For more, check out Growing Sustainable Together: Practical Resources for Raising Kind, Engaged, Resilient Children.
Activism & Politics
The One Question All Privileged Parents Should Ask at School Meetings
The exact numbers weren’t easy to read, but the graph lines showing the poll results were clear – the majority of the folks at the public meeting were white. Looking around the packed high school cafeteria confirmed that fact.
My mind returned to the graph we had seen a few moments earlier. In bright colors, it laid out the racial make-up of the students in my kids’ school district: 28% white, 31% Hispanic, 22% Black, 15% Asian, and 5% “other.”
Hmmmm.
Why I Will Never Make My Kids Sit on Santa’s Lap
No matter how much I want the photo, I’m never going to make my kids sit on Santa’s lap.
“My kids are notorious for not wanting to take pictures with Santa,” I commented to the person waiting at the mall kiosk. She had just pointed out that we could have made reservations to see Santa instead of waiting in line. But there was no way I was having my mother-in-law pay $40 ahead of time for my two sons to then refuse to be in the picture.
I wasn’t exaggerating. The only photos we had of our kids with Santa were from when they were too young to care. They’re each less than a year old in their respective photos. But once they hit two? Nope, nada, absolutely not. They wouldn’t even go near him. At Sesame Place’s Christmas celebration, my then four-year-old wanted a photo with Elmo, but he was only posing with Santa. So my son planted himself solidly on the other side of Elmo, as far away from the big guy as possible.
But did I try to force them to do it anyway? Nope. I never tried to force them to sit on Santa’s lap. It’s for similar reasons I’ll never make them hug or kiss a relative – or anyone, really.
What America Is to Me
To me, this is America.
To me, America should be celebrating the beautiful diversity of our country. It should be celebrating that people come from different backgrounds and experiences. It should be recognizing that people look and act different from each other and being amazed at how wonderful that is.
How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change
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.
“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:
What Happened When My Son Told a Racist Joke
TW: Racism
Reading the text from my husband, Chris, I frowned. “We left the park because [our older son] said something very racist to the girls there.” Furrowing my eyebrows, I typed back, “What did he say??” “That black people look like poop.”
My first thought was, “What the hell was he thinking?” My second was, “How the hell did this happen?”
Our Creative Alternative to the Thanksgiving Myth
“They’re not dressing up as Native Americans, are they?” I said, wrinkling my nose. After reading about how cultures aren’t costumes around Halloween and how the whitewashed version of the Thanksgiving story is painfully inaccurate, I hope that my son’s preschool isn’t re-enacting the famous version of the Thanksgiving narrative. Regardless of their curriculum, I know we won’t be repeating it in our household. So we have to come up with an alternative.
How to Help the Environment While Making the Most of Your Time
Do you want to do what you can to help the environment but can’t find the time? Here are eight ways you can do both!
“I don’t have enough time!” I lament to my husband, as I stay up too late washing the dishes yet again. I’m certainly not alone in this cry, as anyone who raises small children knows. The days may be long, but it still feels as if there are never enough hours. But despite all that, our family still lives in as environmentally-friendly a manner as we can. As many “green” activities take more time than conventional ones – I’m looking at you, dish rags that we need to wash – how do we find the time to help the environment?
Some of it is reorganizing our priorities. But in many cases, I’ve found some shortcuts to save time and still help the environment.
The Absolutely Best Ways to Donate to a Food Drive
Want to give effectively to a food drive to a local food bank?
You rarely have the opportunity to decide how to spend your co-workers’ hard-earned money. But as the one responsible for running our yearly food drive, I wanted both them and the food bank to get the best bang for their buck. Just randomly picking out whatever I felt like at the grocery store wasn’t going to cut it. But how could I donate in the most effective way possible?
I’m not the only one who struggles with this question. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the “food drive holidays,” where everyone from churches to Boy Scouts troops are collecting cans to donate to food banks. Unfortunately, the donations to these drives aren’t as helpful as they could be because people just aren’t aware of the most effective ways to give.
Between my experiences running the food drives and reading up on the subject, I’ve found some really handy rules to guide your food drive giving.
What is Sustainability?
Pushing my son on the biggest tree swing I’ve ever seen, he declared, “This is fun!” As I half-listened to a talk on medicinal plants, I had to agree. We were at the second annual Paw Paw Festival at Long Creek Homestead, the home of a local family who grows much of their own food based on ecological principles. While we go to these events because they’re fun, it’s much more than that. I bring my family to these events so we can have a little glimpse into a possible potential, beautiful future. That’s because these kind of community events embody social and environmental sustainability to me.
Sustainability has become such a buzzword it’s easy to lose the true meaning. Companies sell us “green living” via labels on products that promise they will be safer for your family. (Never mind anyone else’s family.) But to create a just world that offers opportunities to all people in a way that’s environmentally sound, we have to go deeper.