Woman's Hour - Parenting: How to talk to children about climate change

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

As more and more children and young people become engaged in environmental issues, how can parents support them and talk to them about climate change in an age-appropriate way? And are schools doing enough to educate this new generation of eco-warriors? We discuss with climate change psychotherapist Caroline Hickman, climate change teacher Fiona Cowan and eco-activist Ella Mann.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and this is the Women's Hour Parenting Podcast. This time we're featuring climate change, the environment and how you talk about the impact of climate change on the lives of young children, where many of them these days are really quite fearful of what the future might hold. What is age appropriate and what's going on in Britain's schools? I've talked to Caroline Hickman, climate change researcher from Bath University.

She's also a Climate Psychology Alliance executive. Fiona Cowan is head teacher at Bolsover Infant School in Derbyshire. And she's completed a course, the Educate Global Climate Change Teacher Academy course, accredited by the UN. And significantly, this qualifies her to teach climate change to young children. And we also got the view of Ella Mann, who is a climate activist from Oxford. I asked Caroline, first of all, about the interview she's conducted with young children from the UK and the Maldives, where the effects of climate change are already being felt. Well, I've been talking with children for the last five years, which I think is important because this was before Greta Thunberg and the school climate

strikers started to sort of become well known. So this is what children have been saying to me for some time. And what I'm really noticing is that they're clear-sighted about the destructive impact of global warming on both themselves and on other populations but also other species on nature so they've got a strong empathy with nature in the natural world so they're saying things to me like um and they're also very insightful the age for taking the environment for granted is long past. We now need to be thinking about the future. People need to be listening to children. If we listen to children, then maybe our children will inherit a world

in which they can bear to bring their own children. So children are thinking not just about the impact on themselves, but the impact on future children and the environment. So our listener who emails to say that she has a nine-year-old who is worried that he will die at 20, that's not uncommon? It's not that uncommon, no. But what I think is unusual is that many children haven't been talking about this up until now, but they're now beginning to talk about it more and more. So it's becoming more visible, but it has been going on for some time.

I just want to bring in Fiona. Fiona, you're there with it more and more so it's becoming more visible but it has been going on for some time and i think it's i just want to bring it sorry excuse me i just want to bring in fiona um fiona you're there with with small children because yours is a an infant school did you do that course accredited by the un because you felt there was a real need because kids were asking you about this stuff yeah i think we as a school have been looking at climate change for a good few years now, this course came online in May time. And I felt it was really important that we made sure that we were teaching children correctly, giving them the proper view about what's happening. And not making them unnecessarily fearful. Absolutely. Because what the course teaches you is to empower people, to empower

children, to empower women, to be able to support and help themselves. Have you had small kids coming to you in distress about this? I can't say we've experienced children in distress, but we've had lots of interesting questions. We teach our children at school to think for themselves and to ask questions, to be independent in their thought. And as a result of that, children do ask difficult questions. But it's about listening to those children and responding to them appropriately with the facts and empowering them to believe and understand that they can do something.

And what about parents? Because Bolsover is a place that I have to say I wouldn't immediately associate it with widespread concern about climate change. I mean that's a generalisation and I apologise for it but you know what I mean. Yeah, I think it's quite interesting. Bolsover's right in the centre of England. It's right by the M1.

It's an ex-mining community, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. And you do think that it would be a topic that wasn't really sort of on people's radar, but actually what we've found over the last three or four months is we've seen a huge interest from the community. We've got parents setting up recycling sites on Facebook. We've got people asking to have meetings where we can discuss these issues.

Parents have been extremely positive in the work that we've been doing because I think we've taken an approach that's very child-friendly. It's very age-appropriate and we're walking children through the knowledge that they need in order to discuss this appropriately. And Ella, tell us, how have you come to be a climate activist? Well, it's been a long journey. I think it started with a love for the natural world and I think that's a really important starting point for many young people

because obviously if you have a connection to the natural world you have an urge to protect it. So yeah, I think the removal of children from the natural world which we're experiencing at the moment is... What do you mean by the removal from the natural world? Well, I mean the amount of children who play in natural places has decreased massively over the last decade from a kind of half to less than one in ten, I think.

And this is extremely dangerous because obviously if you don't have experience of being in the natural world, you're not going to want to protect it. If the most nature you've experienced is a little bit of grass outside your house, that's not really, you know, you're not going to fight to protect that.

