Teach Your Children Well
by Chris Tilley
10. Teach Your Children Well
With your help, children can develop a strong and healthy sense of what’s right and what’s wrong for the earth. Satisfy their natural curiosity about the world by teaching them about where food comes, or how energy works, and why taking care of our home is important.
10 Kids Version
Kids, Teach Your Parents and Teachers Weller
Our children are our future and the reason that we must save the planet. Personally I have a 4 year old and a 6 year old with a current life expectancy of 80 they will probably be alive in 2080. What is the world going to look like if we do nothing? Drought? Flooding? Food Shortages? Sea Level Rise? Extinction? Heat Waves? Disease? These are all possibilities according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
I am a big believer in our children’s ability to understand and empathize. My two love going for walks and there are lots of trails around to go on. We see all sorts of critters and they ask all sorts of questions. Sometimes I don’t know the answer and I tell them that and we can look it up on the internet when we get home. This last weekend we went to watch spawning salmon in one of the local creeks. We talked about the salmon life cycle, there was a very nice display in a interpretive center, and what would happen if the water, the park wasn’t there or polluted.
Listen to your children. They know more than you think. In this case my son had been on a field trip to the see the salmon spawning during the week. So I had him explain what was going on. He remembered quite a bit. They also have learned to ask question and make comments. Some of them can be quite enlightening like the ‘Trees are part of our community’ from ‘What does planting one tree do?’. In some cases I don’t know the answer in which case we turn to Wikipedia.
We also talk about where our garbage goes and what happens to the recycling, what can go in it and what it gets turned into. Magic School Bus Holiday Special has an excellent episode on recycling.(source) Some of there other favorite environmental material, ‘The Lorax’ by Dr Seuss. Thank you Laura for reminding me of this book. I remember reading it as a child myself and my kids love it. ‘Blue White Planet’ by Raffi is a very nice song to inspire care for the planet.
The biggest influence is in seeing what you do. If you recycle and they see you attaching value and taking the time to recycle, they will to. If you put a water bottle in there lunch that will become normal if you give them a stainless steel one that will become the norm. It when they start reminding you or trying to teach their younger siblings.
I have written this from the point of view of my kids who are 4 and 6. I believe that talking and listening is a universal truth in dealing with kids I would like to invite all parents out there to comment below on what has worked for you. Kids, teens, adults what has worked for you, who had the most influence on you and why?