Page 6 - August Bliss Planet Health & Wellness Lifestyle Magazine

, author of The Parents’ Guide to Climate

Revolution

Every parent wants to raise healthy,

happy kids. We also want children to One way to lighten young hearts is to
learn to advocate for themselves, both shield them from TV, especially news,
on the playground and in the global with its searing, rapid-fire images.
village. In our quest to get it “right,” When children encounter real-life
many parents join the push for early sorrows, such as the clearcutting of a
reading and skill-building while beloved forest, parents
simultaneously becoming over- can validate their grief
involved and over-protective, all of and outrage, reminding

which often does little more than them that many adults
stress everybody out. The following are working to protect
tips help families relax and, forests. By broadcasting
paradoxically, empower kids to “We’ll take care of you”
become world-changers. messages, parents free
Let them be kids:At bedtime one children to learn about
night, my four-year-old nephew said and love the world at a

to his mom, “I don’t want to be alive healthy, childlike pace.
anymore. The Earth will die, and I Empower them: Child-
don’t want to be here when led play fuels young
everything’s dead.” Like many imaginations and sense
children, he’d absorbed our culture’s of agency in their
steady dirge about drowning polar world. That requires
bears and deadly superstorms. His ample down time, adult
mother reassured him, but it non-interference, and
reminded me that society, with its the occasional magic

“save-the-Earth!” message on wand. Even one box of
everything from kids’ games to sidewalk chalk on an
breakfast cereals, can inadvertently apartment balcony can
burden young minds and hearts. provide endless fun,
Young children need to know adults especially if parents
are in charge and things will be okay. don’t stop kids from
As one 14-year-old testified to our city grinding chalk into

council while requesting climate “potions.” Kids benefit
action, “What kids want most is from imagining
freedom from fear.” sandcastles,