San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Annie Nakao

I gave the young man a taste of his own medicine -- an unblinking stare, until he got the message and stopped.

Maybe I did that because I was remembering the roomful of puppets I'd just "met" a few days before on the Peninsula. They were life-size -- the height of, say, a third-grader -- dressed in kid clothes, with kid names. One was in a wheelchair, wearing a blue helmet.

"There's 'Mark' with his cruiser -- the kids just love him," said Diane Gulyas of Parents Helping Parents (www.php.com), the Santa Clara nonprofit that runs a local branch of Kids on the Block. It's a nationwide program that teaches kids about disabilities -- using a troupe of puppets that act and dress like children. Maybe if that freckle-faced kid had met "Mark" with his cruiser when he was younger, he wouldn't have stared.

In my elementary school, we had only one kid, Charlene, who used crutches -- it was the 1950s and polio hadn't been beaten yet. That must seem like the Stone Age, with today's mainstreaming of many more special-needs youngsters into classrooms. One of every dozen American children and teens, or 5.2 million youngsters, has a physical or mental disability, the 2000 census reported. But that doesn't mean you stop influencing human nature.

"We had a school call and tell us the kids don't want to talk to this little boy because they're afraid they might catch what he has," said Carol Gallegos, coordinator of the Kids on the Block program in Santa Clara. "They need to understand that the child sitting beside them in a wheelchair can be a friend or someone to play with." .

THE PUPPETS ARE Gallegos' secret weapon. With their pigtails and braids, T- shirts and jeans, they have an appeal that engages kids immediately. The puppets come in all colors. And differences. Some are physically disabled -- like Mark. "Valerie" has leg braces. "Renaldo" is blind and has a white cane.

Others had no visible disability -- they had AIDS or were autistic or learning disabled. "Anna," for example, has ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. When she exclaims, "There's so much stuff going on that I don't want to miss anything!" kids really relate.

The ideal audience age is about 8, because the puppets are scaled to their size. Since the shows are done only before small groups, the connection is immediate.

"It's like magic for the kids," said puppeteer Nandini Minocha of Santa Clara. "They just totally love it."

And they ask questions. The kind kids naturally ask. "How do you go to the bathroom? How come you wear shoes? How do you play?"

Minocha is one of the program's puppeteers. Dressed in black in the traditional Japanese bunraku fashion, the puppeteers melt into the background while skillfully manipulating the puppets in a variety of skits, which also deal with issues like fire safety. .

PARENTS HELPING PARENTS just got a windfall when the Junior League of Palo Alto-Mid-Peninsula donated $23,000 worth of puppets. It's doubled the number of puppets the program has -- meaning more shows can be performed, if enough volunteer puppeteers are found.

For Minocha, whose 8-year-old son is autistic, volunteering is a labor of love.

"Children with autism find it very hard to be accepted by other children," said Minocha. "So I felt it's very important to have the means of getting children and the rest of the world to accept children with disabilities. Then they perform at their best. It makes them happy."

E-mail Annie Nakao at anakao@sfchronicle.com.

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