It has been quite a journey! It all started about two years ago as a family with important improvement in various sustainability topics. The goal was to improve so that our family could influence the other families to follow a similar approach and de-mistify the “difficulty” of being sustainable.
Initially, by talking and showing what one could do in different situations, we had lots of progress on other families. All of these are in the regular posts (if you are interested in checking them). However, when the pandemic hit, the social distancing prevented the regular “show and tell”, which I found to be a big component of this initiative. I evaluated many ways to continue with this project and have the same impact, but the future didn’t seem that great. That was until I got to a new perspective — sustainability for parents, i.e., how to raise your kids to the fullest so that they can have a better and more sustainable future.
This is based on our family’s experience. We have our eyes and ears open with our eldest son, who is 7 years old. Recently and he has already asked to become vegetarian cause he felt bad for the animals. A couple of weeks ago, he asked us to get “vegetarian” milk (not from a cow) because he thought the cows were suffering. So, he is doing a pretty good job intuitively when it comes to eating sustainably without us telling him why it is better to lower animal product consumptions. But, it does get tricky when it comes to other topics. For example, he noticed someone throwing out on the street a half-burned cigarette on our way to school. He was quite upset and wanted to talk to the guy to let him know that what he was doing wasn’t okay. We asked him why and he said “..because I care about the planet”. So, we kept going on the topic and shared some opinions on how our actions affect others and the planet.
Of course, we are aware he is 7 years old and perhaps because he is our son, but we see him having a great understanding of his surroundings. Growing up, my wife and I never cared where our meat was coming from, or where our trash was heading to, or if others had basic needs covered. So, within our goal of living as a sustainable family, we want to make sure we are not overwhelming our kids. So, we have to re-evaluate how we teach our sons. While doing this, the idea would be to keep notes of what worked and what didn't to pass along that knowledge, would I expect to have a much higher impact on other families and the future.
