Sesame Street, the venerable face of The Sesame Workshop, doesn't introduce new major characters to the neighborhood that often. Perhaps that's why it's taken many, many years since autism became a hot topic in the public mind for Sesame to develop an autistic character. And with this addition, life for many of us oldest Sesame Street fans comes full circle.
The new character's name is Julia, and she is a preschool girl who spends time playing with Elmo, Abby Cadabby and Grover.
The aim of the campaign is laudable, although the campaign's advisors are a mixed bag of various stakeholders who frequently disagree about autism: autistic people, parents of autistic children, and "people who serve the autism community."
The goal of the "See Amazing" initative, according to Sesame Street, is to de-stigmatize autism. It looks promising, and perhaps appropriately, those advisors sure represent the full spectrum. One of their partners is the not-at-all autistic-friendly Autism Speaks. Another partner is the Autism Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN). ASAN said the following in its news release about the initiative:
Over the past year, ASAN has worked closely with Sesame Workshop to ensure that the initiative and its materials are positive, respectful, and promote real understanding and acceptance of autistic people. The See Amazing initiative represents an important step forward in public conversations aimed at autism, one focused on celebrating all kinds of minds.
That's a very promising development.
Also promising is that an animation studio for young autistic adults helped to edit the videos for the campaign. Here's one about an autistic boy named Thomas:
The target group for the initiative is "communities with children ages 2 to 5," according to a Sesame Workshop media statement. The Sesame folk do get to the heart of what autistic people really need: understanding. They say:
While the diagnosis is common, public understanding of autism is not. The lack of understanding around the condition contributes to discrimination, verbal abuse, even physical violence. A recent study reveals that children with autism are five times more likely to be bullied than their peers—treatment no child should endure. While the differences between people with autism and their peers may seem significant, children share something far more important: unique qualities and talents that make the world an interesting place.
Yes.
A review of some of the materials brings out that understanding. The digital storybook "We Are Amazing, 1, 2, 3!," shows how Julia and Elmo play with the same toys, but in different ways. Elmo's approach to toys is typical: He stacks blocks, he rolls cars on the ground. But Julia? She does what a lot of autistic children do: She seeks to make patterns, like lining up the blocks, and she searches for soothing, repetitive motion and sound, like spinning the wheels on the car. Elmo explains to another friend, Abby, why Julia doesn't respond right away to her overtures and why Julia's silence isn't meant to communicate dislike.
And in a complete 180-degree about-face from our early experiences with how people reacted to autistic children, Julia flaps ... and it is OK.
Yes.
Some people might find all of Julia's behaviors too stereotyped and not individualized enough. But she represents just one autistic child. And in fact, not one behavior she exhibits in that story is unfamiliar to our family. Like our family has always done, Julia's friends in the story accept her for who she is and don't try to make her someone she is not.
Sesame Street and I are almost exactly the same age. I grew up learning its lessons of inclusion, acceptance, seeing and appreciating differences and understanding that people's fears, quirks, anxieties, imaginary friends and needs were variable, changeable and never, ever a deal-breaker for treating each other well.
I like to think that I still apply what I learned today, that those lessons helped me understand and accept people who aren't like me and the autistic people in my life as readily as I do. And now, I'm hoping that Sesame's doing the same--this time quite specifically for autistic people--with a new generation of children who have the good fortune to visit the neighborhood, too.
