It all started with a LinkedIn post showcased a family prank and now it’s helping parents all around the world.
Local psychologist and mom of three and owner of BrightSpot Families, Andrea Mata, first posted a photo wearing a “meen mom” sticker tag by her children. When the post picked up a lot of traction, she got an idea to help all parents.
“My son was being kind of mean to his sisters, just being a normal annoying brother. I jokingly went and drew a little badge and wrote “meanest brother” on it and I taped it to his back. I thought for sure the girls would side with me because I was defending them, except all three of them sided together and went against me,” Mata said. “They went and they drew a circle and they wrote “meen mom” and then taped it to my back. It became this little joke between the four of us. I took a picture of it and posted about it on LinkedIn and then there was all of this engagement.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Mata said parents have been “craving” community; making a underlying reason to start the Meen Team.
“If you ask the vast majority of parents in America right now, they think that they have to do it all by themselves and that’s not how humans have evolved over 1000s of years. We need community,” Mata said. “With the loneliness epidemic that’s going on and social restrictions during COVID-19, I think more and more people are craving to be close to people and to have better attachments and bonds with others.”
What is the Meen Team
Because of the engagement calling for “meen mom merch,” Mata got the idea for something a little more helpful for both parents and their children. But don’t worry, you can still buy a ‘Meen Mom’ hat.
“I am now launching the Meen Team, which is going to be a virtual community for parents on parenting and parents’ mental health, because one big hole that I see is that everyone is focusing in on kids’ mental health, but there’s not a whole lot of people focusing in on parents’ mental health. That is super important because it’s a top-down process where if the parents are okay, the kids will also be okay,” Mata said.
The virtual community on the website Skool, features a variety of resources and online activities for parents involved including Ask-Me-Anything office hours led by Mata, exclusive content, workshops, book clubs, Zoom hangouts and separate Zoom mom and dad mixers.
The Ask-Me-Anything office hours are for whenever someone has a quick question or a problem they need help solving.
“Whoever is available hops on a Zoom call and people are able to ask whatever question they have,” Mata said. “So one big question I keep hearing parents say is, ‘My five-year-old, we’ll put them to bed and then they get up 20 times, needing water, needing another hug, all of the things. So then, during those Ask-Me-Anything hours, I would explain, how you would go about addressing that specific behavior.”
The content side of the community includes exclusive videos, workshops and book clubs to get the most out of your membership.
“There’ll be long-form content where people can’t find that information anywhere else, or that strategy anywhere else… There’ll be workshops throughout the month. There’ll be courses,” Mata said. “There might be book clubs where it’s like, ‘Let’s all read the same book and then let’s talk about how this book applies to parenting or parents’ mental health.”
Another part of parenting that Mata has heard struggles about consists of making friends. To help combat this issue, the group will also host online mixers to get to know one another in a more relaxed setting compared to the Ask-Me-Anything office hours.
“We’ll pop into a Zoom call and we’ll all just hang out because one thing I hear parents say over and over again is that it’s hard to form friends after you become a parent unless you’re friends with your kids’ friends’ parents. So, we’re going to build relationships and build friendships with folks,” Mata said.
When parenting, Mata said it can also be hard to have a girls-night or a boys-night separate from your partner. So, there will also be mom and dad specific online hangouts.
“I’ll take the lead on the mom only hangouts. Where we’ll pop in and we’ll just hang out and get to know each other and build friendships that way, Mata said. “Then the dads are also going to have their own space because to be a dad in today’s America is completely different than it is to be a mom. So, my husband is going to take the lead on that one and there’s going to be dad only hangouts so that the dads can hang out and build friendships.”
If the next Zoom call isn’t for a few days, members can use the discussion board feature to type in their problem and have Mata respond with suggestions.
Apart from the social aspects of the community, there are also discounts that members receive just by joining.
“There will probably be times where people in the community might [be] in the middle of a crisis and they need to know what to do about it right now,” Mata said. “For them, instead of having to go through my private practice, which is Bright Spot Families, I’m just going to have them go ‘Hey, Dre [Mata], we need a session this week’ and then I will schedule a session with you and whoever else for as soon as we can fit you in and then it’s going to be a discounted rate. So it’s not going to be the typical $160 per session through my practice. It’ll be a discounted rate for community members.”
Being a Meen Team member
Since Aug. 27, there were seven official Meen Team couples and 20 who have verbally committed to joining the group, making the first group of Founding Members.
“To be a Founding Member, it’s going to be $50 a month… I want to keep this reasonable so parents can actually afford to like partake in it. If you do quick math, it’s like $1.67 a day,” Mata said. “You essentially have a clinical child psychologist in your pocket for $1.67 a day. I don’t know if it gets better than that.”
While registration closed Saturday, Aug. 29, there will be another opportunity for parents to join in January. However, their membership fee will be increased compared to that of the Founding Members.
This virtual group isn’t just for parents in the Greater Toledo area, or even for parents in the U.S. It’s gone world-wide.
“It’s actually open on the international level. So we have one one family from India and then we have another family from Spain and then we have another family from England,” Mata said.
Tthere is no parental age range; the group is for all parents.
“We have one couple coming in and they have a nine-month-old. Who I think is the youngest right now. But then we also have quite a few parents… who have 20-year-olds,” Mata said. “I think it’s going to be that community piece where we’re going to have so many different kind of parents in different lifespans of their child [so] we’re really going to be able to help other.”
Looking towards the future
Members currently receive discounted rates on ‘Meen Mom’ merchandise, which consists of a hat. But, Mata plans to release more for both moms and dads.
“Anyone in the community who wants to buy that hat, they’ll have a discount code for it where they can buy a hat at a discounted rate. When other ‘Meen Mom’ and ‘Meen Dad’ merch comes out, there will also be discount codes for all the merch for people in the community,” Mata said.
While the group has a wide-range of where members come from, there are still many from the Greater Toledo area. So in the future, Mata wants to have an in-person meet up for these local families.
“There’s like five [members who] are all [from] Northwest Ohio… If we wanted to around Christmas time go Christmas shopping or go do a date where it’s like all 10 of us go out for a date,” Mata said. “I would love for it to start to become more like family, you know, ‘Meen Teen.’ Maybe family retreats where we travel together and do more in person stuff.”
When it comes to the reason behind the Meen Team, Mata just says she wants to help parents succeed both in parenting and mentally.
“A lot of parents are struggling to figure out how to parent and they are definitely not alone. I just want to be able to be a guiding light for parents to help them and walk alongside them and help them figure out how to parent their child, all while maintaining their own mental health,” Mata said.
For more information on the Meen Team and BrightSpot Families, go to brightspotfamilies.com.
