Before Earth Day. What we do when no one's watching.
It's not activism day
Earth Day is in three weeks. I'm going to be honest about something: I find Earth Day slightly exhausting as a parenting exercise. Not because I don't care about the planet — I do, very much — but because it produces a particular kind of performance. The schools do projects. The supermarkets run campaigns. Everyone agrees that the planet is important, and then the next day is April 23 and we continue as before.
My children can tell me about carbon footprints and recycling symbols and why we should use less plastic. They have learned this at school, carefully and correctly. They can also tell me that my phone charges overnight and that we leave the television on standby and that I sometimes leave the tap running while I brush my teeth.
They know the theory. They've also noticed the practice. Children always notice the practice.
The gap between what we say and what we do is one of the most consistent things children track in their parents. Not because they're moralistic — they're not, not at this age — but because they're trying to understand how the world actually works, and parents are their primary source of information about that.
I think about this as the modelling problem. Not modelling in the sense of being a perfect example — that's not achievable and not actually what children need. But modelling in the sense of: what data am I giving my children about how adults actually live, rather than how adults say they live? The gap between those two things is what children are always tracking. The practice is the point. The conversation follows.
Materials, steps, what to notice — the hands-on part that makes the edition usable at home with your children this week.
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