green kids

How To Be A One Car Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Be A One-Car Family (Photo: One child pushing another down the sidewalk in a toy car)

“How close is this house to the bus stop?” I asked the realtor as we looked for our house. While that’s not a typical question, it was essential for us. That’s because we only have one car.

People claimed that we’d have to buy a second car once we had kids – especially living in the suburbs. But even after having a second kid, we’ve managed to get by quite happily as a one-car family. It’s even possible to be a zero-car family – one of my friends has four kids and doesn’t own a car! Even if you own a second car now, you may want to consider not buying another one when you retire it. According to AAA, the average family spends $8,500 per car each year on payments, insurance, and gas.

If you’re going to make the leap – or just use the second car less – here’s what to consider:

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How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

How to Save and Use Seeds from the Garden With Kids (Photo: Bowls of sunflower seeds on a counter)

Two huge sunflowers rose out of my children’s garden, their once yellow faces bending down towards the Earth. Holding a serrated knife, I wondered how on Earth I was going to get their seeds out. But I had promised my kids sunflower seeds and sunflower seeds were what I was going to deliver.

Despite my conundrum, saving and using seeds from your garden (or even farmer’s market purchased produce), isn’t that complicated. It’s a great activity to do with kids that you can use to illustrate the life cycle of plants and teach them how to use as much of the plant as possible. It also minimizes reliance on store bought seeds for your garden. After you’ve harvested the seeds, you can save them for next year’s garden, feed them to wildlife, or even cook them off and eat them yourself.

If you’re interested in saving seeds, here are the main steps:

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How to Bring Kids on Public Transportation

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Want to reduce your car use or get around a big city with your family? Be sure to learn what you need to know to bring kids on public transportation.

How to Bring Kids on Public Transportation (Photo: D.C. Metro train coming into the station)

The train doors closed right in my five-year-old son’s face. He was on one side; his grandparents were on the other. They were not reopening.

Thankfully, my husband was next to my son on the other side of the doors. They got on the next train and all was well.

While this incident was frustrating, it’s definitely not stopped us from riding transit. We’re a one-car family and driving in the Washington D.C. area is dreadful. Riding the train and bus are second nature to my kids.

In fact, riding transit can be great for families. It’s a good option if you want to cut back on driving in your own area or just try something different. If you’re traveling, it’s the only good option in many cities with heavy traffic like New York City and D.C. Riding public transit can also be an adventure!

To avoid the problems we faced, it’s keep a few things in mind:

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How to Garden Round the Seasons

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How to Garden Round the Seasons (Photo: Small child playing in the dirt surrounded by tomato plants)

My beans have wilted, either from the slugs slurping on them or the sun beating down on them. Random holes in my garden are a testament to the birds digging for worms. The squash leaves are full of nibbles. Every year around late spring, I begin to despair about my garden.

Yet every late summer and fall, we have produce fresh from the backyard. (Sometimes bountiful, sometimes less so.) At the end of every year, I find growing my garden worthwhile. It brings our food miles down to zero, ensures my food is totally organic, stores carbon in the soil, creates habitat for animals, and is a wonderful way to bond with my kids.

But how do we go from those spring days to the (semi)-successful harvests? The whole process starts in the winter.

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How I Became a Third Grade Environmentalist and What Happened Next

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How I Became a Third Grade Environmentalist and What Happened Next (Photo: Manatee swimming in water)

My parents didn’t have a clue what the impact of bringing me to Homosassa Springs State Park in Florida at the tender age of nine was going to be. It ended up not only shaping my elementary school passions, but determining my life’s work.

I first wrote this essay about the strange ways childhood experiences shape us for the wonderful live show (and podcast), The Story Collider. I performed it live at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. on January 26, 2017 and you can check out the video on Facebook. As I’ll be returning to Homosassa Springs tomorrow with my kids, I thought now was an appropriate time to share it!

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How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Has your child heard about climate change and are starting to ask questions? Or do you want to broach this difficult topic but don’t know where to start? Here are good ways to talk to kids about climate change.

How to Talk to Kids About Climate Change (Photo: Group of kids in front of a capital building holding a poster saying 'Kids Want Climate Justice')

“We’re going to tell the people who make the rules that we want clean air and water for everyone,” I told my then three-year-old as we made signs for the People’s Climate Mobilization. As we got ready for the march, I struggled with what to say to him about it. In the end, I settled on the vague “air and water” statement. A clear mom fail at avoiding the issue.

