How's this for a way to gain insights into America's children: Put a video camera in their hands, and watch what happens.

	Miashanti Smith of Duquesne.
	Elif Yazici of Mt. Lebanon.
	Rebecca Elias of Munhall. 'My Life as a Child' When: 7 p.m. Monday, TLC

Cable network TLC did just that, giving cameras to 20 children ages 7 to 12 so they could each chronicle "My Life as a Child" (7 p.m. Monday). Three Western Pennsylvania pre-teens were among those selected to create video diaries for the series.

Based on a British TV program with a similar format, the six episodes of "My Life as a Child" are each organized around a theme and include the stories of three or four children.

Elif Yazici of Mt. Lebanon is featured in the "American Dream" episode (airing March 12). Elif, a sixth-grader at Andrew Mellon Middle School, immigrated to America from Turkey three years ago with her family. She wanted to use the camera producers provided to her to tell her story and explain her background.

"I told about me being a Muslim," she said. "My friends didn't know anything about them and thought Muslims were bad people. ... I'm a normal American child. That was my big message in my story."

In "Different From You" (March 19), 12-year-old Miashanti Smith of Duquesne chronicles her life as a female linebacker for the McKeesport Little Tigers.

Although her male counterparts were initially wary of a girl in their midst, Miashanti said "they loved the camera."

Munhall's Rebecca Elias, 11, considers being adopted by her stepfather in "Little Women" (April 2). She hasn't seen her birth father since she was 3 and found it easier to talk about that to the camera than with her mom.

"There were some things I was actually surprised that I learned about her and some of her feelings," said her mother, Diana Todd.

The BBC, which produced the program with TLC, put out a casting call for children to participate in the project. Miashanti and Rebecca both attend Propel Charter School in Homestead and were recruited there.

Elif heard about the show through The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh.

Series producer Amy Kohn said a producer worked with each child and taught them how to use the video camera, which the children were allowed to keep when the project, filmed last year, ended.

"We wanted to get a sense of what was important to them, those sorts of activities and things that were going on in their lives," Kohn said at a TLC press conference in January in Pasadena, Calif. "We taught them how to do video diaries, so they would talk to the camera about things that were going on in their lives and how they felt about them."

Every week the kids would send tapes back to producers -- Rebecca said she used at least 50 tapes during the production -- who would watch them to get a sense of what was important to each child.

"We would help them by sending them questions that they would then answer on their own in their rooms or with their parents," Kohn said. "Basically, they were the directors of the film."

Rebecca said her family got used to the camera's presence eventually, but, she said, "My mom didn't want me filming her without her makeup on and some of my siblings hid from the camera."

When Rebecca was playing softball or Miashanti was playing on the football field, the kids would hand the camera over to one of their parents, whom Kohn called, "amazing production assistants."

"Becca was much better with the camera than I was," her mom said. "I would forget it was on, especially at a softball game and all you can hear is me screaming."

In an era when user-generated content has flooded Internet sites like YouTube, "My Life as a Child" is a bridge between old and new media formats. It also was born in a culture that's become accustomed to reality TV shows that star regular people.

"Generationally, people are much more comfortable today talking about their lives in the kind of way that we were interested in, sharing their feelings," Kohn said. "These children, when I talk to them, I feel like I'm talking to college kids instead of 7- to 11-year-olds. They have a great awareness of what's going on around them."