Growing up Sesame Street was huge in my house. Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster you name it I had every toy they came out with it in my toy box, these days it's not much different as my daughter has grown to love the characters I too grew up watching. Every morning at 10 am you can find me with my daughter in my lap in front of the TV watching Sesame Street. So it isn't that surprising I know all the characters and follow the show pretty closely.
One of the things I love the most about Sesame Street is how they do such a great job tackling issues that are difficult to talk about with children. I really loved the episodes they did on Hurricane Sandy and divorce, but today to my surprise Sesame Street was in the news once again for tackling another difficult topic, children of incarcerated parents.
Sesame Street has created a new muppet named Alex, who's father is in jail. You can watch the video here on the Huffington Post but it pretty much is a clip of a muppet named Alex who is depressed because he can't build cars with the other kids and their dads because his father is in jail. Maybe I'm being overly critical but I find the whole thing to be a bit disturbing. Sesame Street's target audience is about 2-5 years old as a parent this is not something I want to have a discussion about with my 2 year old yet. I don't want my daughter to see this, I don't want her to know about jail or incarceration at 2 years old. I understand that there are unfortunately families that have a parent who is incarcerated but is it really something all kids need to hear about? I don't think so.
I also don't think it's very appropriate topic for toddlers to be discussing, whats even more appalling is that this is the same show that refused to air a segment that Katy Perry did a few years ago because parents were complaining about how low cut her dress was.What's next an episode about drugs? I just don't understand what the producers were thinking, I feel like the producers really made a poor decision with this episode and we will not be watching.
Photo Credit: Google Images
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