Dear Reader,
On a lazy Sunday noon, as I was waking up, my first reaction was to switch on the lights. My 6-year-old, lazing next to me switched it off, and opened the curtains. His simple action made me feel both proud and guilty at the same time. While we are all talking about sustainability and climate action, we forget to walk the talk- often for convenience or plain simple laziness. We often don’t consider that the impacts of climate change will hurt our children more than it affects our lives. Therefore, it is important for us to practice what we know, make our children understand what sustainability and climate change means, and how to inculcate habits that are good for the environment.
Our job as parents or caregivers is to ensure they understand how important it is to respect the planet and its resources. A lot of children today are unaware of where their food comes from, how electricity is produced, or how water is becoming more and more dear. Awareness about these things makes them realize how dependent we are on nature and how important it is to take care of it.
All of us understand children emulate rather than follow instructions and thus for us to take simple steps like switching the lights off when we leave a room, recycle paper, reuse containers, or walk short distances instead of hopping in the car, can make them aware of how small actions can have big impact.
As a family, doing activities that are in line with our idea of sustainability, is a great way to make learning fun. We have tried making recycled paper together, using a solar oven to cook food, and exchanging books and toys with friends and family to reduce consumption. We also try to look at labels before buying clothes and try to buy durable and organic materials in place of fast fashion, which makes Whitewater Kids one of our favourite brands.
For older children, explaining the concept of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and asking them to come up with ideas for each of the goals, is a great play to understand the vast expanse of the problem and innovation in solutions. Often, we look at the problem from a narrow view and forget the actual true total picture. For example, replacing plastic bottles with glass bottles is not an entirely sustainable solution since the transportation and packaging of these bottles offsets the benefits of the reduction of plastic to a large extent.
As a parent, I feel responsible for providing our children with clean air and water and to help them sustain this for the future. Small steps often are met with skepticism but like someone once said- every journey begins with a first step.
Let’s resolve to make small changes every day in our lifestyle and to spread this message in our society and community.
A concerned parent,
Nidhi
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