay and education, um, opening up conversations, you know, which tweens can sometimes feel a bit awkward around. But yeah, seeing some really great positive changes in people’s houses. like just changing the structure of the environment, you know. if we wanna have certain digital habits, we need to have an environment that’s gonna support it, right? if there’s no alarm clock in your bedroom and you want your children not to have phones or devices in there, then you need to get an alarm clock, right? or charging station or spaces to be able to read or whatever. So we’re talking in the course a lot about having an environment that supports the goals that you want, or even just the values that you value as a family, being able to create an environment that supports that. so just really small tweaks and changes in people’s homes. Like they’re finding that is making a big difference to how effective they are in being able to do these things.

Amanda: it sounds like it’s really, it’s not prescriptive. It’s allowing families to decide what’s most important to them and make decisions as a family around tech use and when they get their first phone, and all of those sorts of things too. is that right?

Fiona: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Has come at a really interesting time as well, like, you know, as we are moving through, well, at least for people in Australia, you are moving through the social media ban as well. It doesn’t so much affect, I guess, all pre-teens, because some pre-teens don’t have phones yet, or social media, but certainly an interesting landscape to be in at the moment.

Amanda: yeah, definitely. and all the language that you see around that, it’s not about ‘not at all’, it’s about ‘not yet’. And we just need to give the young people more of an opportunity to learn some of these skills so that when they do get social media, it’s something that they can navigate a little bit better. You’re providing this fantastic kind of bridge to go, well, if you do wanna educate yourself a little bit more about this and you do wanna do it as a family, we’ve got this thing to do. How do you feel about the social media ban? What’s kind of thoughts about it all?

Fiona: Look, it’s really interesting actually being an Australian and looking in on what’s happening from a distance, being in Spain. I’m really proud of Australia for having, you know, taken this step. I know that there’s a lot of controversy around it and a lot of different opinions, but I think it’s coming from a really good place. and it’s not surprising that it’s being led by parents in a big way because parents are the ones on the front line, like having to pick up all the pieces when their kids come home and they can’t get kids off devices and dealing with mental health issues and all that. I’m not a big fan of the word ban, but I really like the messaging around the 36 months movement in Australia. Just this idea that we have this time and what are we gonna do with this time? like just delaying that little bit extra in and of itself is valuable, but are our kids gonna be ready at the end of it? that’s the big question. And what do they need when you finally hand that phone over or that social media over? I work with young adults at Berkeley, and we talk about this all the time because it’s integrated in all of my psychology courses. and I ask them about their experience and what they would’ve wanted or wish had their parents had done differently. and they all say that they wish they had delayed a little bit and that their parents had given them more tools to be able to deal with it. so yeah, I think we need to think about it in a preventative sense of, let’s use this time that we have to really prepare them to get out there, because we’re all gonna get out into the world, you know, the online world, eventually. And as adults we’re struggling with it as well. So better use of our time to be able to get them ready.

Amanda: Yeah. That’s such a good point too. After the 36 months campaign, that’s what led to it all going through Parliament and everything, isn’t it? That idea of, what is that three years? extending the age from 13 to 16. For anyone not in Australia, that’s what this 36 months is. That’s a lovely way to think about it. I was quite against it when I first heard about it, mostly because all of the young people that I talked to just weren’t into it and didn’t really get it, didn’t understand why they kind of weren’t consulted about it. But I also am mindful that I work with a lot of young people that are at the little bit of an older spectrum. A lot of the young people I work with are neurodivergent or homeschooled, or they’re so smart that they’re doing their first uni degree at 14 or 15. They’re not necessarily just in a typical school day to day. So a lot of them were like, well, I just manage it myself anyway. Like I don’t get caught up in this stuff. And I’ve found my community online too. a lot of them did find the people that they needed online when they couldn’t find them in person. So it’s been interesting all the conversations that it’s brought up.

