TOWARDS A BETTER ENVIRONMENT: CAN THE CHILDREN TAKE US THERE?

For as long as I can remember, we have always seen children as the future.

We seem to pack their bags with lots of “when you grow older” kits. We tell them what to do and what not to do. As a result, they may begin to accept that life doesn't start until they are finally grownups. Should this be the story?

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Children today would not remain as such tomorrow. Being adults by then, they would have a different worldview and approach to things, without the fine sparkle of a child's mind.

Today, our society prepares young children to make an impact tomorrow and sideline the fact that as children, today, they have their role to play.

Racing to the future.

Pre-schoolers and middle schoolers, as we know, are constantly on an avalanche, without wanting to rest. Their young minds race from one task to another. In my view, it only gets less busy as you grow up. As we grow older, we come to realize the need for intentional rest.

This is not the case for that young cousin or niece of yours, and in this, we find the first striking quality of being a little child.

A quality that needs to be harnessed into solving some problems in society, one of which is the present challenge that our natural environment faces today.

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Teach them young.

If we registered in the minds of our young learners, to care for nature and protect Nature’s treasures, they would stop at nothing to share and enliven these principles.

The fact remains that: if anyone practices what they know without thinking about it, that will be a young child. Young children naturally act without fear or self-doubt, hardly giving less of themselves.

Considering these impressive qualities, it becomes clear that anyone possessing them can make a difference in our world.

Our young learners and pre-teens do not need to stand on podiums to speak, they can get frightened by the height. They are more powerful change agents from the bedside stool, the sitting room carpet, or that leveled school playground.

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Let's play Spiderman

Children have a striking sense of responsibility; if you ever find them playing drama, the boys pose as superheroes to save the world, while young girls are your career women or actively cooking a “tasty meal” for their dolls. They always feel like they have a sense of place in the scheme of things and want to get involved in what they want all the time. They just never play small.

So, we must educate them about the planet without a feeling of fear or pessimism. We must make them see that their role today is as important as their assumed role tomorrow. They should be told about the beauty of nature and how they too can improve and preserve this beauty.

Tell me, what could stifle the curious mind of a child who wants to know about everything around them?

Children as children

Children, as children, can begin to make a change in our society, not as TV hosts, on social media circles, or on radio shows but right in the street of their family home corridors, the lobby between the kitchen and the living room, under the safe ceiling of their classrooms.

Without crossing the dangerous motorways, they can bring new stories to their friends in church, and their families, when back from school. Children have the super ability to break new frontiers without leaving home, remaining under watchful eyes.

If we make them see the direct impact of what they do, we would have improved their sense of ownership of the circumstances around them. They would accept the responsibility to care for the things they have and preserve what is being lost already.

Can the children take us there?

The growing child from ages 3-12 years is at a highly receptive stage. All their dreams and wishes are formed based on what they see, hear, and are taught. So these youngsters can help their families save the planet if they are told about these things that make for a better environment.

As adults, we already live in the age of the effects as we keep managing most of the circumstances we didn’t cause ourselves. But the children, at their developmental stages, show the potential to begin a new generation of the cause and not the effect. It might sound metaphoric to say that they seem closer to the environment than we are, but they do- both in height and about Mother Nature.

Let us see that the real superheroes are not the adults who would not be here to face the repercussions of harsh treatment on our dear planet. Adults who grew to no longer live like the superheroes they were when they were younger.

So, educate a child today about a waste-free generation and you would have made a powerful leap towards a cleaner and healthier existence for all. This is because their young minds would begin not only to live the change but a new generation of change-makers would have sprung up already.

Make a child know how much they can do for the future today and skip telling them how much of the future they cannot do now.

Have a happy new month in July and remember that our young learners are today's leaders too.