‘Sesame Street’ puppeteer and HP team up to help neurodivergent children

A partnership between a “Sesame Street” puppeteer and HP Print Pals is aiming to help neurodivergent children learn to express themselves and their feelings.

HP Print Pals is a program designed in partnership with Stacey Gordon from Puppet Pie, a professional puppeteer who provided design and program input with an eye for helping neurodivergent kids bring what’s inside, out.

The HP Print Pals program provides printouts of different puppet designs, along with features that make those puppets completely customizable.

Gordon, who also plays the first “Sesame Street” character with autism named Julia, joined “Arizona Horizon” to share details of the program.

“There’s so few places where anybody can be themselves and not worry about how they’re expressing themselves,” Gordon said. “One in five kids worldwide is neurodivergent, whether it’s autism, ADHD, mental health challenges, something like that. So there’s more people that are neurodivergent than I think ever getting diagnosed.”

Gordon said that just doing arts and crafts can help people emotionally regulate. 73% of kids who are neurodivergent report challenges expressing and sharing their emotions.

HP came to Gordon and asked to collaborate on a project for kids to make puppets at home because most kids don’t have a puppet lying around that’s going to express how they feel. Gordon created a few puppet bases to allow neurodivergent children to create a puppet and customize it to whatever they want and however they feel.

Gordon said that the reaction she’s gotten to Print Pals has been “absolutely amazing.”

“Honestly, the biggest and best reaction that I’m getting is from the neurodivergent community,” Gordon said. “Seeing them regulate, process and figure out how they want to express themselves… getting to see that firsthand was probably the biggest impact for me.”

If you’d like to download the puppets, please click here.