Parenting in the Age of Climate Change and Global Pandemics

Are there lessons for us as parents during these unprecedented times?

How does one parent in the age of climate change and global pandemics? This is certainly a question I am grappling with right now, as 2020 has already seen Australia thrown into two unprecedented national crises. Four months ago, during the worst bushfire season our country has ever seen, my three year old son was playing with his “Smoke Men”… wooden dolls wearing plastic masks to “suck up the smoke so that people don’t choke”. Today his same dolls are called “Invisible Germ Men”… their role is similar, but instead of smoke they “suck up the invisible germs so that people don’t get sick”.

I fluctuate between immense sadness that these are his childhood games, so far removed from the Barbies and hopscotch I played as a Gen X child in the 80’s and 90’s, and immense pride at his resilience and understanding. Obviously, I don’t provide him with every gory detail about these national crises. I don’t want to unnecessarily traumatise him. But I don’t want to lie to him either. Four months ago, I had to explain why there was smoke in our sky, and why in the same week there were hail stones the size of golf balls and sand from the desert LITERALLY on our doorstep. Today, I have to explain to him why he can’t play with his best friend or go to kinder for the foreseeable future.

My son loves fire engines, so four months ago, the sight of a firetruck and the sound of sirens was exhilarating for him. Golf ball sized hailstones were cool. He had never seen sand from the desert before! So, what was a bit of smoke haze in the air? COVID-19 is a bit less exhilarating. As a parent, it’s a bit tricker to explain why he can’t see Nanna and Pa for… who knows how long? Why we are now playing in the back laneway instead of our local playgrounds. Why all of a sudden we spend most of our time inside our small apartment and, as an only child, his social interaction is now solely with Mummy and Daddy.

Honestly, I don’t think he is as traumatised as his parents. My heart bursts with pride at his resilience. I cried when he told me that he is no longer “afraid of the people with masks”… he now likes to see people wearing masks in the street “because it’s so they don’t get sick”. He seems to understand that he can’t play with his best friend “because we can’t see the germs and we might have them or he might have them”. He no longer runs up to our neighbours when we see them outside. He gets that we are “keeping them safe”. He understands that we can’t play at the park “because the invisible germs might be there”. He seems to be mastering some pretty hard core lessons in social responsibility for a three year old.

So, some days I want to cry with heartbreak for him, but actually, mostly I want to cry with pride. Our kids are so much more resilient than their parents. We are only a few weeks into what has been a pretty relaxed lockdown for most of this country. The messaging has been confused and contradictory. Australia has managed to flatten the curve largely due to self-governance, social responsibility, and probably the unprocessed trauma of the bushfires that literally just happened. I understand that people are traumatised and want to get back outside. Back to “normal”. But what I don’t want people to do is use their kids as an excuse to do so. The normal that we have come from is not the normal that we should be striving to get back to. The normal that we have come from is not conducive to a healthy future for our children.

If we really want to create a healthy future for our kids, one where they can see their friends, run wild in nature, visit their grandparents, and play innocent childhood games, we can take this opportunity to go within. I am lucky. I am able to stay at home with my son. He’s three years old, so I don’t have to home school. I just have to play with him. Connect with him. Cuddle him. Honestly, I think he’s fine. Thriving even. I can’t use him as an excuse to try and get back to any kind of normal, other than a new one that he and I need to co-create. A new normal where I have healed the trauma of his difficult birth, where I don’t punish him for my own post-traumatic stress and anxiety, where I take the time to implement effective but emotionally gentle discipline, and the establishment of healthy boundaries.

My son has started role playing what seems to be a birth process, whereby he asks me to envelop him in a blanket, and then he makes his way out through a “tunnel”… his own symbolic “rebirth”! He was born via emergency c-section after a long and difficult labour. Maybe he feels he missed out on this process and this is what he needs for his own integration? Who knows, but I do know it has been healing for me to watch this and feel intuitively that he is healing too. In some ways, it has been hard for me to just be with my son and watch these innocent games. He triggers my trauma and together we must heal it.

These are the difficult lessons that lockdown has facilitated for me. I have stopped procrastinating about being a parent. I have addressed the self-delusion that allowed me to believe I was justified in my former parenting style, which was guided by the stress of a hectic and “too busy” lifestyle of trying to “do it all”. I have used this time to just sit still with my son. I have listened to him. I have loved him. I have stopped allowing myself to be influenced by other people’s judgement. I have “forgiven” him for traumatising me and I sincerely hope he has forgiven me. I think he has, because I feel like we have never been closer.

I have taken this time to heal. I have “seen” a future that does not include unprecedented anthropogenic climate catastrophe. I have realised that if we don’t all take the time to stop, or at least slow down, not only are we throwing away valuable quality time with our kids, we are throwing away their futures too. Our kids don’t need all the “stuff” that we seem to need to make them happy. They really just need us. But more than our physical presence, they really need us to face some inconvenient truths and learn some brutal lessons. They need us all to look towards the “normal” that we are striving to get back to, and whether this is going to serve them well. They are the future, and we can use this time to help them become socially responsible, environmentally aware, and consciously “awakened” little people.