Think Out Loud

Vancouver company’s ‘Slumberkins’ aims to help kids learn emotional wellness

By Elizabeth Castillo (OPB)
Nov. 4, 2022 5:08 p.m. Updated: Nov. 14, 2022 6:24 p.m.

Broadcast: Friday, Nov. 4

The Yak family in “Slumberkins,” which premiers today on Apple TV+. The series is based on characters from a Pacific Northwest children's brand.

The Yak family in “Slumberkins,” which premiers today on Apple TV+. The series is based on characters from a Pacific Northwest children's brand.

courtesy of Apple TV+

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A new series streaming on Apple TV+ hopes to help kids “discover a world of feelings.” The show is based on books and characters from Vancouver-based children’s brand “Slumberkins.” The show follows the adventures of Bigfoot, Unicorn, Sloth, Yak and Fox as they navigate their emotions.

Halle Stanford is the President of Television for The Jim Henson Company and an executive producer of the series. Kelly Oriard and Callie Christensen are the co-founders and co-CEOs of the brand based in the Pacific Northwest and are co-executive producers of the show. We learn more from them about “Slumberkins” and the concept of social emotional learning.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. A new series with a Northwest connection is premiering today on Apple TV+. It’s called ‘Slumberkins.’ It’s based on books and characters created by the Vancouver-based children’s brand, and it has one big goal: to empower children’s emotional wellness. Kelly Oriard and Callie Christensen are the co-founders and co-CEOs of the brand and are co-executive producers of the new show. Halle Stanford is the President of Television for The Jim Henson Company and an executive producer of the series. Welcome to all three of you.

Guests: Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.

Miller: Callie, first. How did Slumberkins, the company, come to be?

Callie Christensen: Oh, it’s been quite the journey. Kelly and I are educators turned entrepreneurs. We were both working in the therapeutic realm of schools – myself in Evergreen Public Schools and Kelly in Portland Public Schools – as a marriage and family therapist and school counselor. We had this moment, while we were on a maternity leave together, of wanting to come up with this concept of providing parents with tools and resources that really put the power in their hands before a child might get to the school ages where we were intervening. That came to fruition in the form of books and plush creatures because, as educators with this idea, we did not know how to start a business. So we started out hand making Slumberkins back in the day and selling them at local craft fairs.

Miller: Kelly, what were you seeing that made you think that there was a need that your new company could fill?

Kelly Oriard: Yeah. When we were working in the schools, as a school counselor you get such limited time with kids. You do small groups. You do whole classroom lessons. There was always a huge wait list for groups around mindfulness or family change. Teachers were often coming to me saying, ‘Behaviors are increasing, and kids are under so much stress and dealing with so many things’ and wanting to know how to support them. As a therapist, I knew that the people who could make the biggest impact were the primary caregivers: the parents, grandparents, people who are close to these children outside of school. They just didn’t know the kind of things that I knew as a trained therapist, and we wanted to give them those tools. This was all pre-pandemic, which now post-pandemic, I can only imagine how much that sentiment has ramped up in the schools.

Miller: Callie Christensen, you’ve said in the past that you want to bridge the homeschool connection for young children. What does that mean? What’s the home school connection?

Christensen: I think, as educators, you’re always looking for a way to get families more involved in the process. Kelly and I both saw the most progress with our students, from an emotional development standpoint or success within the school world, when the family was involved, when they were using the same resources, using the same language that teachers are using. What that means for what we’ve created is that the brand in and of itself has curriculum that’s being used throughout school districts – we’re in a partnership with Portland Public. We give a lot of resources to the teachers, that are specifically designed to send home with kids, that engage the parents in the learning. It is truly just that. It’s getting parents interested and engaged in a really approachable way, which I think is the power of having this brand that has this… It’s just really approachable, easy to use. You don’t have to read a textbook on how to help your child from an emotional development way. It’s just turnkey. We used to say it’s really stealth SEL disguised as plush creatures, and the vitamins are in the books. Then put it into the format of… When we meet Halle from the Henson Company, put it in the format of the show, and you just even reach so many more families in that way.

Miller: We’ll get to that in just one second. Kelly Oriard, Callie mentioned stealth SEL, but this is a phrase that we actually haven’t talked about explicitly yet. What is SEL or social emotional learning?

Oriard: Social emotional learning is really about helping kids and adults understand about their emotions and their interactions with other people. When we think about belonging and connection being some of the most important things to human beings, social emotional learning is helping us get in touch with the things that connect us as human beings, which is emotional bonds and connection.

Miller: When did you both decide you wanted to expand the Slumberkins brand/universe, which is largely plush toy characters and books and curriculum, you wanted to expand that into a TV show – when did that idea first appear?

