Sesame Street Memories

Hello

Recently I was invited to attended a meeting at Talaris to get an update on Sesame Street . The CEO and the Director of Education for Sesame Street gave the presentation to a small group of people and I was one of the lucky ones invited.

Truthfully, I hadn't thought much about Sesame Street in a while. Not since my children have grown up. So I was very surprised and impressed to hear that Sesame Street is now in 120 countries. It is in India and Israel and Palestine lots of South American and European countries. Sesame Street worked with the Israelis and the Palestinians to do cooperative programming.

Sesame Street has also developed a program specifically for the children of parents who are serving in a war zone. Many of these children have their parents, sometimes both their parents, leave for a second and third tour of duty. This program, Talk, Listen and Connect(TLC) is being distributed to bases across the country. Click on the link but make sure you have plenty of tissues handy, it really gets to you.

Listening to the dedicated people from Sesame Street brought back a flood of memories for me. I was a very young mother of a six month old son named Andy when my husband left for Viet Nam. When Andy turned one, I discovered Sesame Street. Andy and I would cuddle on the couch, I would say the letters and numbers with "the Count", we would laugh at the Cookie Monster and Bert and Ernie and I would always look forward to the unexpected celebrities who showed up. I probably got more out of the show than Andy did. But it gave us the time in a scary and upsetting period in our lives to just be together and enjoy ourselves.

I talked to the Sesame people and told them how happy I was to hear about the TLC program and how much I was comforted by Sesame Street when I was going through a similar situation. They were very pleased and proud of the work they have done in that field and happy to hear that their program helped others so many years ago.

In the course of our discussion, the people from Sesame Street told me something interesting. They said that they always build in something for the parents to keep them there so that the children aren't watching the show alone. They also said that they never tell the parents what not to do and only deliver positive and reinforcing messages. I suddenly understood the key to their longevity and success and why Sesame Street is now in so many countries around the world.

Do you have any memories you would like to share about Sesame Street? Add a comment.

Jeanne