I hadn’t realized she’d been listening, distracted as she was with a bowl of fettuccine under a mountain of parmigiano. My wife and I glanced at each other, in one of those unspoken communications parents have when trying to figure out how to address an “adult” topic in response to a child’s question.
Then my wife explained about the drought and the high winds, and I told our daughter that this was part of climate change making the natural world more dangerous. I added, “And that’s why we have to work so hard to fix this. Because there’s still hope.”
We can try to shield our children from the truth, but kids these days rapidly learn how to access information for themselves. This is good! Information literacy and critical thinking are the keys to success in the 21st century. But by the time children are ensconced in elementary school, parents simply cannot control the flow of news and ideas to their kids. We need to be ready.
I try to walk a fine line between not sugarcoating the news while also not scaring my kids. It’s true that the climate crisis is not like other problems. There may never have been such great disasters looming on the horizon; at the same time, there’s never been a crisis for which we’ve had so many tools to both predict and mitigate the worst consequences.
While Biba says she’s no expert when it comes to talking to children, she thinks kids especially “shouldn’t feel like the burden is on their tiny individual shoulders.”
But despair is not a luxury available to parents. By having children, we’re committed to the long-term view. Throughout my life, I’ve always rolled my eyes at the cliché “think of the children,” so often deployed by politicians who are advocating for their various pet policies. But right now I am thinking of my children. And when I see the worry and empathy in my daughter’s eyes, I know I have to do more than just allay her fears. I have to believe my own message and remember there’s genuine hope — and then get back to work pursuing that systemic change.