''I got my leg blown off,'' he said. ''All I was thinking about was, 'Am I going to be able to dance with my daughter or play soccer with my son?'''

Back home, Salau said he worked quickly to re-establish a physical closeness with his children, which sometimes can be difficult for families. ''Hugging still means everything it did before you were hurt,'' Salau says.

Knell said Sesame Street is trying to model behavior and provide the vocabulary for parents who need extra help. ''In many cases, Mommy and Daddy or caregivers may not have the tools necessary to deal with these very tough-to-teach issues,'' Knell said.

Psychiatry professor Stephen Cozza of Uniformed Services University, which trains military doctors, said a parent's injury or emotional problem is often ''a big white elephant in the room that nobody's talking about.''

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Lammey and his wife, Rose, can relate to that. Michael was badly burned in an explosion while serving in Guam last year.

The burns almost killed him and left him disfigured. Rose said she and her husband initially had a lot of trouble discussing what happened with the couple's three young daughters.

''We didn't know how to handle that sensitive issue. We just put it aside for a little bit until we could sit down as a family and talk it out,'' Rose said in a telephone interview from San Antonio, where her husband is still receiving treatment.

On the other hand, there can be a tendency to give young children more information than they can handle, said Cozza, who also is an adviser to Sesame Street.

He said the new DVD seeks to strike the right balance by showing families how to talk openly about the changed situation they face without frightening young viewers.

While the program doesn't directly address emotional disorders faced by an estimated 20 percent of returning veterans, the DVD can help frame family conversations around that too, Cozza said.

Leslye Arsht, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, said Sesame Street is doing something that isn't easy for the military to tackle alone.

''There is no more credible voice for 3- to 5-year-olds than the voices of Elmo ... and parents trust him too.'' Arsht said.

Army Maj. David Rozelle agreed. An amputee who spends time counseling others, Rozelle was injured in Iraq before becoming a parent to two young children.

''These little people our kids trust so much can explain limb loss and help kids cope,'' he said. ''We don't do it very well ourselves.''