Climate Action 92 – Talk Climate Change With Your Kids

Education and Climate Information

The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024

We are not talking to our children enough about the biggest threat to their future. Clearly a difficult conversation. But because children will be impacted by the most serious effects of climate change AND will have to take action as they grow older, it is in everyone’s interest to engage thoughtfully but with urgency in talking about climate change with our kids.

Climate change is a complex topic and a parent’s perception may lead to a conclusion that their children are not aware of nor concerned about climate change. Yet today’s youth, if they are in the least perceptive and social media savvy, cannot escape coverage of climate change-related environmental issues and events and the insanely mixed messages about climate change they receive through the media.

Just like every important social issues, they will form an opinion and perception with or without you. It is important to address climate change for many reasons, but mainly for their mental health. Messaging can be scary and depressing, and if they are to find hope and take action as they become adults, they must be given an honest and balanced view of the causes and potential impacts of climate change, and what they (and their parents and other adults) can and are going to do to address it.

And the dialogue goes both ways. Often it is the kids coming back from school that are educating the parents and consequently raising the concern of the whole family and motivating action. In fact, it turns out that children are positively influencing their family members that either are indifferent to or actively opposed to accepting the facts of climate change. This is called the pass-through effect.

In a study published in 2019, researchers found that middle school-aged children were able to build climate change concern among their parents based on an educational intervention. It turns out that teaching children about climate change raises concerns about the issue with parents. Controlling for the demographics, fathers and conservative parents showed the biggest shift in the view point. And the research showed that daughters had the biggest effect on their parent’s attitudes!

“As a woman myself and someone who frequently engages with conservative Christian communities,” she says, “I love that it’s the daughters who were found to be most effective at changing their hard-nosed dads’ minds.”

Katharine Hayhoe – Climate Scientist at Texas Tech University

NPR provided a framework for talking about the reality of climate change with the focus being on helping them understand climate change as an approach to coping with their anxiety, providing a safe space to explore their thoughts and feelings, and helping them sort out the actions they can take.

You know climate change is here. These 6 tips can help you talk to kids about it:

Break the silence – simply beginning the dialogue, even at a basic level, is enough to open the door for a more in-depth discussion and exploration.

Give your kids the basic facts – you can decide at what level. If they come home with lessons from school, it is a perfect opportunity to amplify what they are already learning.

Get outdoors – and amplify the message that what they see in nature is an interconnected web and preserving it is worth it.

Focus on feelings – our children are faced with complexity and uncertainty that can manifest as anxiety. Listening to what they are feeling abut climate change is a big step forward in equipping them to be able to manage those feelings. Emotion-focused coping is about feelings.

Take action – if you are not taking action yourself, encouraging and supporting their action is an important step forward. Of course, modeling the behavior needed to address climate change and taking action together is even more powerful. Problem-focused coping is about action. 

Find hope – it is important to frame the problem so that we do not become more anxious or become apathetic in a problem that appears too large for meaningful action. They also have to be able to be kids while preparing to address the challenges of life. Meaning-focused coping is about hope.

“When I think about the options available to me as a mother in 2019 trying to cope with a global crisis while also paying my mortgage and packing lunches, I don’t see “hope” as a landing place or a single destination. I see myself facing the facts, taking action, and offering comfort when I feel stronger, and taking breaks, reaching out for support, and looking to others to carry on when I get tired.”

Anya Kamenetz on NPR

Check out the printable comic that NPR published. Might be a good place to start the dialogue (if your daughter hasn’t brought it up to you already!).

Next Up: Climate Action Day 93: Be a Savvy Consumer of Climate Information

Howard Creel

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Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com