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Elmo videos help kids with 2nd deployment

Elmo’s dad is deploying — again.

He gets the phone call, sighs and turns to his wife and Elmo, the lovable red Muppet.

It’s official, his dad says: He has to go away again soon.

Elmo bursts into tears, and his mom and dad try to comfort him.

“When Daddy was away before, we did O.K., didn’t we?” his mother says.

And the Muppet family breaks into a song with the refrain, “We can do it, we can do it, we can do it like we did before.”

Sesame Workshop announced Tuesday that it is now distributing the two newest videos in its “Talk, Listen, Connect” project dealing with tough topics for young military children.

In the TLC “Deployments, Homecomings,” Sesame Street’s Elmo learns to adjust to the news that his dad is going away again. In the “Changes” video, Elmo’s friend Rosita learns to express her feelings and adjust to the new life after her father returns injured.

About 500,000 of the video kits are being produced, said Gary Knell, Sesame Workshop’s president and chief executive officer.

The free kits are provided by the Defense Department through Military OneSource, by the New York State Office of Mental Health, the Military Child Education Coalition, the United Service Organizations and through other outlets. Kits are also available in Spanish.

The videos and other materials can also be downloaded online.

The kits include:

* The Talk, Listen, Connect DVD.

* A magazine for parents and caregivers providing tips, strategies and activities to help comfort and reassure children.

* A children’s activity poster.

* Postcards featuring Sesame Street characters for parents and children to stay connected.

In both new videos, military children and their mothers and fathers offer insights into what they’re feeling and how they deal with those feelings.

“Even though he doesn’t have his leg any more, I still look at him the same,” one young boy says. “There’s nothing different. I’ll always love my dad.”

His father, words failing him, pats his son’s knee.

Thirteen-year-old Alexis Maxwell’s message clearly connects in the “Changes” video.

“You need to remember you have to be proud of your parent,” says the daughter of wounded Marine Lt. Col. Tim Maxwell. “They survived the whole thing and they’re going to get better. That’s something to be very proud of.”

In the “Changes” video, Rosita’s dad has been injured. On the advice of her friend and confidant Elmo, she speaks frankly to her dad and mom about feeling sad because things are different.

“I wish your legs were OK and I wish you didn’t have to go to the doctor so much,” she says. “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,” her father says. “I’ll always be your Papi. Even though some things have changed, my love for you did not.”

Then he proceeds to show her how they can still dance — just differently than they did before. She climbs on his back and they swing around in his wheelchair.

Army Staff Sgt. Ramon Padilla and his family participated in the filming of the “Changes” video. Padilla said watching parts of the video at the news conference Tuesday was “very sentimental” for them.

“We were in the same situation Rosita’s dad was in,” he said.

Padilla said he watched his 3-year-old daughter Emily break into a big smile as she watched herself on the video, which shows her helping Padilla put on his prosthetic arm as he patiently reminds her how to help. Then as she and her 2-year-old brother Ramon swing, her father returns the favor by pushing them.

Making the video “helped open my children up to be more vocal, and more willing to be part of this new change,” Padilla said.

Another benefit was getting to know other families of wounded warriors, he said.

Padilla said his family watched one of the original “Talk, Listen, Connect” videos when they lived in Vicenza, Italy, before he deployed to Afghanistan.

“It was a blockbuster in the Padilla household,” he said, adding that it gave them good ideas for communicating.

Then he was wounded in July and lost his left arm, and also suffered a moderate traumatic brain injury. A few months later, he was asked if his family would participate in the filming of the next Sesame Workshop video.

“I said, ‘Only if I get to meet Elmo,’” he said. “And Sesame Workshop agreed to my terms.”

In addition to interviews with military families, Sesame Workshop staff worked with an advisory board of experts in child development, mental health and programs supporting military families in all aspects of the project.

“It’s profoundly important to recognize the amount of time and effort and work on the part of Sesame Workshop,” said Dr. Stephen Cozza, a retired Army colonel and professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

The project recognizes the many complicated issues military children face and communicates to kids “in a way only Sesame Street can do,” he said.

“They talk about tough topics but do it with sensitivity and with clarity,” he said. “They do it at the developmental level young children understand, using characters that are known and trusted by American kids. I don’t think it gets better than that.”