I once traveled to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania for a photo assignment and later that week found myself wandering a stretch of beaches in northern Zanzibar. It was high noon and the thin turquoise water had receded towards the horizon, evaporating. I stood marveling at the local fishermen who had crossed hundreds of feet of soggy sand under a blazing sun in order to catch dinner for their families—or if they were lucky, a small surplus to sell to a fish market. In recent years, these small-scale fishermen have had to work harder and venture farther to catch fish—a ramification of overfishing by industrial fleets, which has endangered ocean ecosystems and the billions of people who rely on seafood as a key source of protein.
I recently recounted a simplified version of this story to my 5-year-old daughter. We were fishing in the pond behind our house, and it seemed like a good opportunity to broach the subject of “sustainability,” a mouthful of a word for a young child (and one which I didn’t actually use). But I did speak about “waste” and the interconnectedness of all living things. And while fishing itself would not be my pastime of choice, her father introduced it to her and her younger brother, and they were soon hooked—pun intended. Likely because fishing is the ultimate sensory experience for young children—my daughter loves handling the nightcrawlers that we buy from the local liquor store, hidden in small soil-filled containers in the corner fridge next to the Miller Light; her bare toes wiggle in the grass, unbothered by the buzz of insects and the scorch of summer heat as she waits for a bite; she loves feeling the sudden tug on the fishing line followed by the sight of the rippling water and scrimmage underneath; and reeling her catch in with a winning smile, reveling in the way it feels to touch a slimy, glistening bluegill. She knows we always release our catch back into the water. We have no business taking what we don’t intend to use, I have explained, but I stop short of mentioning the slew of environmental challenges confronting our world—biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, ozone layer depletion and global warming, to name a few.
Even though I feel weird about recreational fishing, anything that keeps my kids outside and loving nature I see as a win for the environment. But I find myself grappling with how to explain the world’s ginormous environmental problems to my children (especially my eldest who has the capacity to understand quite a bit) without making them feel guilty or anxious or depressed. How do I talk to them about waste, such as food waste, without causing them to feel shame?
Sometimes an untouched plate of food or a look of disdain at what I’ve dared present as dinner will unnerve me so much I’ll slip and mention that there are children in the world who don’t have enough food to eat; that we should be grateful. I know this causes them to feel shame, and all the contemporary child experts say that is bad mothering, but it’s hard to control. I spent a chunk of years working for the UN World Food Programme, traveling to remote villages in Pakistan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh where we were distributing something called Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based paste, to curtail malnutrition in young children. What I’ve seen in this vast inequitable world through my work—the poverty and the ravages of hunger, the devastating effects of climate change on the Global South—is in stark contrast to our wasteful, excessive, emission-producing American culture.
I realize that my children are young, though, especially my son who is two, but the level of urgency with which we must tend to the climate crisis goes without saying in my circles. After working on ocean conservation and fisheries at the Pew Charitable Trusts, I joined the World Bank where my work is focused on climate change. I just returned from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers conference where the term “apocalypse” was omnipresent. It was actually there in Vermont that I came up with the idea for this essay, when another writer was chatting to me about “honey holes,” a secret go-to location where a fisherman consistently finds an abundance of fish. I thought to myself: what do we do when there are no more honey holes left? The things we have taken for granted for too long.
That’s always the question: how to protect our children while giving them the right amount of knowledge (and paving the pathway for responsible citizenry and environmental stewardship). When I bring my dilemma to AI, I’m told to read eco-conscious books to my children and explore nature with them, two things I already do regularly. It also advises me to teach my kids the importance of the three R's: reduce, reuse, and recycle—easy enough.
But it’s the suggestion “to talk openly about the impact humans have on the environment” that feels most tricky. What comes to my mind is too dark for my daughter’s bright, curious, pure mind—I don’t want to taint her in any way, but when I catch her pulling out sheet after sheet of printer paper to draw her favorite subjects (fairies, rainbows, butterflies and unicorns of course), I have to remind her to use the scrap paper first, and to use both sides; that we have white boards, erasable drawing pads, and magnetic drawing boards. I gently remind her that we can’t use unlimited amounts of paper because it isn’t good for the environment because paper comes from trees (softwood coniferous trees mostly) and they are cut down to make paper (every 2.5 seconds in fact).
A tree falling is sad, especially to a little girl that loves to climb them, but I feel it is psychologically manageable whereas there are images that would be too much for my kids, too destructive in nature that even I struggle with them: ocean trawlers scraping the bottoms of oceans, with dolphins, sea turtles and whales entangled in trawl gear as ‘bycatch’; mountain-sized landfills brimming with discarded plastics, diapers, cans, and other trash that keep piling up encroaching on those living in the slums; glaciers melting causing polar bears and walruses to lose their homes, sea levels to rise and coastal areas to flood and wreak havoc on communities all over.
