Kids and Climate

What the...?

There's nothing like being caught off guard when your 7-year-old starts asking you questions about climate change.  What do you do?  How do you answer?  What should you say?

The way to respond depends on the developmental level of the child.  The short answer is probably best in all cases.  It can be a good idea to say that the climate is a way of talking about weather and that that is changing around the world and that grown-ups are working on ways to respond to the changes.  Then move on.

You may also want to consider where the question is coming from.  Did the child hear about the subject at school, or from a friend, or did he pick it up from television or radio news?  It's a good idea to remember that the newsmedia in general are not filtering their content to make sure it's age-appropriate for your child.  It may be worthwhile to go on a bit of a media diet.

Age Appropriate Guidelines

It's also time to start to consider how you are preparing your child to interact with the world around them.  To help them understand that they are part of the world, rather than set them up in opposition to it, it's best to start young instilling a love of being outdoors in a natural setting.  This doesn't have to be didactic or pedantic.  It's just a matter of making time for having fun outside.

As they get a bit older, children will be more ready to take action in their world and will take great pleasure in doing things right, like recycling, setting up a compost bin, or learning more about local plants and animals.

Once they reach adolescence, they are more prepared to take their action outside their family and into the larger world, perhaps approaching local businesses about a better take-out container option or asking their school district to switch to integrated pest management and non-toxic cleaning products.

The National Wildlife Federation has a great website on this topic.  The main page is www.climateclassroom.org.  It also has a wealth of links to clear and concise recommendations for different age levels, especially on this summary page.  And it has suggestions for how to make the single biggest difference in your child's relationship to the world, with their Green Hour program.

To look back at the antecedents to this, here's a link to an article written in the early 90s by David Sobel called "Beyond Ecophobia."  It appeared originally in Orion Magazine and is maintained in the online archive of Yes! Magazine (both also great sources).  As he says, "If we want children to flourish... then let us allow them to love the Earth before we ask them to save it."

in The Williamsport Guardian last year, reviewing the basics of the need for frequent, spontaneous, unstructured, self-directed play with natural materials out of doors and how the concept of nature preschools can fit into this.

Educate Yourself

Another way to approach this might be to acknowledge that you yourself have more to learn about the topic.  There are many ways to find out more.  Websites like www.realclimate.org can satisfy your technical questions, but for bigger picture issues such as how climate and society and politics interact and why it's so difficult to grasp psychologically, there are other resources.  The Northwest Earth Institute has a 4-session small group discussion course called "Global Warming:  Changing CO2urse" which addresses many of these issues, along with steps to take as an individual or family to respond productively to the problem.  This course is available for small groups to take locally -- if you would like to run one at your church or school, please contact us and we can help you set it up.  The national Focus the Nation program taking place on college campuses around the country on January 31st, 2008 is offering a teach-in on solutions to climate change.  Bucknell University locally has organized events throughout the day, all of which are open to the public.  It's another way to learn a bit more and find out how you can be part of the solution.  Local Action also has available another small-group discussion course centered on a workbook called The Low Carbon Diet.  Unlike the Northwest Earth Institute book, it spends less time on theory and psychology and more time on practical suggestions.  For this one as well, just let us know and we can help you get set up to run a course with a group of friends or neighbors.

Also, stay tuned for a LAN Roundtable program on WKOK 1070 Newsradio about Kids and Climate with a panel including a scientist, a therapist, and an educational psychologist (and disaster prepared-ness expert).  Date to be determined.  If you'd like to be notified, please contact us at info@LocalActionPA.org.

Other Resources:

Books:

Last Child in the Woods:  Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv

Also see our page of children's book recommendations.

For younger children (up to around 7), books like those by Lynne Cherry, such as The Sea, the Storm and the Mangrove Tangle, can give kids a sense of ecology and an understanding of balanced systems.  They also model detailed examination and beautiful drawings of plants and animals.

For elementary age children, books with more of a message like The Lorax or Dinosaurs Help Out can give them a sense of basic behaviors and model how to make a difference in your own life.

For adolescents (12 and up), books like I Can Save the Earth, offer a more detailed and nuanced presentation of a variety of issue areas, like air quality, water quality and land use, and also point out ways kids can make a difference in their own community.

Magazines:

Green Teacher can be a resource for parents or professional educators.

Readymade offers a hip angle on recycling and repurposing the stuff of our society and can make it more alluring to teens.

Orion has a resource issue called Beyond Ecophobia.  LAN has a copy available for borrowing.

Websites:

These may not be particularly relevant or developmentally appropriate for the youngest kids.  If you do find yourself looking for just the right website, consider that you may be the one you're looking for.  If you can find out more, you will be more comfortable responding to your children with the right amount of information for them.  A single sentence may be all it takes, before they are ready to switch gears and go play.  So consider again sites like realclimate.org or any of these sites for older kids; they may be good entrees for you as a parent.

Some sites have content for both the 7-11 age range and older:

• Global Warming Kids   (Remember that at this age, getting outside may still be the best direction to move in, but if you want a site that goes bloop and bleep and has games for kids on eco themes, this is a global compendium.)
• TIME for Kids (This site has quite a few resources to draw on but isn't necessarily fully up to date and has some dead links.  In particular, the Eco-friendly Househunt is still on the site, but several links to it are broken.
• Scholastic (Another site with sound effects for every click and screen change... but it does include 100 ways to green your actions presented in a manageable and non-threatening format, everything from finding new uses for greeting cards to installing rain barrels at your house.)
  

For older children, here are a few general information sites about climate change:

• Explain That Stuff
  
• Kids vs Global Warming (This one was actually created by an 8th grader)
  

In addition to these, there are a wealth of sites like www.storyofstuff.org, www.themeatrix.com, and www.storewars.org which are great entrees to particular aspects of our carbon-intensive culture.  Working as they do with animation and parodies of pop culture, they may also appeal to teens.