Over the years Sesame Street has taken difficult subjects and broken them down to a level that young children can understand.   Sesame Street not only teaches the core academic subjects, they also work with the social and emotional development of the child.   This includes helping parents and children discuss difficult complicated topics.  Sometimes it may be hard for children to put into words what they are feeling, but sometimes adults are the ones that are unable to find the words to say.   The most recent topic that Sesame Street has tackled is divorce.

The topic of divorce is a very sensitive one that affects all members of the family.  Sesame Street is attempting to help parents and children better discuss their feeling with a special educational video posted online.   The special toolkit, “Little Children, Big Challenges: Dealing with Divorce,” has videos and other information for children and adults.   In the videos the Muppets and friends on Sesame Street talk about Abby Cadabby’s parents’ divorce.  Elmo, Gordon, and Rosita are there as Abby talks about her feelings about the divorce of her parents.

According to a time.com article, this is not the first time that Sesame Street has attempted to discuss divorce.  Many years ago it was Snuffy that had to deal with the divorce of his parents.   The show produced that segment on divorce about 20 years ago, but it caused a huge amount of emotion of distress to a test audience of children that viewed the video.  Producers decided not to air the segment at all, but now today they have created new video on divorce online.  Instead of Snuffy discussing his parent’s divorce, we have Abby talking about adjusting to having divorced parents.

Divorce is not the only topic that Sesame Street has decided to discuss.  There have been different topics that have been covered.  Some have aired during the regular Sesame Street programming,others have been part of a primetime special, while others are available online.   One of the topics was grief, which was discussed in 2010 in a primetime special called “When Families Grieve.”   They also discussed food insecurity in another primetime special called “Growing Hope Against Hunger”, which is also available for viewing online, like “Little Children, Big Challenges: Dealing with Divorce.”  Along with the preceding topics, parents can find several others that may help their children deal with many different issues in their lives.