Talking to Kids about Climate and Home Tips

Sara Goldstein of the website Motherly quotes Laura Schifter, founder of This Is Planet Ed and author of Students, Schools, and Our Climate Moment, who explains that “worry, sadness, grief, and fear are all normal climate feelings.”

It's not easy to talk to kids sometimes about climate change as we're afraid to scare them, but opening the conversation is critical as extreme weather events are impacting our daily lives. These home climate tips can guide us.

Kids get solar solutions.

The four climate principles that actually work

Schifter’s Planet Ed developed four essential climate principles with The Nature Conservancy’s chief scientist Katharine Hayhoe that break this massive topic into kid-friendly chunks:

1. Earth is our home (with its perfect invisible blanket of gases)

2. Earth is getting hotter because of us (humans are making that blanket too thick)

3. Our climate is changing now, and that harms us (wet is wetter, dry is dryer, hot is hotter)

4. But together we can build a brighter future (through reducing impact, adapting, talking about it, learning more,

   and working together)

Use these as conversation starters. Let younger kids draw or play out solutions. Schifter shares that one four-year-old built a solar-powered spaceship with magnatiles. Her own daughters created fictional characters like “Nature Nina and Solar Sally” who make a difference in their schools. Make it creative, make it theirs."

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