Noah Glenn is the owner of the creative agency Perpetual Motion, which provides video and animation services to such clients as Muddy's Bake Shop, Explore Bike Share, and the National Civil Rights Museum.
Glenn has two children. As his daughter got older, he noticed that she was having "big" feelings — anxiety, anger, worry, jealousy. He noticed something else. It was a topic that his friends who were parents were talking about.
This was the genesis for Glenn's podcast "Like You." His podcast is focused on mindfulness for kids, which through breathing and imagination exercises, music, and affirmations, is designed to address anxiety, self-esteem, and empathy.
"The broad focus is on social-emotional learning," Glenn said. "Mindfulness is a vehicle for that — getting to know yourself, your feelings."
The podcasts are weekly airing on Tuesday and are about 10 to 15 minutes long.
"We're giving [kids] tools to manage their emotions," Glenn said. "We do breathing exercises, we say affirmations. There's music, and then we do imagination exercises."
Each episode starts with a breathing exercise that helps to the bring the listener in focus. Up next is the imagination exercise, or the meditation. Glenn said he doesn't use the word "meditation" to avoid people's preconceived notions on the practice. Next comes the affirmations, and episodes end with music.
"Each episode has its own theme, things that are interesting for kids," Glenn said. "[It's] anything from being a superhero to having a tea party to blowing bubbles."
The podcast is aimed toward kids four to eight years old, though Glenn said that he has listeners as young as 18 months and as old as tweens and teenagers.
"We have a fairly wide age range for our audience. That's because when I'm creating media for kids, I never want to feel like it's dumbing it down to them. Kids are very smart. You treat them with respect," he said. "If I'm trying to create for younger children, I think the older kids latch on and appreciate that."
Recently, Glenn has been segueing Perpetual Motion to focus on children's media. He said his role model is Mr. Rogers.
"I wanted to do something in that vein, something that speaks directly to kids and treats them as a peer," he said.
Glenn said he's still working on projects with his current clients. His past work with educational organizations and nonprofits that focus on kids has led him in this direction as well. Right now, he's looking to increase his presence in this space and further expand on the "Like You" universe.
"[It's] something that I'm really hoping to scale," he said. "I've got ideas for an app with daily affirmations for the morning and in the evening, and mindfulness courses for educators, students, and parents. I want to do live events where you can bring people together. Because I think that's something that's been missing when you're only engaging in digital platforms."