While my kids cannot live in a bubble, we actively made the decision not to have a television in the house for multiple reasons, and fortunately their exposure to anxiety-provoking news about the environment (or the world at-large) is non-existent. My daughter’s exposure to things outside the home has been carefully curated; for two years, she has been attending a private Reggio Emilia nature school for PreK on 17 acres with a pond and a huge stretch of woods that they wander through daily, doing nature scavenger hunts where they learn about different plant species and plant trees (yes, they literally plant trees). She will be starting Kindergarten soon at a different school and who knows what the other children will be talking about. We live in a gorgeous wild area bordering on West Virginia, where there are plenty of folks who think climate change is a farce. I need her to be equipped with just enough knowledge about the environment, engaged and aware, but not anxious, or worse, I think way worse—pessimistic about the future. That’s why I have to be careful not to communicate too much negativity in these climate chats. For example, instead of saying, 10 million hectares of forest are cut down each year endangering species, causing pollution, flooding and homelessness, experts say I should focus on simple positive actions, like “planting trees can help the environment.”
In motherhood, I continuously feel like I am up against choices that can arguably have a lasting impact on the well-being of my young children—from sleep training to parenting styles to vaccinations to physical environment (rural or city) to schooling choices. On top of that, some of the choices I make have consequences for the environment, not just consumer choices (e.g. cloth vs disposable diapers) but down to the number of children I decide to have. Case in point: there’s a contingent of folks, also known as “anti-natalists,” who argue that the more children you have, the more carbon emissions you’re producing (some have debunked that saying lifestyle choices—such as eating meat can be more damaging to the environment), but there is no doubt that increasing population levels mean increased consumption of resources, and, in effect, greater greenhouse gas emissions.
We do the best we can, but there is always room for improvement. I can’t get rid of my car, because we live in the middle of nowhere but like most families, we don’t run the water while brushing our teeth, we turn off the lights to save energy, bring reusable bags to our local co-op, use reusable water bottles and compost our food. Further to that we are a mostly plant-based household. I’ve been vegetarian for 30 years and my kids simply don’t like the texture of meat, and I don’t push it on them since it’s not sustainable in any case; a plant-based diet does wonders for the ecosystem. According to a multitude of recent studies, such as this new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and various media reports, plant-based diets are linked to better environmental health. The United Nations reports switching to a plant-based diet can reduce an individual’s annual carbon footprint by up to 2.1 tons with a vegan diet or up to 1.5 tons for vegetarians (also fascinating is that there is “an inextricable link between human health and environmental sustainability,” according to the EAT-Lancet Commission Summary report).
I don’t share this science with them because it wouldn’t make sense, but I do say eating vegetables is good for us (and for the planet). But as with anything parenting, what I’ve come to realize I need to show them, not tell them. This is where having our own vegetable garden has been a wonderful tool (and great stress-reducer). It’s nothing revolutionary—we grow cucumbers, bell peppers, watermelon, carrots, radishes, snap peas, squash, tomatoes and, for the first time this year, garlic—which we just harvested after planting the bulbs in October. I’ve been lucky to have a local farmer mentor me, and our small successes thrill all of us—there’s nothing like the joy in growing your own food. The kids pluck the sun sugar tomatoes and pop them in their mouths, crunch on the snap peas, chop the bulbous cucumbers with their Montessori knives and serve it for snack time. They love punching their hands in the soil, playing with the worms and the potato bugs, shoveling dirt here and there, including all over themselves, and squirting water across all of it with our snake-like hose.
I realize I am not going to save the planet with my garden, but on some level, I’m instilling an awareness in my children and continuing to cultivate their love of nature. When children garden, they gain ownership in what they are growing, learn about cycles (of food, of seasons), how they can impact the garden and how the garden impacts them, and begin to feel some sort of gratitude towards Mother Earth, even on a subliminal level, for providing us with all of this beauty and nourishment.
In the end, maybe the best way to talk to your children about sustainability is not actually talking (well at least not at a certain age) but showing. I keep hearing about modeling behavior and that kids often learn best by observing. To lead by example. If I don’t want my kids to leave the water running when they brush their teeth, I must do the same. If I don’t want my kids to waste food, I also have to be conscious of the portion size on my plate (will I finish all of that?) If I want my kids to be kind and curious, I have to be kind and curious, and so forth.
So, you want your kids to care about the environment? The best way to do it is to show them that you care.