Or was it? After all, three is awfully young to face the fact that our everyday choices could affect everyone on the planet in both in the present day and hundreds of years from now. There are plenty of adults who can’t grapple with that reality. Climate change activism is my personal passion, but it’s not right to force it on him before he’s ready.

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about explaining climate change to our kids. More than a year later, we still haven’t directly explained it. But now I see it as more of a process than a one-and-done conversation.

In addition to my personal interest, my professional background is informing a lot of my approach. As a science and environmental communicator, talking about climate change and related issues is one of my specialties.

Here are some big principles to consider if you are going to  talk to kids about climate change:

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How to Teach Your Kids to Love Biking and Walking

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Want to get your kids outside, have more exercise, and lower your carbon footprint? Try biking and walking places with your kids with these five ways to help them love non-car transportation. 

How to Teach Your Kids to Love Biking and Walking (Photo: One little kid pushing another in a little pretend car)

“You said we were walking! Noooooooooooo!” my four-year-old yelled as we tried to get in the car. Oops. I may have mentioned that we would be walking to the library instead of driving.

While it can be inconvenient on days when we’re running late, I do love that my son loves walking and biking places. Active transportation gets kids outside, keeps them moving, builds relationships with neighbors, minimizes greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, and increases kids’ independence.

While our society advertises a minivan as the ultimate family vehicle, it’s actually possible to shift trips away from driving. One of my friends with four kids under seven years old actually doesn’t own a car at all! (I am still in awe of her.)

If you’re interested in making the shift, here are some tips to get you started:

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10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments

Want to reduce the flow of stuff into your house? Here are 10 principles to follow to accumulate less stuff (particularly toys) and cut down on clutter.

10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff (Photo: Toy plastic house and wooden walker on the floor)

Looking at the spread of toys and books scattered across our basement floor, I shake my head. “We have way too much stuff,” I think. “And we have birthdays coming up.”

Like many families, we suffer from the disease of Too Much Damn Stuff. While it’s frustrating, I take some hope in the fact that the flow of stuff into our house has slowed substantially in the four years we’ve been parents.

We’ve worked hard to cut down on the amount of toys in particular because having fewer toys can encourage creativity and reduce stress. When presented with four toys or 16 toys, toddlers who could choose from four toys played with individual toys longer and played with them in a larger variety of ways.  Laura at the blog YouShouldGrow has nine more ways that kids benefit when they have fewer toys. For more on the advantages of having fewer toys, be sure to check out the book and website Simplicity Parenting.

From an environmental point of view, producing and shipping all of these things uses natural resources and energy. Not to mention the waste when you need to get rid of them. Of course, buying all that stuff costs money that can be used in other ways!

As I’m (clearly) far from an expert in this realm, I asked my fellow bloggers for their tips on accumulating less stuff as a parent of young children:

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How to Limit Advertising’s Influence on Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

How to Limit Advertising's Influence on Your Kids (Photo: TV playing a McDonald's advertisement)

“I think they’re trying to sell you beer,” stated my son after a Bud Light commercial during a football game. While I didn’t really need my kid to be watching beer commercials, I was proud of his analytical skills. After all, he understood that commercials are more than just fun little videos.

An average kid above the age of two sees more than 25,000 commercials a year. Although peers influence what toys children want, commercials play a major role in preferences. Ads also reinforce the mindset of needing to buy the latest and greatest “stuff,” regardless of what you already own. As hardly anyone advertises the benefits of playing outside, eating vegetables, and buying simple toys, most of us want to counteract advertisements’ influence.

My kid is inquisitive, so we’ve used his questions as an opportunity to help him become more savvy about advertisements. Here are four steps that can help you teach your kid to be more media-aware:

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How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Thinking about starting seeds for your family vegetable garden? Here’s step-by-step instructions on starting seeds and getting your kids involved.

How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids (Two photos, both of small white children leaning over bowls of dirt with their hands in it)

Watching my kids plunge their hands into a mix of seed starting mix and water on our back deck, I know there’s something simply right about what we’re doing. And messy. Very messy.

But after planning a garden with kids, seed starting is the next logical step. While I could fill my backyard garden with seedlings from the farmers’ market, starting everything from seed is both cheaper and more rewarding. It helps the kids see the full life-cycle of plants, from seed to fruit and back to seed again. It’s also a great way to get them involved before spring shows up.

So every year, I flip through the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, order too much, and start the process of bringing up seedlings. (If you’re not in the Southeast U.S., Home for the Harvest has a great list of sustainable vegetable seed companies.) While my older son (nicknamed Sprout, appropriately) has helped start seeds the last few years, my younger son started helping this year too.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

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