Whereas if you've experienced the full wonder of the natural world, then you have an urge to fight for it. I wonder exactly, Fiona, what you teach the pupils at your school. Which lessons actually are about climate change? Where do you shoehorn it into the curriculum? So, shoehorn is an interesting way of phrasing it because obviously the curriculum's jam-packed, there's lots to teach. We've always delivered a broad and balanced curriculum at school but, you know, my children are three to seven and they need to learn the

basic skills of reading and writing. Of course. What we've tried to do is embed it within what we're already teaching so that it's not become a bolt-on part of the curriculum. So a lot of what we do is about what we were always doing. I think it's just interesting what our friends just said about children having an understanding and a love of the natural world. That's a lot of where we start with with our children, going out into the woods, doing lots of adventurous activities and we spent a lot of time working on our outdoor area. Those are things we've always done. But the idea now is that as part of that, we include knowledge and discussions around climate change and the concepts.

So, for example, last week our children went out on a walk around the village that was talking about preparing to write stories actually but it was also a mapping exercise for geography but as part of that they were also looking at how many washing lines had washing on how many solar panels they could see right and because when they returned back into class the teachers had quite lengthy conversations about why would we be looking um for washing lines and what would people be using if they're not using their washing lines and what would the impact of that be? And so the children are not doing it as a separate subject.

No, I get that. Basically, you're going out there and everything you're doing and learning is embedded in real life and the local community. That makes perfect sense to me. Caroline, what about dietary changes? My kids went vegetarian, still are vegetarian, but I have to say, you know, they still leave lights on, still have lots of showers and still never turn down a lift. So what do you say about young people's attitudes to all this, actually? Well, it's complicated. I think you've got to deal with both practical and emotional solutions.

You can't just focus on external practical solutions. We've also got to be talking to children about how they feel. So you can deal with it on a practical level by talking to them about the milks that you buy, get a different range of milks. The thing about cow's milk is, and I appreciate there are arguments against it, although not from Britain's dairy farmers, of course. There are arguments against corn-fed cows. Right, OK. But it's cheaper than many of the alternatives. And of course, jobs depend. In the farming community, jobs depend on the continuation of dairy farming. But other alternatives are expensive, more expensive.

They are. But in the long term, are we talking about short-term or long-term solutions? In the long term, we are going to need to make these adjustments. So we have to actually have economic and political solutions that will enable the communities to make these changes. So we can't get stuck on it costs more. We actually have to address what is the bigger issue, which is the long-term survival of our communities and the planet. So we do have to find ways to address these complicated things.

Sure, and is there proof that doing something about the environment, whether it's recycling or cutting down on the amount of red meat you eat, for example, makes children feel less fearful about the future, makes them think they're doing something? I don't think that on its own makes children less fearful. I think you have to do that in relationship with others, with other children, with adults, with schools. It's a relational issue. It's not just a practical issue. We're

not going to save the planet, so to speak, by just planting trees or switching off cow's milk. We also have to be working together in community and we have to take care of the emotional feelings which are underpinning the anxieties, which is grief and sadness and anger and despair and frustration from the point of view of the young people that adults haven't stepped up and done enough to deal with this up until now. So actually that's what's causing more anxiety for young people than anything else is they need to see adults taking action on this. Ella?

Yeah, I totally agree. I think we really have to take care of the emotional well-being of us young people because we are very angry and very frustrated that we're just kind of coming into this world that's you know just breaking just yeah it's falling apart um would you recommend school strikes then, Ella? Is it something you've supported? Yeah, so I organised the first couple of strikes in Oxford and I found it a massively empowering thing to do.

Not only because it gave me a way to channel that anger and sadness that I felt, but also that it was so well supported by the adults. The adults weren't saying, you have to do it this way. You know, we have all the answers. They were saying, we really support what you're doing. How can we help you? And that was such an incredibly empowering thing because... Yeah, I get that.

But of course, Fiona, as a head teacher, I can't believe for one minute that you would endorse School Strikes, and not least because your school's doing its best to teach the subject properly. It's an interesting journey, actually, this, because as a school we didn't really want to endorse children missing in school. So we talked about the fact that we would spend the day

in September talking about climate change, teaching about climate change, and we would commit every Friday to have a message as part of our work that we do. However, with conversations with the parents in school, actually what they were saying is that we need to show that our children have got a voice and we need to talk to them about what peaceful protest looks like

and to give them an opportunity to say what they want. Thank you very much, Fiona. Fiona Cowan, who is from Bolsover Infant School. You also heard from Caroline Hickman and from Ella Mann. And if you have anything you'd like us to cover on the Woman's Hour Parenting Podcast one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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