Sesame Street’s Elmo Helps Provide Comfort To Children After Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy has provided a troubling and frightening experience for a lot of people. Even the bravest of adults must admit that Sandy has been a cause to worry. So, just imagine how frightening the megastorm was for children. Whether the children lived through it first hand or even those who simply saw the images of destruction on their televisions, it must have been a truly frightening experience.

According to Today, no amount of statistics or estimated recovery times could really explain the weather event to the children or provide comfort in its wake. Parents have been trying everything they can think of to soothe their scared kids, and now they have some help from a voice every child trusts.

On Tuesday morning, Sesame Street’s Elmo visited Brian Lehrer’s WNYC’s radio show and spoke directly to the young children listening. Elmo, the popular muppet, was a perfect fit to talk to children since he himself had been through a scary storm on “Sesame Street” in the past.

“Well, the wind started blowing really bad, and we had to put tape on windows and stuff,” he explained of the episode. He even had to help Big Bird put his nest back together after the storm ripped it to shreds.

Joining Elmo and host Lehrer was Dr. Rosemarie Truglio. Truglio is the vice president of education and research for Sesame Workshop. She explained that the episode was thought of and created long before Sandy or even Hurricane Katrina.

The episode was meant to help parents if their kids should ever face a similar storm.

“‘Sesame Street’ is based on a whole child curriculum, and so we focus not only on the cognitive skills, but social and emotional skills of children,” Truglio said. “We wanted to have a community show like this where we could model for parents tips — so that we could model how you prepare for a storm and how you get through the storm with activities … and keeping your child calm and safe.”

Here is WNYC’s radio show with Elmo: