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New Elmo DVD takes on deployments, injuries

Elmo’s dad has deployed and come home. Now he’s deploying again.

His fluffy blue friend Rosita is having trouble adjusting to her own father’s injury.

Elmo will use his own experience — and the research conducted by Sesame Workshop — to help military children and their parents cope with the stresses of multiple deployments, in a new Sesame Street DVD available for military families in January. The Muppets also address the difficulties children face when a parent returns changed as a result of traumatic brain injury and other war wounds, said Jeanette Betancourt, vice president of outreach and educational practices for Sesame Workshop, at a family forum Oct. 9 at the annual convention of the Association of the United States Army.

Sesame Workshop will produce more than 400,000 of the new DVD. It builds on the “Talk, Listen, Connect” DVD starring Elmo and his deploying dad, which debuted in August 2006. Like its predecessor, the new DVD will also be offered in Spanish, and will be free. When it is launched in January, it also will be available for download at the Sesame Workshop site.

After Rosita expresses her frustration about her dad’s injuries, Elmo encourages her to talk to her parents.

Rosita tells her father, “I wish your legs were OK, Papi, and I wish you didn’t have to go to the doctor so much. And I just wish things could go back to the way they were.”

“I may be a little different, but I’m still your dad. I will always be your Papi,” he tells her. “Enough though some things have changed, my love for you did not.”

Military families who are addressing these issues are part of the DVD, and they discuss their strategies, Betancourt said. Sesame Workshop also held focus groups with service members and spouses across all branches of service, to include Guard and Reserve members.

“We can’t just stop at the stages of deployment,” Betancourt said, noting that their research moved them to the next phase of “Talk, Listen, Connect.”

The goal is to reduce the level of anxiety when families experience multiple deployments and to help find ways to cope, not just individually, but also in the context of the family and community, Betancourt said. The video is designed to help the children as well as their parents communicate.

“We know from the past that Muppets not only make you laugh, but also help you feel much safer. They enable you to communicate and allow you to talk about some difficult topics that sometimes you can’t do otherwise,” she said.