How do we talk about the climate and ecological crises with young children?

As it’s school summer holidays, many of us are around children more – whether they’re our own or not! And in the many roles I play in life: parent, friend, scientist, trainer, I often find people struggling with the same question:  ‘what do I say to the children about the environment’? So this blog explores how we can talk to children about some of the conservation challenges their generation face. 

Teachers at my children’s school say that even the four year olds talk about plastic in the oceans. The pupils know there are big issues happening in the world, they’re worried and they don’t have the language or the context to grapple with them. Which can lead to those issues feeling scary, or too big to handle – just like it can for adults too. And the teachers aren’t sure what to say to support these young minds and hearts.  

So, whether you’re a parent, a teacher, an aunt, an uncle, a friend, or in any other way connected to children, how can you play your part in supporting children to understand the world around them? 

Start where they are

This isn’t about teaching five year olds about research methods or forecasts of carbon emissions. It’s about starting with where they are, strengthening their passion for their world, and helping them have a conversation about nature from there. It’s about bringing the natural world closer – so they see that it’s something they are connected with already.

The best way to do this is to link into what they know and care about. If you’re around children in any sort of collective unit: family, school, beavers, childminding setting – what are the values that underpin how you are together? 

There will be some key values, even if they aren’t often voiced out loud. For example, ‘we are kind’, ‘we listen’ or ‘we work together’. Each of these can be harnessed to help children build their own relationship with the natural world locally, and start to make sense of the big issues globally. If you don’t know what values to build from, talking to children about what matters to them and makes sense to them is a good place to start. 

What follows in this blog is an illustration of how you could bring this to life, using some example values. It’s not the solution, and it’s not a ready-made learning resource. It is, I hope, a starting point for you to make the big, daunting conversations more accessible, hopeful, and fun. 

Wonder

Young children are hardwired to be fascinated by things – especially in the natural world. Whether it’s ants busying themselves in the cracks of paving, dandelion clocks, puddles to splash in, or spiders seemingly suspended in mid air. Children have a ready made capacity for wonder. And our role as adults is to nurture it. To keep fuelling that idea that ‘nature is amazing’. 

Wonder plays an important role in our actions and choices. In her book Atlas of the Heart Brene Brown notes: 

Awe and wonder are essential to the human experience. Wonder fuels our passion for exploration and learning, for curiosity and adventure. Researchers have found that awe “leads people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for others” and causes them “to fully appreciate the value of others and see themselves more accurately, evoking humility.”

How can we nurture wonder? Here are a few ideas:

• Go on a wonder walk: even just for ten minutes, with an ice cream at the end for motivation if needed! Go as slowly as possible and take turns to spot awe-inspiring and wonderful things, such as ladybirds, flowers or moss on walls
• Share books: The Book of Trees and Oceanarium are just two examples of beautiful, inspiring books to encourage wonder at the diversity and beauty of nature
• Stargaze: the night sky might happen quite late for the smallest people during summer, but often bedtimes are all over the place in the holidays! Invite children to come up with their own names for constellations, rather than teaching them the ‘real’ ones. This can be a creative and connective experience.

Curiosity

As well as being wonder-filled, young people are innate scientists. They are hands on, they work things out by asking questions, looking and doing and trying again. This is a fantastic quality to nurture in service of developing a love and understanding of the natural world. When children, or adults, get curious, we go deeper. We develop our relationship with the object of our curiosity. It gives children a way into thinking about the big problems, where things are going wrong and what could be done differently.

So anything you can do to nurture curiosity will help. For example:

• Where does our food come from?  Try and find out about different types of food and where they are grown or produced
• What happens to a local tree/flower/plant over summer? Go outside and visit it every day, or every week
• Join a science collective by taking part in citizen science projects.

We can stimulate curiosity, by getting involved and asking questions. But it’s even more powerful when it comes from the child themselves. So if a child has a question about the natural world, or a big climate or ecological issue, try to support them in their investigations. Let them know it’s fine not to have all the answers – none of us do. But we don’t get closer to the answers without asking the questions!

Working together

Complex problems require complex solutions. And that means working together. As researchers, we know this. We know that working in isolation isn’t going to solve everything. Instead, it’s about collaborative approaches both to problem solving (working together to investigate), and knowledge and skills sharing (working together to enrich our collective understanding). 

It’s so important that children understand this message. Not just because it means they will have healthier working dynamics. But because it can reduce the pressure. It’s not down to them alone to fix everything. It’s up to them (and us) to listen to one another, support each other, learn from mistakes, and build a new, collective way forward. All our voices matter. 

How can we nurture collaboration in children?

• Join with local social and environmental projects
• Encourage them to suggest ideas for groups they are part of to take forward
• Practice small scale listening and teamwork projects such as making bird feeders together taking turns to be the “project lead” to try out different ideas.

