What if kids could see their own strength when things get hard?

The idea

Kids run into hard moments all the time.

A friend leaves them out. Someone says something hurtful. They’re scared to walk into a new classroom or separate in the morning.

And they don’t always tell us about it. Or want our advice when they do.

As a parent, I kept thinking about how to help my kids recognize the strengths they already have and see different ways to respond when things get hard, without turning it into another parent lecture.

That became Naru.

The first episode started with my own need as my son, Shahar didn’t want to get in. This is Shahar’s first days in gan.

[Photo of Shahar]

I wanted to give him something encouraging to watch around a challenge he was actually living through.

Naru creates personalized animated stories around situations a child is dealing with, using details from their world, things they love, and strengths that are already theirs.

The psychology behind it

Naming emotions can help children make sense of what they’re feeling. Seeing a character like them face a challenge, draw on strengths they already have, and find a way through can give them another response to carry into their own moment.

Research on emotion labeling, mental rehearsal and video modeling gives me reason to think these ingredients are worth exploring. The evidence is promising, but it doesn’t prove Naru works. That’s what I’m testing.

How I built it

Higgsfield for video, ElevenLabs for voice, Suno for the song, Canva to bring it all together.

When I showed it to my kids, they wanted more.

But the part that interested me most came afterward.

We started talking about the story. They connected it to things that had happened to them and even started giving Naru advice about what he should do.

That was enough to make me want to test the idea beyond my own kids.

So I built a landing page in Base44 and sent it to parents in my neighborhood.

What I’m testing now

Now I want to know whether there’s something real here.

Do kids actually want to watch more?
Does it open conversations with their parents?
Does anything from the story stay with them when things get hard?

And ultimately: is it useful enough that parents would pay for it?

That’s the stage Naru is at now.

A prototype, a hypothesis, and real people starting to test it.