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Monday, April 12, 2010

When Families Grieve: A Sesame Street Special

Some of you may recall the Sesame Street episode that featured the monsters reactions to the Death of Mr. Hooper from several years ago.  It had a profound impact on many children and parents helped by the fact it was aired on Thanksgiving Day.  The creators behind Sesame Street have decided to revisit the topic in a nighttime special called "When Families Grieve."  The episode airs Wednesday night on PBS stations (check local listings).


Interestingly this has nothing to do with the upcoming 'National Healthcare Decisions Day' on Friday April 16th (right after taxes...well you know what they say about death and taxes.)  This special episode emerged from the Talk. Listen Connect. program tailored towards military families dealing with repeated and prolonged deployments.  The program is supported by New York Life insurance who interestingly also provided a lot of seed money to Comfort Zone Camp, which was featured at the recent AAHPM meeting.

I am reminded of a quote from the Comfort Zone Camp video: "I thought I was the only kid who had a parent who had died."  This episode may help a lot of kids realize they are not alone.

In conjunction with the special episode they are distributing nearly 1 million multimedia kits to families and will have online resources as well. As with the Mr. Hooper episode, I am guessing they will approach this in a secular way and focus on memories of the deceased and they will likely teach adults a lot about death and grieving as well.

I have it DVR'd and will post a review after it airs.  If anyone has any comments while they are watching it please feel free to use this post as a conversation hub.

I have included a few videos below to give you a hint of what the episode will feature.



An preview of a clip from the show:

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