Oriard: Callie and I are very big dreamers and very competitive. Even from the early days when we were learning about business, somebody gave us a business sheet that says, ‘Say your big hairy audacious goal, something that sounds like it’s out of this world. But it’s, I know I’ve made it when…’ Back then, we said, ‘When there’s Slumberkins on Ice.’ We always wanted to bring the characters to life to reach more families and could see that potential. [We] just kind of pinch ourselves every day that we’ve gotten to this place now.

Miller: You’re not there yet though, right? You have a TV show but not yet a live Ice Capade extravaganza?

Christensen: Correct.

Both: Correct, correct.

Oriard: But you can tell, we’re like, that’s coming. [laughter] We’re eternal optimists.

Miller: Halle Stanford, let’s bring you in here. When did you first hear about Slumberkins?

Halle Stanford: Hi Dave. I have to just say, I love that they just said that about the ice show. I was just saying that yesterday. I’m like, ‘You know you’ve made it when it’s like Fraggle Rock on Ice,’ so I’m completely with that big dream. I just wanted to say I love that.

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I was brought in on Slumberkins… I’ll tell you how I was brought in because, myself, I was an anxious child, and I had an anxious best friend. You may know him. His name is Grover. He was the monster at the end of the book that kept saying, ‘Don’t turn the pages.’ It truly is the reason I came to The Jim Henson Company as a producer. I really wanted to create those first friends for kids again. I noticed, pre-pandemic, such a rise in anxiety with younger children, and of course the research backs it up. You can hear that Kelly is saying the same thing. So I just was on the lookout for an idea, a creator, a property that could help us imagine this type of series, and the universe delivered. I was so lucky to meet Callie and Kelly at a conference for female entrepreneurs called Alt Summit. I fell in love with them and the intention and design of Slumberkins and realized that The Jim Henson Company could definitely figure out how to realize the dream of the show becoming a bigger television franchise. So then I brought on board Alex Rockwell, who was our showrunner, and the Jim Henson Creature Shop to help realize the series. That’s how I got involved.

Miller: I want to go back to the first thing you mentioned. What exactly did Grover, the character, mean to you when you were little?

Stanford: He was just so sweet and so vulnerable and so special. I don’t know if you remember that book, ‘The Monster at the End of this Book,’ but he does everything possible to make you not turn the pages. He’ll put up bricks and mortar and all of that, and then you turn the page. And of course you break down the pages and get to the end, and then he goes, ‘Oh it was just me.’ And at the end he goes, ‘Oh, I’m so embarrassed.’ I just love that vulnerability. I actually got to live the dream, just like Kelly and Callie are saying, when I got to meet Frank Oz when I started as an assistant here 27 years ago and tell him, ‘You were my first friend.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ I got to meet Grover in person, too. That was pretty special.

Miller: Callie, what did it mean to have the Jim Henson company be the company to partner with, as you turned this into a TV show?

Christensen: Oh my goodness, I might have to hand this one to Kelly because she introduced me to the Jim Henson Company. Well, I mean we all know Sesame Street, we all know but Kelly is the true Henson super fan. Like, we watched the Labyrinth millions of times in high school. We’ve been high school best friends since we were 14. So it goes way back, I don’t know … I’ll hand it to Kelly, because it’s truly a dream come true.

Oriard: There is no one more iconic and legendary in the space of children’s programming and puppets than the Jim Henson Company, and the fact that we met Halle at a conference, I still remember that moment of somebody introducing us to her, and I felt like it was fate bringing us together, and there was going to be this moment of full circle meaning coming through my life of what I had really looked up to and loved about the Jim Henson Company and having the opportunity to do that together has just been incredible.

Miller:  Let’s have a listen to a scene from the show. This is from the first episode when a character called Yak has been trying over and over to get her parents attention, but they are focused on her three baby sisters: [Excerpt] “Am I okay? What am I feeling? I learned how to juggle today, and I couldn’t wait to show my mom and dad, but every time I tried to show them, my baby sisters needed them, and they couldn’t watch me. That made me feel mad. So I took the rattle. Mom and dad are always so busy with my sisters. Do they even care about me anymore? I gotta go talk to them. Thanks for being my listening friend.”

Callie Christensen, there’s a lot going on in that 50 seconds we just heard. But first of all, who is the listening friend in this context?

Christensen: Well, the listening friend is the child watching the show and it is just a way to engage the audience. And it’s amazing to see kids tune in when the character’s asking them to listen.

Miller: Because I should have maybe noted that there’s a kind of break in the narrative action. We’ve been watching Yak get frustrated as her parents aren’t paying attention because they’re feeding or taking care of the three little sisters, and then Yak sort of turns to the viewer and the lighting changes and that’s when she delivers this monologue. Kelly Oriard, what do you think is important about this scene? And I should say that there are versions of this scene in all the episodes.

