You Can Ask Helps Children Cope With Difficult Times

Encouraging children and adults to work together to handle stress and fear.

Elmo with firefighters (You Can Ask)

In the wake of September 11, 2001, children everywhere experienced fear, stress, and shock from the day's tragic events. Many were personally impacted, while countless others absorbed upsetting media coverage and repeated viewings of the events with no mediation. Sesame Workshop saw that there was a pressing need for a swift response that would help process their emotions.

To plan this response, the Workshop partnered with Project Liberty, a special project set up through the New York State Office of Mental Health to help children and families in the tri-state area who were impacted by the events of September 11.

The result is You Can Ask, a project offering video and print content to parents and caregivers as they guide their children through stressful situations.

Addressing a broad unmet need

When Sesame Workshop and Project Liberty members gathered to discuss how they could best help children, the advisory panel suggested that there was a broader unmet need than just a response to September 11. The panel members explained that children -- particularly three- to eight-year-olds -- did not have access to many resources helping them cope with stressful situations in general. So the project took on a wider scope: It would help children to express their feelings, encourage communication, help build emotional strength and resilience, and help adults understand what children are feeling during times of loss and fear.

Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop's vice president of outreach and educational practices, explains that the advisory panel was also very productive for another reason.

"The director of FEMA [at the time] was in the audience at the advisory, and when we said that video has the most impact for us in our outreach projects, he stood up and added onto the funding on the spot!"

Conducting research to inform the project's goals

Betancourt and her team of researchers took the advisory panel's recommendations and conducted further research to define the needs of children, parents, and service providers. They held formative research focus groups with parents of children aged three to five and six to eight in three language groups: English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese.

"We found in our research that it is rarely acknowledged how young kids really experience stressful situations, or even what a stressful situation might be. For young kids, it can be anything from losing a favorite object to moving to changing a childcare provider," Betancourt says.

Based on these findings, the group began shaping resources that would help families increase dialogue. "Having the dialogue between children and caregivers is very important," explains Betancourt. "We found that in certain cultures that dialogue about feelings was not as typical."

So You Can Ask's central message is one of communication. The project addresses a broad range of issues children commonly face – loss, fear, bullying, and relating to others -- and offer materials that would help families talk through tough times in an age-appropriate way. It shows parents that no matter what sort of problem a child is experiencing, they can help ease a worried child's mind. You Can Ask outlines the ways adults can achieve this goal, and offers support and advice for talking about stressful topics with three- to eight-year-old children. It also offers ideas for helping children build social and emotional skills and cope with difficult times.

The project also helps parents and caregivers identify why their child becomes stressed, and explains that a parent's stress will impact a child. Parents and caregivers must take care of themselves first, says Betancourt, before they can address their child's feelings in a productive way.

You Can Ask has become a valuable resource for families, mental health specialists, and other service providers and research shows that it is effective.

"Parents and caregivers can know ahead of time that something as simple as changing a routine can be stressful for a child," Betancourt says.