SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : Letters to moms and dads worldwide are made with a lens, sent from the heart

Just in time for Mother’s Day, Nickelodeon offers up U to U: Letters to Mom and Dad.

Producers of the series provided camcorders to kids in 25 countries for them to write “video letters” to their parents. The results are sure to be eye-openers for children and adults watching the Nick series here.

“Some were very candid,” says Bob Altman, producer of “Letters to Mom and Dad.” “We really wanted them to tell us how they see and feel about their parents. It’s a pretty interesting process and it promised to empower kids.”

The process began last summer, as 100 world participants wrote letters. Twenty-five of them were selected to put those letters--or their own interpretations thereof--onto tape.

“We found that kids all over share the same feelings about various topics, regardless of where they’re from,” Altman notes.

The stories, he says, run the gamut: “We have a letter from a Moroccan girl who thanks her parents to allow her to go to school, since she lives where most girls don’t go to school, but her parents can afford it. We have one from a Russian boy whose father is an elephant trainer and, at 13, he’s already a performer, and in the letter he says he’s already surpassing his dad and will probably be more successful.”

There’s another of a Scottish girl who thanks her mother, a farmer, for being fun. On the video the mother is seen teaching a sheep to jump on its hind legs and a donkey to roll over.

Chinese siblings carefully thank their father, but say they wish they saw him more, and when they do see him, they wish he wouldn’t yell so much.

Issues of culture play a role as a Native American boy must leap from life on his reservation to his predominantly white school. The boy and his father build a dream catcher--a hanging web--and fall asleep hoping for good dreams to be caught in it.

Altman says that what emerged from the letters is that “kids can really deal with really gritty issues, abandonment and divorce, and yet the stories are still inspirational.”

Between the letters, producers insert snippets of kids talking about their parents. One boy expresses a frustration with his parents’ dislike of his friends. Another says that when his friends make fun of how short his mother is--and he joins in--he feels badly later.

The best part about the show, Altman says, is that with home video, “kids have the ability to produce, write and direct TV in a way that they have total control. It personalizes in a way that documentary never can, and that would be cost-prohibitive anyway, to go to as many countries as we’ve reached this way. But this gets adults out of the loop. We never change what they write, merely edit, but they get the power to speak their minds.”

“U to U: Letters to Mom and Dad” airs Sunday at 7:30 p.m. on Nickelodeon. For ages 6 and up.

More Family Shows

For those who don’t already have the video, the Disney Channel airs Walt Disney Pictures’ 31st full-length animated feature, 1992’s Aladdin (Sunday 7 p.m.; Monday 4 a.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. and 9 p.m.). For ages 2 and up.

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Whitney Houston hosts Nickelodeon’s Eighth Annual Kids’ Choice Awards (Saturday 5 and 8 p.m. Nickelodeon), which airs live from Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar. Brandy, The Glamour Girls and The Melodics, and All-4-One are scheduled to perform. Tatyana Ali, Michael Cade, Lacey Chabert, Immature, Tia and Tamera Mowry, Michael Fishman, Ben Savage, Taran Noah Smith, Malcolm Jamal Warner and Rider Strong are scheduled presenters. Four new categories are introduced this year: favorite cartoon, favorite book, favorite animal star and favorite video game. For ages 4 and up.