Four years ago, while rushing though a cold Colorado grocery store parking lot with my four baby boys, my then four-year-old son witnessed a passerby discard his plastic pop bottle on the ground by our car. I picked up the pop bottle and carried it with us to the store entrance and threw it in the trash. My little boy looked up at me with a questioning stare and said, “Mommy, why did you pick that up? It isn’t ours.” Due to trying to secure the baby’s car seat in the cart and round up my twin three-year-olds, I offered my oldest son a rushed response, “Because it will kill fishies.”
When we arrived home and the chaos of the outing was winding down, I decided to go into a little more detail and told him that when we throw our trash on the ground it ends up in the water, in turn ends up polluting our water ways and oceans and destroying the habitat of fish. I wasn’t prepared for how much of an impact that would have on the way my sons learned to perceive littering. My children, to this day, are constantly picking up trash they find in the parking lot, parks or ANYWHERE they see it laying out. Without fail one of them will always quote me as they do this task, “we don’t want to kill fishies!”
I tell you this story to tell you this, we are raising future adults. The old saying “you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks,” applies to people too. Of course, adults can learn to take different precautions in the interest of the environment as we become more educated on this critical subject. However, how much easier is it to apply things you have been taught and doing your entire life?
Don’t just do, explain! As parents, we sometimes try to shelter our children too much, leaving out consequential details we think may be too hard for them. Yet, I think it’s necessary we bridge that gap. When you fill up their water bottle, explain why you are using a refillable bottle instead of a disposable plastic bottle. When you plant a tree in your yard, explain the fact that human beings are destroying too much forest and that planting, not chopping, is good for our world. Per dosomething.org, extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the “background” rate, with dozens going extinct every day. Most children adore animals, explaining deforestation in terms of the animal’s homes being destroyed and the physical harm that comes to the animals is a concept that imprints on children.
Just as we have come to realize that it isn’t enough to just teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic; but that we must prepare them for the world of money, child rearing, fitness and nutrition. We also must teach them how to be socially and environmentally responsible in a world that has gotten out of control and is badly in need of change.