Make Sustainability A Regular Conversation In Your Home
As they grow older, it is natural for children to begin asking questions. Pre-teens and tweens will often begin exploring their curiosity. This provides a great platform for having dynamic conversations on the need for sustainability and why being eco-friendly is important to you. What is important at this stage is to make it a natural and unpressured atmosphere for your child to ask those questions.
Speak about where your food comes from while including them in dinner preparations or around the dinner table.
Allow them to help you sort the trash, and do a fun activity of tracing its journey to the recycling plants. In the summer, encourage your child to get out and explore nature by taking regular walks or visiting your local parks. You could also adopt a summer project of creating a kitchen garden with your child. Finally, as children get older, parents can give them some control over eco-friendly decisions by allowing them to choose used clothing to donate each season, or allowing them to choose eco-friendly products on shopping trips.
Lead By Example
Children model behaviour exhibited by their peers, parents and extended family. That is why parents need to make a conscious effort of displaying good eco-friendly habits in the home as an example for their child. This behaviour is particularly important during the formative years of their childhood, including adolescence.
Encouraging them to buy sustainable fashion and support thrift stores, and doing so yourself, can model Earth-friendly behaviour to your child, no matter what age they are.
Our children’s education begins long before they enter a classroom and continues long after they wear a graduation cap. Providing your child with a solid environmental education provides them with life skills that are rapidly becoming more essential – life skills that help them play their part in ensuring the survival of the world.
Kylee Harris is an educator who has taught in elementary schools in Singapore and Hong Kong for 5 years. She lives in Florida and continues to teach life skills to young adults in her community.
