Sesame Workshop Salutes Strength of Military Families

April 24, 2009

The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) provided advice to Sesame Workshop for the “Talk, Listen, Connect” series.

The recent “Talk, Listen, Connect” primetime PBS special, “Coming Home: Military Families Cope with Change,” explored issues that military families experience as they find a “new normal” when service members return from deployment with both the visible and invisible wounds of war.

Navy Cmdr. Russell Shilling, scientific advisor for psychological health at DCoE, has worked closely with Sesame Workshop to create informational kits for the “Talk, Listen, Connect” series of three programs, which uses Muppets and documentary footage to help children cope with their parents being deployed and with the return of a parent who has been physically or psychologically injured in combat.

“Deployments are difficult for the entire family – especially so for children,” Shilling said. “Having familiar characters like Elmo talking about the deployment process helps to reassure children and offers parents an opportunity to begin a discussion about what’s going on.”

Shilling, a Navy aerospace experimental psychologist, started working with Sesame Workshop early in 2007 to help develop the portion of “Talk, Listen, Connect” aimed at injured service members and to develop distribution and funding strategies. Shilling also helped devise the concept behind the development of an advanced Web site application to support the overall program.

“Coming Home” is the second installment of the series, which is designed to support military families with children between the ages of 2 and 5. The program features actress and singer Queen Latifah, singer John Mayer and the Muppet Elmo.

The special aired in connection with April’s designation as the “Month of the Military Child,” which is designed to salute the courage and strength of military families.

“Our service members and their families make sacrifices every day,” said Army Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton, M.D., the director of DCoE. “Telling their stories honors military families, offers help to those who may not be coping well with change and educates our nation about military families.”

Appearing on the program was Dr. Stephen Cozza, professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and associate director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, a DCoE component center.

“Sesame Workshop put together a wonderful program that really is geared toward families, using characters that are trusted in our communities and helps young children and adults understand the impact of these events on kids,” Cozza said.

To support the initiative, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences hosted a pre-screening of the Sesame Street special for military families, community support organizations and senior leaders of the Military Health System.

The screening was introduced by Dr. Charles Rice, president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and included remarks from Dr. Robert Ursano, director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress. Military Health System senior leaders in attendance included Ellen Embrey, acting principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, and Sutton.

Sesame Workshop has been creating outreach materials to help military families since the first “Talk, Listen, Connect” program aired in 2006.

For more information, visit Sesame Workshop’s “Talk, Listen, Connect” Web site at http://archive.sesameworkshop. org/tlc/.