Reading the plaque on the wall at the National Children’s Museum, I raised an eyebrow. I had been looking around while my kids climbed on the huge structure rising up two stories in the middle of the museum. The sign on the wall caught my eye, so of course I read it. It had a little blurb about the skills children would learn from using said giant climbing structure – like problem solving and teamwork – and careers that used those skills. Although I was nodding along at first, I stopped and thought, “Wait a minute! Why are we so worried about them learning specific skills, much less for a career? Why can’t we just let them play?”
Warm weather in January stirs up a lot of ambiguous feelings in me. On one hand – it’s beautiful out! On the other – it’s probably because of climate change! (It’s also called climate chaos for a reason – the up and down unpredictability is part of it.) And back to the other hand – we should enjoy it while we can! In reality, it’s probably a combination of all three.
Bringing kids out in nature and modeling enjoying it is one of the best ways to build lots of emotional and physical skills as well as environmental awareness. You don’t need to get all apocalyptic, but it’s also a chance to draw attention to how it is unseasonably warm and how the climate affects it. You can get curious, asking your kids what they think we can do to help. (It’s very possible they’ve already discussed it in school.) We don’t want to put the whole burden on them though, so be sure to talk about what adults (including yourself) are doing, like Indigenous water protectors fighting oil pipelines or Black and Hispanic activists working to close coal and natural gas plants in their neighborhoods. And of course, all of the people working to build renewable energy!
At least I’ve found one good thing about Elon Musk – as an object lesson for my kids on what kind of person not to be. Both my husband and I are big Twitter users (me for work particularly) and so the kids have heard us complain about the ongoing saga at that particular social media platform.
I didn’t expect to think of the Fraggles when reading about Indigenous perspectives on the environment, but that’s just how my brain works. Despite the weird connection, it gave me a new perspective on how I can treat holiday gifts and in fact, our whole community in the year to come.
Hearing a car approach behind me, I yell “Car back – stay to the right!” My older son shifts to the right on his bike. He’s close enough to the parked cars so that another car can pass safely, but not so close that he’d get hit if one of the parked car’s doors opened unexpectedly.
Every ride to school, my older son and I have many of these back and forths, mini-exchanges for our mutual safety. We also talk about other things – from what they did at school that day to their latest video game milestones – but these are necessary for the sake of transportation. In our daily commute this fall (paused for now due to the weather), I realized how biking was reinforcing so many of the communication skills for parenting I learned elsewhere. In other situations, they seemed nice but optional. While biking, their necessity appeared much more obvious and urgent.
“You’re so brave,” said a woman on the sidewalk as I pedaled by her slowly. Her words came right on the heels of me tearing into my older son about not screwing around while biking in the road. (He was riding so slowly I was almost crashing into him and swerving.) “Uh, thanks?” I stammered, not sure what else to say.
While I didn’t have much to respond in the moment, the comment stuck with me. Brave? What did she mean by that?
Under the little girl’s steady hand before me, I saw a world emerging. A world that’s more environmentally and socially sustainable, powered by solar panels and windmills, with lots of ways to get around besides cars. All laid out there in marker.
This was just one of many amazing examples I got when I asked kids to envision their ideal city. I did two different book promotion events – one at a spring festival at our local nature center and one at a book festival – and had this visioning activity to engage kids walking by. (It’s the activity in the last chapter of my book!)
Two small heads, one brown-haired, one baby-blond turning brown. Both buried in books, racking up minutes for their school’s Read-A-Thon. Two bodies, snuggled on the couch, not arguing or bouncing. A rare moment where they’re both still.
I blink.
Images of crying parents and classmates next to a brick wall. Outside of an elementary school. Police tape and sirens. News headlines.
“31 students, that’s pretty good, considering the weather!” I breathed a sigh of relief looking at the sign-in sheet for our school’s first Bike to School Day. It wasn’t torrential rain, but I was worried that even the gray drizzle would be enough to warn people off. But we had a full bike rack and a number of happy kids with Safe Routes to School goodie bags.
The event was a result of a few months of direct work, but even more organizing time before that. This was the first year I had truly been involved in organizing at my kids’ school. Even though I wrote in my book about how to make your kids’ school more environmentally friendly, it was all based on expert interviews, not personal experience.
In working with our school and school district this year, I learned quite a few things first-hand about general advocacy in schools and bike advocacy specifically.
