Reaching up in my closet for my sewing bag, I asked my then-six year old son, “Do you want me to teach you how to sew?”
“No,” he said, with an edge in his voice of “And why would I?”
But as I settled down on the couch, his attitude shifted. He wandered over, asking, “Can I see what you’re doing?”
“I’m sure the mayor will respond to you – they love getting stuff from kids,” I promised my kids, crossing my fingers. In the back of my head, I thought “Damn right, she better.”
I was trying to convince them to write letters to our local city government officials about climate change. While heavy topics like climate change can seem scary for adults to talk to kids about, finding ways to empower kids can help them be much less anxiety-inspiring. When kids know that they are not helpless – that they can make a difference and that their parents want to do it with them – they can tackle hard topics much better than we would expect.
“I just want to raise my kids to be kind,” the Facebook comment read.
My eyebrow raised. This comment followed a back and forth between me and the commenter. That conversation was sparked by her complaining that she was sick of people trying to shame white people. That comment was in response to a thought-provoking post about racism that wasn’t shaming. Trying to provide an alternative perspective, I explained because of the unjust systems we live in that we all have some level of racism and we actively have to work to be anti-racist. She basically said that she was disgusted at me trying to create conflict and would raise her kids to be “color-blind.” And then she dropped that line on me about “raising her kids to be kind.”
Really? Really?!
“Why do they say that Africa is the most wild? Antarctica is the most wild!” my older son proclaimed as we listened to the narration of yet another Disney Nature documentary.
“But how does the story end?” my older son asked.
We had just finished reading We Are Water Protectors, a powerful picture book written from the perspective of an Anishinaabe girl. She talks about how her people regard water as life and how a “big black snake” threatens the water and therefore them. While the book never names what the “snake” is, the pictures clue the reader in – it’s an oil pipeline. Like many real-life young people like Autumn Peltier, the narrator is an Indigenous water protector committed to halting water from becoming polluted with death instead of life.
A twig of a tree stands in our yard, a few buds just starting to form. In the future, those buds could become branches. But now, they’re nothing but green and brown nubs off of a slim trunk.
It’s hard to believe that one day we’ll be eating pears from that tree. In fact, we may not. Deer may nibble the buds or disease may fell it.
And yet we planted it anyway.
Big world events – like COVID-19 (coronavirus) and climate change – can drive us to despair. I’ve semi-seriously joked that my anxiety about climate change has at least prepared me for this outbreak. But I’ve also learned that there are a couple of ways to react to these big world events, some of which are mentally and emotionally healthier than others.
In a study by a Swedish University that I found in my book research, researchers found that teenagers reacted to climate change in three ways: “emotion-focused,” “problem-focused,” and “meaning-focused.”
“And he’s splashing in a puddle!” I said, pointing out the picture of a beige puppy frolicking in the rain.
Then I stopped. Why had I assumed the puppy was male? Why was the “he” my default? For that matter, why did I assume the adult dog singing the song to the puppy was their mother?
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.