Linda Ellerbee, As Always, Treats Kids Like Adults

Looking for family specials keyed to the 4th of July weekend? One of the best is the latest Nick News with Linda Ellerbee special on Nickelodeon (9 p.m. ET Sunday), titled Coming Home: When Parents Return from War. It explains a lot. It speaks clearly and cleverly. It never condescends.

Ellerbee has been taking that approach for a long time. First on NBC in the 1970s and early 1980s, presiding over Weekend and NBC News Overnight with equal helpings of insight and attitude. Then, in 1986, presenting one of TV's best documentary series with ABC's Our World. (Why isn't the History channel repeating this?) And by 1992, when talking plainly to adults was becoming unfashionable on prime-time TV, Ellerbee went to cable, and Nickelodeon, and kids.

For more than 15 years now, she's presented Nick News with Linda Ellerbee, tackling every serious missue you can imagine, and many playful ones, too. Sunday's edition about the war isn't her first on the topic. It isn't even her first war, because Nick News was there to talk about kids' perceptions and fears during the first Gulf War. She was there, too, right after 9/11, when young viewers (and, arguably, lots of older ones) needed her most.

So for Sunday's special, Coming Home: When Parents Return from War, Ellerbee presents herself -- and has earned the right to do so -- as a comfy TV friend, wearing jeans, orange high-top sneakers, and a welcoming smile.

This time, instead of talking to a small collection of kids, she lets kids, and their parents, speak for themselves. About what it's like to worry whether your mom or dad is coming home from battle. What happens if they do, including such sensitive topics as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and what happens when, as one kids says, dad is both "a hero and a jerk."

And despite the title, Coming Home: When Parents Return from War also covers when happens if they don't. It's a superb half-hour show, a stimulating start for discussion, and I can't imagine any family touched by the military not being touched by this program in turn.

"Most of you," Ellerbee tells her young viewers at the end, "have far more courage than you ever dreamed possible." Plain speaking, quiet reassurance, acknowledgment of young people's concerns -- Linda Ellerbee is great at all of them. Fred Rogers would be proud. And, in her own comfy shoes, she looks no less at ease than Rogers always did.