Do you Talk to the Kids about the Future?

From where I am sitting right now, everything is perfect, I am surrounded by families having lunch, chatting, smiling and laughing. I am the odd one on her computer amidst a restaurant full of people eating, in fact the waiters may ask me to leave in a minute…

If I take a quantum leap into the unknown and believe what I have been reading (Thank you Jonathan Safran Foer for talking about belief in We are the Weather) it is clear to me that it isn’t looking pretty.

I think I am grieving for a future that hasn’t happened yet.

My 13 year old son says to me last night ‘I guess this climate change thing is really going to get me’ and in that moment I am not sure how to answer. My friend who is with me says ‘the world will be perfect, us humans have everything we need right now to turn it all around’ I, inside, think we may have what we need but we have no time and not enough is being done. How do I say that to my kids? They read it all on social media and they know what is going on. There was a Radio 4 programme the other day about how to talk to your kids about climate change and my daughter shouts from the other room, ‘We know it all already!’

My husband steers me towards the positive, like the work Peter Diamandis is doing, I must read his book and perhaps redress the balance because I feel sad and when someone denies climate change I feel disbelief followed by compassion. I don’t want to believe it either but we are in the 6th mass extinction, I remember the insects that used to splat on my Dad’s windscreen in the 70’s, where have they gone?

Then I wonder what could be helpful.

Do I teach my kids to be gardeners? Move somewhere remote? How selfish is that, when I really feel that we are all connected, that my kid is your kid. I want to help everyone (which is not realistic) not just my family. Do I join the Red Brigade? Or will everyone soon visually tire of those beautiful eerie people in red walking slowly and gracefully towards trouble to remind us of all the damage that we have done and that doom is on it’s way so we better wake up and get our shit together. Do I make my own band of black doomsday people, to remind people that the clock is ticking? To remind people and myself is why I went to Extinction Rebellion in London, this is why I stood on stilts with a hand less clock around my neck that said ‘NOW’ in the rain.

This is why I will continue to stand up and be a stick in the spokes of a relentless wheel. I am not perfect, I have environmental flaws in my lifestyle, I am a work in progress but I am doing what I can and I feel we can all do so much more than we think we can. But I will also start to look towards the positive, like this article on green roofs in New York. There is so much good news out there and this is where I will point my mind.

If (or should I say ‘when’) a wave of environmental change and disaster is coming then I want to know that I have done something not just for me and my kids but for all of our kids and all of us. Now is the time for us all to positively and from the heart, connect with each other more than ever before. I think it is time to step up. Am welcome to any positive information, please do send it this way in the comments below. We need to read the good news. I need to read the good news! Sent with love and by the way, how do you talk to your kids?  #climatecrisis #environment #climatechange #ourchildren #ourfuture #fridaysforfuture #exctinctionrebellion #jonathansafronfoer 

Lehla is the co author of Jump, Fall, Fly from schooling, to homeschooling, to unschooling