Oriard: Yes, this moment where we really take pause, we’re slowing down what is emotional processing. And we’re really, in these episodes, are trying to get at a moment where potentially deep fears or concerns or core beliefs start getting built up. So it’s very common at this age that a child would take the viewpoint of parents not paying attention to them, personally. And so in these moments it helps break down, have a child understand what’s going on with their own feelings, and leave that moment with a question or an inner knowing themselves and connection with another character, to help them understand that you know, they are okay. There is not a scarcity of love in the family. There’s an abundance of love in the family. And really focusing on a deeper level of emotional awareness, not just behavior, because we really see behavior as communication.

Miller: Callie, it seems that one of the key lines in that clip we just heard, and in others, is the character asking themself a question, and it’s repeated. The question is: ‘what am I feeling?’ Why is that question important?

Christensen: I think it’s so important to highlight, like Kelly just said, we’ve seen, we know behaviors are just ways of communicating. And what those moments show is just emotional fluency and emotional regulation and processing. It is modeling emotional fluency for kids, giving them the language around feelings, giving them the opportunity to sit and think, what am I feeling? Those are the moments that in the time that we’ve watched the show with our own children, they are truly tuning in and trying to figure out what that character’s feeling, and seeing it through their eyes and identifying with those feelings as well.

Miller: Halle Stanford, how is what you’re doing with this show different from what Sesame Street pioneered 52 years ago?

Stanford: I think that there are similarities, but obviously some real differences. The similarity is that we’re doing what we’ve always done best, which is create. Like I said, those first friends, characters that kids connect with. Puppets are very, very powerful. In fact, in that heart space moment that you’re talking about, I don’t think any other medium could deliver that connection with the audience better than puppets.

Miller: If I could stop you there, I’m curious about that because I should have mentioned this earlier, but it’s a kind of hybrid visual style where there is an animated background for the most part, with puppets as the characters moving around. I imagine – I don’t know, I don’t make tv shows – but I imagine it might have been easier or cheaper to just have it be fully animated. So why have puppets?

Stanford: Yeah. Puppets, like I mentioned, they have this deep connection that make kids feel safe, and they feel connected to them and intimate. And puppets are used in therapy as a tool by many teachers and therapists to help very young children manage big feelings. So you can just imagine like with us bringing the characters to life, we always say, we’re creating them from the inside out, right? So bring the Slumberkin characters to life, and view them with this personality. They feel so authentic and real to the kids at home, but also they’re also a creative, very safe, sensitive and fun space for the kids at home to be able to express themselves and be that listening friend, and be able to have that relationship. I think it even breaks down to something as simple as for children, they appear to breathe the same air, right? Like they’re in my space, so they must be real. And parents at home know, oh we’re all creating magic together, with puppets. So we did bring that to life.

What is different is exactly what Kelly is saying, which is that we’ve taken this curriculum, the social emotional learning curriculum and deepened it. So it’s beyond what you’ve seen on television before. We’ve seen a lot of shows, like Arthur where it’s about social awareness, relationships, responsible decision making, but not a series for this age group that’s about self-awareness, self-management and regulation and self-esteem. And I just think it’s beautiful. I don’t think there’s anything out there, but it’s all wrapped up in fun tales. Alex Rockwell, our creator, says, ‘it’s like a 21st-century 100-acre-woods, the story’. So they’re just playful, really fun stories with gorgeous songs from Ingrid Michaelson wrapped up all in this.

Miller: Kelly, NPR recently reported that parents and community members have protested angrily against social emotional learning in recent months at school board meetings, and state lawmakers have introduced bills to try to ban it. They’ve found disputes specifically about SEL in at least 25 states. One lawmaker in Oklahoma said SEL seeks to find traumas in our children as a pretext to push anti-family, anti-logic and anti-reason philosophies and leftist political ideologies. If you were talking directly to that lawmaker, a state senator from Oklahoma who introduced this bill in February, what would you tell him?

Oriard: I would say that the connection and social emotional learning are the first learnings that any human being encounters. The connections that we have with our parents, with people who love us, come way before anything about policies or ideas and rules. People need to feel connected, belong, and understand their own system and that’s what SEL is about. It’s about helping children, families understand, manage emotions, and also love and accept each other. And so it’s disappointing that something so real and true that is truly helping people, and trying to be supportive of every single person, is being pulled into that arena. And I would highly disagree that SEL seeks to do the things that he’s saying.

Miller: Callie, Kelly and Halle, thanks very much.

Guests: Thank you so much.

Miller: Callie Christensen and Kelly Oriard are co-founders and co-CEOs of Slumberkins, and co-executive producers of the new Apple TV Plus original series. Halle Stanford is the President of Television, and executive producer at the Jim Henson Company, and executive producer of Slumberkins.

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