Parenting is challenging. You’re tasked not only with raising a child to be physically and emotionally healthy but also socially responsible.
In this era of overflowing landfills, dwindling natural resources, and rising gas rates, it’s critical to raise an environmentally conscious child.
Read on to learn how to raise your child to be environment friendly.
What A Waste: Teaching Kids to Be More Mindful
Research shows that mindfulness helps kids cultivate a focused awareness on the present moment, just the way it’s beneficial for adults. It’s easy to develop deep connections to nature, people, and animals when we are present in the moment and conscious of how our actions affect others.
As a parent, you should practice mindfulness with your kids to help them stay self-conscious and make positive decisions.
You can focus on mindful practices such as:
- Guided meditation
- Deep breathing
- Verbalizing body sensations
Set aside a five-minute “quiet time” every day. During this time, turn off the lights and have your kids sit cross-legged or lie on the floor. Ask them to focus on their breath and allow their thoughts to pass, like clouds in the sky.
Afterward, discuss your emotions and body sensations. Help your kids verbalize their feelings when they experience anger, happiness, sadness, shyness, or embarrassment. Let them understand that talking through emotions is an effective and healthy way of working through them.
You should also nurture a sense of wonder and curiosity in your children by incorporating nature into various aspects of their lives. By letting your kids spend time in nature, they’ll feel more connected to the world around them and learn how to advocate for it.
Tips to Help Teach Kids the Importance of Conserving Energy
Teaching kids about energy conservation not only helps lower the family utility costs, but also helps them learn valuable life lessons that can impact their health, the environment, and their future.
Here are simple yet effective strategies for teaching kids the importance of energy conservation:
Education and Awareness
For your children to appreciate energy conservation, they need to understand the source of energy. Talk to your kids about energy, explaining were natural gas, electricity, and other forms of energy come from. Several kid-friendly websites explain the concept in a fun and easy-to-understand way.
Illustrate the Concepts
Find ways to link simple acts, such as turning off lights and closing doors, to the big picture. You can use various resources, including posters and signs, to help your children understand the relationship between saving electricity at home, your utility bills, and the environment.
Going outdoors is an excellent way to illustrate the concepts. A good idea is to plant trees to shade your home and explain how that helps save energy and lower carbon emissions.
Have a Household Energy-Saving Challenge
Another effective way to teach children how to conserve energy is by challenging them to a healthy contest. Develop home energy-saving challenges. For example, you can create a chart and pin it where everyone can list the activities they did to either save electricity or lower their usual energy usage.
Encourage them to make positive changes and reward them with stickers on their chart. This contest is one of the best energy-saving tips that get the whole family involved in reducing household energy bills.
Energy Savings Tricks and Tips for Kids
There are many ways you and your kids can work together to help minimize energy consumption in your home. Here are a few energy-saving habits to get you started.
Encourage Book Reading
Encourage your kids to turn off the television and video games to save on electricity and read books instead. If your children are younger, you can cultivate their reading habits by creating a chart.
For every book they read, they earn a sticker. After five or ten books, they receive a treat. This reward scheme can work for older kids as well.
Keep the Doors Closed
Keeping the door closed is one of the simplest, most cost-effective ways to keep the cool air indoors. You can attach a bell on the handle of the back or front door to serve as an aural reminder for your kids to shut that door. It is something everyone can easily hear when they’re running in and out of the house.
Dry Wet Clothes in the Sun
Instead of using the electric dryer, encourage your children to hang their wet clothes on the porch in the sunshine. It will become a habit after drying their clothes in the sun a few times, and save you a significant amount of money on electricity bills in the long run.