Fiona: Yeah, and it’s interesting, right, because what you may be talking about then are people who have really good, strong formal thinking skills. Going back to that theory, they do see all that nuance. They see the gray area and they have a lot more perspective on where it fits in their life. Well, I mean, I think one of the strongest studies that I often refer to is a study in JAMA Pediatrics where they basically took a group of kids who were scrolling a lot, and then the kids that weren’t scrolling, and then they looked at their brains. And essentially the ones that did a lot of scrolling had higher activation in their insula, which is kind of like the area of the brain that’s responsible for social evaluation, and the amygdala, which we know is involved in stress response, and dopamine. So I mean, that’s just one of many studies, there’s some others that show structural changes. But I think that we have to understand that preteens are going through this period of their brain development where it’s shaping and changing and these things have a huge, amplified effect on a preteen brain. so I think from that perspective, I think there’s some really solid evidence for why we need to just wait that little bit longer.

Amanda: it’s been, like you said, you said you were proud of Australia and it’s been inspiring to see how quickly it’s moved and how much everyone’s gotten behind it and how quickly they’ve been able to take action on it too. I’m excited to see how this next phase goes as it rolls out.

Fiona: Yeah. I think, of course it’s gonna be complex, right? Like it’s gonna be hard on many levels, but I think that we’re in it together, and this is the thing, right? it’s not an us versus our kids problem. it’s more an us versus the tech industry problem. and I really do love the conversations that have been starting around, can we switch off the algorithm? I think this is an amazing discussion to be having. And how can we influence the tech industry to be able to make that an option now? Whether kids would do it or not is a different thing, but I think it’s certainly important, then we can educate kids about the importance of turning it off, or the importance of using it less for that reason.

Amanda: It’s gonna be, like you said, we’re in interesting times and to have those skills and to understand a little bit more about how our brains work and the choices that we can make around all of this is so important. And if nothing else, this ban I think will provide… we just need to bring more people together, don’t we, in community spaces that are not so one sided sitting there scrolling to feel connected to something, but to have the conversations, whether it’s online, but certainly in person as well.

Fiona: Yeah, and my hope is that spaces emerge for marginalized communities, but just mainstream kids everywhere, like where kids can get together and talk and have that deep connection that they’re so longing for. and I really like the We Kind music movement, run by Millie. I really love those initiatives of being able to create those physical spaces. I think that’s what people are longing for.

Amanda: Yeah. Her Cause Club, I think it’s called, where people are coming together, doing some cool stuff. I’m noticing more of a… I’m getting more and more signups to the wait list for our Online Academy too, which has been interesting. That’s been such a beautiful space for just weekly doing art together over Zoom and check-ins and things like that. that’s been really nice to see. what have you got planned? Do you see yourself running more in person events around your immediate community?

Fiona: I always love running in person events. Take the opportunity when I can. in Spain we have a friendship club, because there’s a lot of kids in our community who have come from abroad. they’re English speaking kids and sometimes they come into Spain without any Spanish knowledge. Um, and so I’ve got a club where they can arrive in Spain and they have instant friends. and we have fun experiences together. this month we’re going to volunteer on a farm, last month they got a chance to try flamenco, and yeah, it’s just a really beautiful club. it gives me such great energy that lasts all month until I see them again. So I’ll be doing that, but I also will be working more in schools here in Spain, mainly doing Phone Savvy work. So that’s gonna be really exciting as well.

Amanda: will you be going in to run a version of it for parents after school, or will you be educating the educators, or all of the above?

Fiona: the plan is still in process, but the idea is for me to be able to run the Phone Savvy program that is online, in person, and just generate more real time conversation. and then they go back to the platform to be able to communicate with other parents all around the world, and to have deeper resources. They get that online, but it’s just starting the conversation really in person. And I think that’s always really rich, you know? I’m also gonna be providing a lot more live support for people going through the Phone Savvy program. I think it’s important for there to be a space where they can Q&A, and also hear what other people are doing, like verbally.

