Essential Skill #17: Talk to Your Kids

If the subject of global warming seems overwhelming to you sometimes, imagine what it's like for children. It's nearly impossible to go a single day without hearing about it on television or in conversation. Sometimes it's new evidence of the dire impact of global warming. Other times it's arguments for why global warming is a hoax.

In The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, author David de Rothschild says there's just one way to avoid confusion and fear. It's Essential Skill #17:

Talk to your kids.

Instead of letting the media educate your kids on global warming, take the lead and educate them yourself -- just the basics though, with as limited information as they need (based on their age) to understand what's going on, but always with the bigger picture in mind.

Specifically, De Rothschild suggests that you:

• Filter the information that comes into the home
• Put the news in context (i.e., the earth isn't going to burn up tomorrow)
• Encourage children to verbalize their fears
• Be moderate, not obsessive
• Be positive
• Find ways children can help
• Get active (i.e., encourage activities that let kids be kids, without worry or fear)

You can also direct children to environmental websites just for them where they can learn more and take action to help. One of our favorites is the webiste for our Live Earth Leader of the Week, Roots & Shoots, a program of the Jane Goodall Institute. You can also browse through this comprehensive list of environmental websites for youth.