Did you hear about the new kid on Sesame Street? Let me tell you a little bit about who she is.
Meet Julia. As you can see, she has blazing red hair and bright green eyes. She has a good group of friends on Sesame Street. She is surrounded by a whole group of people that constantly support, help, and encourage her despite the difficulties she may face. What difficulties, you may ask? Julia lies on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
"For more than a year, Julia has existed in print and digital illustrations as the center of a multifaceted initiative by Sesame Workshop called "Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children." The fact that Sesame Street FINALLY created something to teach young children about ASD is fantastic in it of itself. The younger children are when they learn about ASD, the better. It helps them better understand why their brother, sister, cousin, or friend behaves the way they do. From experience, I know that learning what autism was at a young age helped me become a better person.
Julia's development, both as a character and a campaign, took years in the making. There have been multiple consultations with various organizations, experts, and families within the autism community. Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop's senior vice president of U.S. Social Impact, stated, "we wanted to promote a better understanding and reduce the stigma often found around these children. We're modeling the way both children and adults can look at autism from a strength-based perspective: finding things that all children share."
They've already done a very good job at portraying this strength-based perspective through the various media they have released. For example, whenever any of the characters interact with her, they always mention something along the lines of "there are different ways to play with each other". Playing side-by-side and finding things you both have in common with one another has been mentioned in some of the short videos that have been released on YouTube. Isn't that neat?
Julia was something I never had growing up. I learned about autism through my family members and watching my cousins and aunt. Autism in the media has been around only for the past several years, so Julia has been a long time coming. She's teaching them things that I had to learn the hard way growing up. She will teach thousands of young children some important and valuable life lessons, and I'm so excited to see the impact she will make on not just children, but the rest of society. I think adults could use some of these lessons as well.
Julia will make her debut on April 10th on both PBS and HBO. If you're a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin of someone with a young child, I highly recommend you record the video and have them watch it.
