The residents of Sesame Street have always been a diverse group; they include a grouch who lives in a garbage can, a bird with gigantism and a wooly mammoth with the first name of Aloysius. The newest resident on Sesame Street is Alex, a Muppet whose father is in jail, according to NBC News.
Sesame Workshop has created "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration" as an online tool kit specifically for families and children who have a loved one in prison. The issue is one that has flown under the radar due to the stigma associated with being incarcerated but the fact is that one in every 28 children has a parent currently in jail, according to a report from Pew Charitable Trusts. A total of 2.7 million children have a parent in prison.
Alex is an orange human-like Muppet with blue hair and a hoodie. Alex is encouraged by others to open up and share his feelings. Perhaps more importantly Alex is told that it's OK for him to be sad or angry or confused about where his father is, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"I just miss him so much," Alex says in one of the videos. "Sometimes I just feel like I want to pound on a pillow and scream as loud as I can."
Sesame Workshop created the toolkit because they had noticed a lack of resources designed to help children deal with the difficult situation. The creators decided to have the messages come from a Muppet instead of one of the adults on the program because it's easier for young children to relate to the Muppet.
"Coming from a Muppet, it's almost another child telling their story to the children," Jeanette Betancourt, vice president of outreach and educational practices at the Sesame Workshop, told NBC News.
Ann Adalist-Estrin, director of the National Resource Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the majority of initiatives dealing with the issue have targeted older children, not the 3 to 8 years olds that the Sesame Workshop program is aiming for.
"Just having this out there in the home says to kids, 'My parent is askable about this. They showed me this video. They read this book to me,'" Adalist-Estrin said. "The materials really help with how to prepare kids for a visit, how to talk about writing letters and phone calls."
The videos from the "Sesame Street: Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration" initiative can be seen at this link.
