How do you tell a kid what’s coming? Do you lie to them? Do you reveal the truth in bits and pieces? Aaron came to the conclusion that telling his kid about climate change would have to mean recommitting himself to fighting it.
Taking action is one of the more effective ways to address climate anxiety, many activists and experts say. And formulating action plans is one way parents can prepare their children for the climate crisis, Eleanor Cummins suggests in a piece published this morning, which surveyed a number of books that have come out in recent years about climate change, education, and parenting.
Simply understanding the basics of climate change, Eleanor wrote, probably isn’t sufficient at this point. Teaching kids about emissions and calling it a day means “burdening them with science in a way that’s fatalistic,” Mary DeMocker, author of The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution, told Eleanor. And “while kids will be affected by climate change for the rest of their lives, they can’t vote or, in most cases, drive themselves to climate rallies.”
Eleanor also looked at case studies of successful climate education, like one that journalist Katie Worth wrote about in her recent book Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America. A sixth grade teacher taught climate change gradually—covering the basics of the carbon cycle in a few different months, then spending a whole month on “solutions projects.” No one expects sixth graders to solve climate change, of course. But exposing them to the existential threat of climate change gradually, and helping them think about next steps, can keep them from being overwhelmed by what they’ve learned while preparing them for the future.
As with Regunberg’s piece, Eleanor’s latest ultimately shows how talking to kids about climate change can make all of us—parents and nonparents—better at thinking about the crisis. “What black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking are you employing?” Eleanor imagines parents or teachers asking themselves in preparation to talk to kids. “Where is fatalism about the future holding you back? What more can you be doing to build community?”
Putting our fears in a mental closet may help us cope on occasion, but it won’t help fuel the widespread social and political change needed to avert climate catastrophe. Kids force us to take those fears out of the closet and hold them up to the light—prodding us to find a better coping mechanism than emotional denial.
There’s something a bit hopeful about that: The more that adults act to keep kids from being overwhelmed by the reality of climate change, the better chance our kids will live in a less overwhelming reality.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor
