Referencing ejs html element in javascript

Question

In my program the client requests a page from the server and then the server sends a page along with a JSON object back to the client. The JSON object has become a HTML element on the client side. The issue now is that I can't reference the ejs JSON html element via the <script> of the program. What I have currently tried to do is nest the ejs JSON html element in a div. I then try to reference the div in script by it's ID. This correctly gets the HTML element but now I try to reference the child of the div (which is the ejs JSON HTML element). I was not too sure which attribute I would use on the div to reference its child. I was thinking it was either children[0] or childNodes[0]. (ADDITIONALLY I AM ONLY REALLY FAMILIAR WITH EJS, I DON'T KNOW THINGS LIKE AJAX YET) Here is my code that might help:

server side:

app.get("/", (req, res)=>
{

var send_item = JSON.stringify({session: req.session.id});  

res.render("index", {send_item});
});

client side:

<div id="session_container" style="display: none;">
     <%=send_item%>
</div>
<script>

    var session_item = document.getElementById("session_container");
    console.log(session_item.childNodes[0]);//THIS RETURNS UNDEFINED (SO DOES NOT WORK AND THE PROBLEM)

</script>