Sesame Street will be introducing a new character to their television show that will bring light to autism.<\/p>\n
The show will be welcoming Julia, a muppet with autism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big discussion right at the start was, \u2018How do we do this? How do we talk about autism?\u2019\u201d Sesame Street writer Christine Ferraro told the CBS News show 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tricky because autism is not one thing, because it is different for every single person who has autism.\u201d<\/p>\n
About one in 68 children have been identified with autism spectrum disorder in the United States.<\/p>\n
Julia will display some of the common characteristics of autism which will start to appear in her debut episode.<\/p>\n
When she is introduced to Big Bird, she ignores him which makes Big Bird believe that she didn\u2019t like him. However, the other muppets inform him that \u201cshe does things just a little differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julia also starts jumping up and down out of excitement when the muppets play tag which Ferraro said is \u201ca typical sign of autism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julia\u2019s puppeteer, Stacey Gordon, is also the mother of an autistic son.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad my son\u2019s friends been exposed to his behaviours through something that they had seen on TV before they experienced them in the classroom, they might not have been frightened,\u201d she told 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might not have been worried when he cried. They would have known that he plays in a different way, and that that\u2019s OK,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n
Julia is already included in the digital and print storybooks. She has been a character in them since late 2015, but this is her first television appearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love her to be not Julia, the kid on Sesame Street who has autism,\u201d she said. \u201cI would like her to be just Julia,\u201d Ferraro said.<\/p>\n
Julia will debut on Sesame Street in April on channels PBS and HBO.<\/p>\n
Laina Yost<\/strong> Sesame Street will be introducing a new character to their television show that will bring light to autism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":14919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1421,1422,1870,2005,1505,1077],"class_list":["post-14931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-ae","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-autism","tag-laina-yost","tag-sesame-street","tag-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Julia.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3SP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15599,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14931\/revisions\/15599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nManaging Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"