A Quote by Nancy Gibbs
'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.
Related Quotes
I wish I could tell you that the Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street were thanks to my genius, but it really was a lucky break.
In South Africa, where HIV-positive children are often shunned, we have an HIV-positive Muppet to teach children to be friendly with children with HIV. But they use local actors. And it's not always a street. Sometimes it's 'Sesame Plaza,' or 'Sesame Tree.'
Over its 40 years, Muppets on 'Sesame Street' have addressed AIDS, divorce, a parent's deployment overseas, and a death in the family. But the show is addressing incarceration in a way it didn't used to: by bringing the show directly to the kids and families it wants to reach.
Divorce is something I think that children feel particularly hard and what's sad about a lot of divorces, and certainly about my divorce, is that absent fathers who really want to play a part in their children's lives but don't live there, they have a pretty tough time.
When I was going through all the divorce things, that was really hard to discuss, because nobody wants to talk about their failures. Nobody wants to talk about how painful those kinds of things are.
We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of his education.
What I always liked about country music was the stories, the ability to talk about very real things like divorce and drinking and death and jail.
So, I'm on Sesame Street, walking around with all these monsters, Elmo and his buddies, a whole bunch of chickens, a whole bunch of penguins and a number four dancing about. It was just pure joy, simple, ridiculous fun, stupid joy. There's no irony. Sesame Street is just a crazy great place to be.
So, I'm on 'Sesame Street,' walking around with all these monsters, Elmo and his buddies, a whole bunch of chickens, a whole bunch of penguins and a number four dancing about. It was just pure joy, simple, ridiculous fun, stupid joy. There's no irony. 'Sesame Street' is just a crazy great place to be.
A man is born gentle and weak. At death, he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At death, they are withered and dry. Therefore, the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death, and the gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.
It is important to communicate to children about what we are going through. We often speak in half truths. We don't frame the truth or explain our experience in terms they can understand. We need to take time to do this. What has to happen is that more people have to get involved with more children. Focus energy on the child. Children are raising themselves these days in all sorts of strange ways.
People talk about Wall Street greed, but one of the things many people don't understand is that there are a lot of organizations that have been the recipient of largess from the same Wall Street.
It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought - I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.
There are many things children accept as "grown-up things" over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility--for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents' decision to live apart.
With four kids, it's hard to watch anything other than 'Sesame Street.'
Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.
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