Amanda: Yeah, definitely. Yay. we get a lot of youth mentors who have built their own business or are thinking about building their own business for young people listening to the podcast. So would you mind telling us a little bit about what that journey’s been like for you? How long has Mothering Girls been going? What kind of events have you been doing? Just a broader view of it as a business, I suppose, or an organization.

Fiona: Wow. It’s been such an organic process. I started it back in Singapore, and it’s kind of moved with me within every country. and most of the work that I’ve done really has been serving local community, so parents, wherever I have been. I’ve played around with a lot of different workshops and resources. You know, I love developing resources for parents. and so to date, I’ve got this course, there’s some books, I do meditations. I just really like creating experiences. and so I’ve just been adding to that over the years as I go. I think it’s also been very much informed by my parenting, you know? My girls give me material every single day. and every time something happens and I work through to the other side, I think, gotta share this with my community. I really wanna be connecting with other people and saying, is this what you’re going through as well? so it’s been a great springboard into conversations with other parents.

Amanda: Yeah. Great. Your Instagram’s so fantastic. For anyone listening, check out Mothering Girls on Instagram for lots of magic from Fiona. What’s it like to move a business, especially a business that’s so in person, to a whole new country with a whole different language? does it take time to get it rolling again?

Fiona: I really like the process of moving to a new country. it’s a very exciting process. Everything’s fresh and new and exciting and there’s so many opportunities. I know that’s not what everyone feels when they move country, but I always like to see it like that. I always get right on in and go straight into the community and try to meet as many people as I can. Spain has been a little bit challenging. I’m fluent in Spanish, because my husband’s fluent in Spanish, but I think that the language barrier is certainly a thing. there’s a very big cultural difference in Spain between Spanish parents and perhaps parents who have come from abroad. and having a product that works for both of those communities has been a real challenge for me. I’ve really had to learn a lot about both of those. I think that’s been my biggest challenge culturally speaking. but within the international community, it’s always been quite easy, because all parents are struggling with these same things. As soon as we start talking, it comes up and we have something to talk about.

Amanda: Yeah. And how great that you can create programs like Phone Savvy and it be for parents all over the world and get to have this amazing community and ecosystem of people sharing across the globe like that. It’s amazing. Couldn’t have done this 10 years ago.

Fiona: And there you are. That’s the positive impact of technology. technology has its good and bad elements. So I think we really need to keep it all balanced. But yeah, I wouldn’t be able to do the work that I do without it, for sure.

Amanda: So true. how many countries have people come from already to start the pilot round of Phone Savvy?

Fiona: Oh, that’s a really good question. And I haven’t, on the spot, haven’t counted. Quite a few!

Amanda: what are some… I don’t want you to give the whole program away or anything, but what are some tips that you would share? Because I know how much research you were doing, going away every month to research a whole new topic, whether it was AI or social media or sexting or porn. they’re such intense subjects and I know how across all of those things you are. and actually I do want tips, but I would also love to hear, is there something in particular that you learned that surprised you, that you just wish all parents knew about? Or all people that have young people in their world knew about?

Fiona: It’s actually really funny because every week I’m updating Phone Savvy because the tech landscape is changing every single week, and particularly around AI. I feel like the speed at which it’s changing and the usage of say AI companions is quite alarming. I would certainly say that’s something that parents need to be aware of. and already in the last month I’ve had several parents come to me with challenges around that. so yeah, I think the AI component was quite confronting, and then constantly updating. But I think overall, the part of the course that is most powerful is getting kids to think for themselves around this stuff. And I know that from my own journey with my kids. so for example, influencers and followers and likes, just the nature of social media, right? it has become kind of a cultural norm that we do these things, and we never really stop and step back and think, wait a second, what does this mean? and so I love seeing kids see some of the content and think, yeah, what does a like mean? or why do we think that clicking follow means that that person is now my friend? just having these kind of perspective shifts around things. even phubbing, you know? it’s quite normalized that we sit around phubbing.

Amanda: What is it?

