New TV Show Teaches Preschoolers About Foster Care
Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash
A sitcom produced by CBC, designed for a preschool audience, is designed to teach kids about foster care. Aunty B’s House uses heart and humour as it follows a foster mum and her foster kids, navigating difficult topics such as losing a parent and coming into the foster care system. The program’s lead actor, Khalilah Brooks, draws on her own experience growing up in foster care to inform the character she plays.
The new show, Aunty B’s House, is based on the real-life experiences of the show’s creator, Khalila Brooks. In an article for the CBC online newsletter, Teghan Beaudette writes, “The show is structured like a sitcom with ‘90’s guitar riffs and kid-friendly punchlines – with the goal of helping all children understand that families come in different shapes and sizes.”
As a child, Brooks remembers being embarrassed for ‘standing out’ in moves to new communities and schools, leading to a lack of confidence. She wanted to hide, but one foster parent in particular changed everything for her. “She taught me how to stand up straight and keep my head up high and that I didn’t need to be ashamed of my journey and being a foster kid and that she was going to teach me how to be loved, and that’s exactly what she did.”
As an adult, Brooks developed her Aunty B character which she presented in live shows in Nova Scotia, where she had grown up. She connected with producers Michelle Melanson and Ken Cuperus at a pitch session at Centennial College. Melanson and Cuperus have an adopted child, whom they adopted out of the foster care system when she was 11 months old, and Cuperus himself has lived experience, having been adopted at a young age.
The show is designed both to normalize their lived experience for foster children and to teach empathy to children who aren’t growing up in foster care. “Episodes include stories about how the tooth fairy will find a recently moved foster child, how to cope with the nervousness and anxiety around a family member visit – and how to cope with the sadness that sometimes happens during that visit. In another, a child doesn’t want to part with her shoes, the last pair her mother bought her before she died.”
While North American audiences are less familiar with children’s programming that tackles darker subjects like parental death, there were examples of Scandinavian programs that the team could draw on for reference.
The show is designed to demonstrate the difference a compassionate, nurturing caregiver can make in the life of a child at risk.