Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

lives. So on her visits to the local library, Darlene selects books to read to her children that focus on helping others and on gratitude. She also searches online for stories of gratitude that she can share with her children at the dinner table.
    Anthony and Blair approach gratitude from another angle. In addition to encouraging their two sons to be givers of gratitude, they also want them to be receivers. This means making it part of their daily lives to help others. Blair created a “helping chart” on which the boys record the acts of kindness and generosity they engage in each day and the number of thanks they receive. The two boys are so into the “grat game” that they compete to see who will get the most gratitude points each week.

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Message #6: Earth Is Your Child’s Home (“We’re a Green Family”)
     
    Children love the Earth. They really do hug trees. Kids care in the purest and sweetest way for birds, flowers, plants, and animals. Smelling a flower, marvelling at a bee buzzing around them, and jumping with joy at seeing a deer are just a few of the ways that children express their connection, love, and awe for Mother Nature. They wouldn’t want to do anything to harm nature. And they would be really mad at their parents if they learned what was being done to their Earth.
    I hope there is no argument that, environmentally speaking, we simply can’t sustain our current habits for much longer: Air pollution caused by the growing number of automobiles on the road and coal-burning power plants worldwide. Our oceans and seas being fished out. Massive deforestation. Globally, billions of people rising to the middle classes and demanding more of everything. The list goes on. And who will suffer from our disregard for the health of planet Earth? The answer is our children. This chapter is about our children and the Earth that they will inherit. My plea is that we hand our planet over to our children in reasonable condition so that Earth will have many more miles around the sun ahead of it,and our children and their children can enjoy its many wonders as we have.
    The sad reality is that our children will be inheriting an environmental mess. Even more sadly, by the time they grow up, most of them will become a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution. In our voraciously consumptive culture, many if not most children are receiving messages that will perpetuate the environmentally destructive legacy of their parents.
    Our planet’s only hope is for parents to send very different messages and raise “green children” as a result. Parents can connect the wonderful feeling that young children have for nature with a sensitivity to the impact they can have on the Earth and a sense of environmental stewardship for how they can help protect it in the future. We all love our children and want them to have a bright future. A part of that bright future should be the condition of the planet that we pass on to them. If parents can send the right “green” messages to their children, then perhaps they will care enough about Mother Earth to work to undo the damage their parents caused to it.
CONNECTION TO EARTH
     
    A wonderful series of books,
Teaching Green
by Tim Grant and Gail Littlejohn, offers parents many ideas on how to help children develop a deep connection to Earth that can result in a commitment to and sense of stewardship for the future health of our planet.
Develop a Personal Relationship with Nature
     
    At the heart of children’s connection with nature is the love that I just discussed. Children will want to take care of Mother Earth because they care for nature. And children will care more about nature if they have a relationship with it. And the only way todevelop such a relationship is for children to experience nature fully: they must walk in, play in, explore, see, touch, and smell it. Experiences that are rich in sensory stimulation, intellectually and emotionally engaging, and directly related to the natural world act as the “hook” that makes children feel not only connected to but also an integral part of nature.
Emphasize the Connection Between People and Nature
     
    Because children don’t have much life experience, they can’t readily see the connections that we have with nature and other people. We are far more connected than children (and many adults) realize, through what we eat, wear, and use in our daily lives, and how we move around. Recognition of this