The children’s awareness of the issues of global warming, translated…
Remembering how some twenty years ago when I was in high school, every day as I walked toward the school, there would be, a gathering of the meal trucks, and a lot of the students who couldn’t manage to get their breakfasts at home, can grab a bite to eat on their way in, and, each stand was doing very well.
The rice balls, the sandwiches, Chinese buns with egg…………with heat coming from the foods, they got, placed inside the plastic bags (the issues of plasticizers weren’t that big then), then, we’d, found ourselves a cup of soy milk, milk tea, then, gotten them poured into the plastic bags too, and, we’d, finished the breakfasts in the early self-study sessions at school, then, afterwards, we’d, tossed these bags, these cups, all into the trash cans of our classes, easy, cleanly, and simple. And yet, this few short minutes’ worth of our convenience had, created the trash that won’t be dissolved for millions of years on end.
As I watched, I’d felt my heart wrenched, and so, I’d asked Pei, my classmate to come with me, to communicate with the food trucks’ owners, to ask them not provide the plastic bags, and told the students who bought the foods from the trucks, to carry their breakfasts by hand into the schools, to reduce the uses of plastic bags; and we’d also gone to the office, to ask the office to allow us to tell the whole school of over two thousand students and teachers, to reduce the uses of plastic things………recalling all that now, I’d still, felt, passionate about what I’d done.
That hot-blooded young lady, is now, a mother of three, and, global warming had become, a known crisis, there’s, no time to waste. Sometimes, I would become, quite bossy, smiled and convinced the person sitting at the next table, “actually, the drinks may be best, without the straws too!”, and more of the times, I can, only, teach my kids to be aware too, and, start showing cares and concerns, for the environment myself.
My three children got potty trained very early, when they were a little over a year old, they only have diapers at night when they sleep, during the day, they wear their potty training underwear. One day, as my a little over one younger son woke, as he was still, half asleep, he’d, run fast into the bathrooms, to relieve himself, after taking off his clean diapers, as he “relieved himself”, he’d told me proudly, “Mommy, I’d made the earth happy now!”, that young child was so proud, for saving a diaper.
Actually, since I added in to the group “No Plastic” on FB, I’d found, that there are, more and more mothers who’d, started, going back to the old ways, to use the traditional cloth diapers, not only was this reducing the trash greatly, it’s said, to be, more ventilating, more comfy, and, I can’t help, but giving all these mothers who are pulling in their weights to help the planet kudos!
Awhile ago, my child’s elementary school hosted the survey of “are you willing to have the air-conditioning on during class” surveys, I’m really glad, that my kids selected the box of “Not installing the Air-Conditioning systems, and finding a more energy efficient way”; when my youngest sleeps, he’d told me he’d not needed the air-conditioning on, because he “loved the polar bears, I don’t want to disappoint them!”—this before school age child, used the word “disappoint” like an active verb, like he was, reciting from a nursery rhyme, and I was, so very, moved.
The Swiss adolescent girl, called a strike to not go to class for global warming, she’d gained applauses from the students globally. Surely, if the earth can’t see tomorrow, what use, would there be, learning in school? And yet, so long as more and more of us, get involved in the reducing of use of plastic items, to reduce the uses of all forms of energies, I’m sure, we won’t, disappoint the planet!
And so, this, is on how parents, can start instilling the values in their young when they are little, and, those values you’d instill in your young, they will CARRY over, because the writer’s two children are affected by what she’d told them, and they wanted to save the polar bears, and that, is why, the young children are, on board, and this simply showed, that everything starts with, just one.