It all started when I read an article in Scientific American titled “Affirmation of Worth Boosts Scores of Black Children.” It wasn’t my first time reading about something like this. It also doesn’t surprise me, as many people of color including those here at ABF Creative, grew up in homes filled with positive affirmations for kids and occasional Bible verses to keep us on the straight and narrow. However, it also made me aware that in the growing mindfulness content arena no one has carved out a space for Black, indigenous, and other children of color. Our children matter too.
So, we are happy to officially bring you Charm Words! Our new franchise will be kicking off as a daily podcast (books too?) with episodes releasing Monday through Friday. Each episode is a carefully crafted audio scape 3-5 minutes max in length and every affirmation has been reviewed by our good friend and esteemed children’s media advisor Ed Greene PhD. Our ultimate goal, to help young children of color make affirmations of worth a habit.
As we were developing this podcast, a video of a biracial mother-daughter duo went viral because she practices affirmations of worth with her daughter everyday while doing her hair. To us this further solidified that we were heading down a good path. Now let’s make this easy and accessible to anyone.
In order to do that, we took great care in packing as much science backed methods into our 3-minute run of show that sonically made sense.
Anatomy of a Charm Words Podcast:
Positive and encouraging message – Our fictional host Zola gives a short monologue to start the podcast off. The message is typically related to the Charm Words aka affirmations for the episode. We wanted to make sure the voice was happy and inviting. We tested out several voices utilizing predictive analysis, and ultimately settled with our very own Heidi Kwiat from the Webby Award winning African Folktales podcast. She’s just too good.
Breathing exercise – Children deal with a lot. More than we assume they do. So a breathing exercise helps them calm down by slowing down. A growing number of studies and evidence show that breathing exercises are the first line of defense against anxiety and other mental health related challenges.
Binaural beats – The small few seconds of beats in the podcast helps to refocus the listener after the breathing exercise soothes them out. We don’t want anyone falling asleep on us do we?
Charm Words – These are our affirmations that we are cleverly coining as of course…….Charm Words. Affirmations of worth can go so deep, but over time we plan to get very, very specific to make these affirmations hit home for different backgrounds.
The high 5 – Around the time we were developing the podcast I had just completed reading Mel Robbins book “The high 5 Habit.” The science behind the psychological effects of the high 5 with kids could not be ignored. We found a great way to incorporate it into the podcast as a congratulations for completing the practice for the day. We assume most kids would listen with a parent, but even if they are by themselves, they can clap or use the mirror.
The podcast is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review! It goes a long way for us to be discovered on these platforms as a independent studio.
This podcast would not be possible without the gifted hands and ears of the ABF Creative Charm Words production team: Lead Producer, Composer, and Engineer, Nilo Galang. Lead Writer, Gary Swaby. VO Talent, Heidi Kwiat, Celestina Harris. Publicity, Carla DuBose, Tequilla White. Executive producers Anthony Frasier, Wanda Reynolds.