Creativity

Finding solutions to complex problems isn’t only done through collaboration. It’s also about coming up with new ways of living. We can’t repeat the same patterns and hope for different outcomes. So one of the most important traits we can nurture in children is their creativity. 

What is creativity? It’s the ability and willingness to explore possibilities and come up with new answers. We can’t expect our four year olds to come up with perfectly workable answers, but we can encourage them to be energised in the process. And they certainly come up with some innovative suggestions!

In their book Art and Fear, Bayles and Orland recount the story of the ceramics class experiment. Half the class were told they would be graded on the quantity of pots they created – measured by weight. The other half were told they just needed to produce one pot, the very best they could. 

And which group produced the pots judged to be the best quality? The group which had theorised and planned and aimed for perfection in their one single submission? Or the group that had been tasked with turning out as many pots as possible? 

The latter. In the process of doing, and learning from their mistakes, members of this group improved their skills and artistic sensibilities, without agonising about how well they were doing. It was the freedom to keep going, and give things a go without fear of doing it wrong or badly that actually produced the best work.

The future of the planet needs creative thinkers. Ones who aren’t afraid to make mistakes and learn from them.  Maybe one of the best ways we can support our children to live and work in service of healthy ecosystems is to encourage them to give things a go, without fear of failure. How can we do that? By cultivating a sense that they have the right to play and experiment, and the outcome matters less than the process. Here are three simple ideas:

• Let them take photos of nature spots and then write a story or poem about that place
• Do some junk modelling, for example inviting them to create aliens, or imaginary guardians for the local park
• Do some nature art together, using fallen objects such as leaves, petals or twigs to create pieces on the ground.

For the adults Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth and From What Is To What If by Rob Hopkins both offer new thinking on how to approach some of the social and economic problems we face.

Determination

One of the most important qualities in life is the ability to keep going, even when it’s not easy. Even when things go wrong. And this is when it is helpful to nurture qualities of determination and persistence. This attribute goes hand in hand with creativity: cultivating a growth mindset in which mistakes are springboards for better and more interesting things supports a sense of determination too. Beautiful Oops is a wonderful and interactive book conveying this message. 

We know that in many aspects of life the pay off for good work is delayed – a planted tree takes years to bear fruit. This is very much the case with work to restore health to our planet. Many of the developments taking place now will take years to come to fruition. There is a temporal and spatial disconnect between our actions and their consequences – for good or bad. This is a truth that can be hard to grapple with; many of us love instant gratification, and particularly children!

So it’s helpful to find ways to let children know that their efforts aren’t wasted, even if they don’t see the rewards immediately. Growing activities can help with this, for example:

• Growing a fast-germinating seed, such as mustard or cress, so children have to wait, but not too long
• Moving onto slower growing seeds, such as spinach, or sunflowers
• Planting something in one season to be harvested the next, such as garlic
• Planting something to be enjoyed by other people: for example, a Year 6 school class can plant potatoes in the spring to be harvested and eaten by the next cohort of Year 6 children in the autumn. 

Courage

Sometimes we need to have the courage of our convictions and do the right thing, even if it’s not the easy thing, or what everyone else is doing. This can be something as simple as not dropping litter in the playground, or going to pick up litter someone else has dropped. 

To stay strong in our convictions, we need to care – we need an attachment to the cause we are fighting for. For youngsters this starts with noticing, and caring about, what’s around us. The flower bed in the street, or the plant pots at school, or the playground in the neighbourhood park. 

• Start a conversation with a child about what matters to them, and why
• Talk about how you don’t have to join in if someone else is doing something you think is wrong (such as being mean, or dropping litter)
• Help them identify their allies and supporters – both grown ups and peers.

The Lorax is a classic children’s book about advocating for the planet. The Lorax speaks for the trees, even when the whole world is against him. How do the children in your life want to ‘speak for the trees’? 

A final point to make about courage is that it’s also necessary and courageous to take a break. We live in an anxious age, and finding ways to soothe our minds and step back is important for all of us – adults and children alike. 

Thinking about it, all of these ways to help children build their understanding about how to advocate for the planet apply equally to adults. We can’t take it all on, alone. We need to find ways to connect with wonder, with others, to think differently and to know when to rest and to keep going.

What next?

This blog is very much intended as the starting point for conversation: with me, with other interested adults, with children. So I’d love to know:

• If you have children in your life, what do you think about these starting points? Are there any other approaches you’d recommend for talking to children about these big themes that affect us all: emotions, eco-anxiety, nature and education? What key values would you use as a way into these topics. 
• I know there are plenty of social scientists and other professionals who dedicate their careers to exploring the theory and practice of supporting children with these conversations. If you are one of them, I’d love to hear more about your work, and will happily share with others. 

Let’s carry on the conversation! Just contact me here.