Being a responsible parent is not an easy thing. In the 21st century, this responsibility has extended to cover environmental preservation besides ensuring personal health and hygiene. Owing to the current condition of the environment, it’s important to teach your kids about the benefits of organic produce apart from giving moral and social lessons. Switching to organic products can also help you save a lot of money, which you can invest in your children’s education and other aspects of their lives.
But the thing that most parents wonder about is how to make their children understand the importance of coexisting. As the entire Gen-Z is dependent on technology for entertainment and knowledge, the following tips can help you educate your kids about the right ways to prevent further degradation of the ecosystem without hindering development in any way.
Grow at home
If your home has a yard, you can grow a small organic garden there and teach your children to take care of the plants to enjoy their delicious produce. That way, your kids will not only learn to grow plants (one of the biggest developmental moves in this age) but also enjoy the first-hand experience of growing their food. You can also create a spice garden to get raw materials for your culinary experiments and ask your children to help you in the endeavour. Include weekend gardening plans in your schedule and help your children grow in the arms of Mother Nature.
Teach them about nutrients
While feeding your kids, give them small lessons on the benefits of the different nutrients that they consume. You can also take the help of animated videos and graphics to teach them about the various vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, enzymes and their respective roles in improving health and maintaining the structure, integrity and functions of the organs and their systems. When you buy your regular supplies from an organic food store, you should explain the benefits of the products and their ingredients to your kids before asking them to consume it blindly.
Give them pets
Keeping pets at home and helping your kids grow with them can change their entire outlook of life and nature. As they grow up to be compassionate and caring individuals who love their furry friends, a shift to organic foods and other household stuff will be quite easy. For example, they won’t enjoy the idea of hurting their pets, and with a little encouragement from your side, they may chuck every material that is made by hurting animals. You can grow similar compassion in your children regarding plants and make them avoid things that are the by-products of large-scale deforestation.
Read books to them
These days, you can find numerous books and comics on the benefits of organic products for your children. You can read them out as bedtime stories, explaining to your kids the need for organic revolution and answering any questions that they may have with proper examples. It’s a kind of domestic environmental education that you can home teach your kids to make them grow up into responsible citizens. You can also create drawings, sketches, paintings of trees, and other elements of nature to help your kids develop a respect for them from a tender age.
Get rid of bad habits
Most of the time, your children mimic your lifestyle and take to habits that you may have. So, make sure you get rid of all your bad habits like smoking, drinking, wasting food, torturing animals, etc. If you want your kids to be responsible, you should first be the same to help them get used to it at a young age. If you want to make the shift to organic products, you should remove most of the harmful, synthetic materials and chemicals from your home and encourage your kids to do the same. Find an organic food store online and shop with your kids to help them acquire the knowledge of how they should replace the chemicals with greener and healthier options.
Play interesting games
Besides trendy video games, you should also innovate and create new games for your children that impress on their minds the importance of going organic. Take role-playing as an example. Your children may love the idea of playing a big tree that you can save from cutting down and become the messiah of Mother Nature. Then, you can also show them around the garden, give them a jar of bees or other insects to keep. Some children have a thing for tiny organisms, like worms, which they love to keep as pets and take care of. Don’t cringe at it or discourage them, as it can develop a beautiful, symbiotic relationship between them and Mother Nature.
The more inclined your children will be towards nature, the better chances you will enjoy in teaching them the benefits of organic products. Treat your children’s minds as empty vessels waiting to be filled with the right knowledge. As they grow, they won’t be able to get rid of these old habits, which will be a part of their individuality and identity then.