Fiona: phubbing is kind of like the term that we use, it’s phone and snubbing put together as a word. and it’s the term that we use when someone is looking at their phone instead of talking to you. So you might be talking to someone, they’re looking at their phone, they’re phubbing you. my children learnt this when they were like six years old and now they use it all the time. It’s like, mom, you’re phubbing me. but we normalize that we are sitting around as a family and everyone’s looking at a device. there’s a really amazing photo series where they’ve taken the phones out of people’s hands, like a bride and groom both looking at their phones, or a family at dinner. when we stand back from them we think, wow. I was on a train in Singapore, I remember my kids were real little and they didn’t have phones, and I remember having that moment of looking around and thinking, what is going on? Our whole society is looking down at their phones and no one’s talking. So it’s really getting our kids to step back for a second and think about this in a different way. and I feel like a lot of the stuff that I present in the course in a fun way gets kids to really think about it. and that’s when the shift happens. once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and you kind of see it everywhere and it changes your behavior in a way. And my kids, sometimes when they go to social events, they automatically put their device away if they have it, because they’re aware of that. So they’re cool changes to see in kids. Proud mama moment.

Amanda: Yeah. how are kids getting access to AI companions at the moment? Tell us more about that.

Fiona: so there’s a difference between chatbots… although now, people are using chatbots to be able to get this information, but a chatbot is a source of information, usually factual. and then an AI companion is intended just for friendship, well, friendship and interpersonal connection. and so they’re using it as a therapist, they’re using it as a friend, they’re using it for relationships, sexual content. And so it’s problematic because there’s not a lot of guardrails around it. and so kids are getting access to content that is completely inappropriate for young kids. but there have been many cases of kids using chatbots as well for advice. and sadly there’s been a lot of cases of suicide coming from the advice that a chatbot gave kids. So these are certainly two things that I recommend that preteens don’t get access to.

Amanda: it must be almost impossible to remove access, I guess. how do you limit that? I imagine you can access it just on the browsers, even if you don’t have a device at all.

Fiona: yeah, there are things in the course that I give advice around. there are certain levels. You could do it on the device, you can do it from parental controls, you can just check in with your kids depending on what age they are, and obviously check search histories and things like that. But the most important thing is that you’re having conversations with them. why, what are these things? why are they problematic? What are better sources to go to? why are kids going there? because they have questions. And if they don’t know where else to ask those questions, then there’s the problem right there. So if we set them up saying, I know you have questions, and these are the other places that you can ask, these are the trusted people in your life that you can ask these questions and we wanna answer them for you, I think that’s probably a better way to do it. So love and limits kind of thing. we wanna be there and we also wanna set some boundaries and make sure that their tech environment is safe for them to be able to navigate.

Amanda: Oh, sometimes I’m really glad I’m not a parent, to be honest, in these times. It must be so challenging.

Fiona: Yeah. It’s like juggling a lot of balls in the air.

Amanda: but thankfully there’s people like you in the world who have devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours of research and dedication to bringing programs like this to life. it’s really inspiring and incredible, Fiona, and impactful.

Fiona: Thank you. And I also have a lot to learn from the community as well. I really value the community that I have. the sharing between parents, it’s like we’re kind of supporting each other on this journey.

Amanda: Oh, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today, Fiona, and your energy. so great to see you. I’ve missed you. I missed having our regular chats from the mastermind we’re in, and I just love following everything that you’re doing. I wholeheartedly believe we all need to go and take Phone Savvy, even if we’re not a parent. I know that I’ll learn a lot from the program as well. You’ve created such a magical, important tool, program, community, all the things. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. I’ll pop the links for you and for the program in the show notes as well. So if you’re listening, check those out and go follow Fiona. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Send me a message on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/shinefromwithinhq/
• Jump on a 30min call with me to talk about your own dreams of starting or growing your youth business here.
• Curious about starting your own program or business to support youth this year? Check out our free video training: How to Start and Grow your Youth Mentor Business here.

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