parenting | babyproofplanet

A couple of nights ago, listening to Aidan snore lightly in his cot, my mind began to race with fears about the future. I was tired, hoping for an early night before a busy weekend, yet sleep eluded me.

Dramatic images of extreme weather, food shortages and chaos flooded my mind. My stomach churned with anxiety. Worst of all, I knew my worries wouldn’t be gone in the morning or be eased by nighttime tricks such as camomile tea.

I was so restless, I woke up my poor husband! Luckily he was sympathetic. As an environmental lawyer, he has had to confront similar concerns himself whilst battling with climate change legislation. Sleepily he admitted that he had hidden his own fears from me as he didn’t want to scare me!

He gave me a useful piece of advice which I have been thinking about over the weekend; the trick of owning our fear. This practice involves fully confronting our fears in order to learn from them and move towards positive action, as taught by the influential environmental activist and author, Joanna Macy. Naomi Klein also urges us to face our fears in her persuasive book about climate change, politics and parenthood – This Changes Everything.

Sleep finally won and when I was allowed to sleep until almost 7.30 (a great result!) I did feel a bit better. I’m sure I will have many more restless nights but facing my worries has made me even more determined to become actively involved. I want to help avoid those dramatic images from being realised.

I have been researching campaigns during Aidan’s naps this week and I keep uncovering exciting ideas. To pick one example from many, I discovered a Australian group called 1million women (onemillionwomen.com.au) which encourages women to campaign for action on climate change. I was really impressed by this model for inspiring action.

Please let me know if you have ideas or campaigns which we could discuss here. Let’s truly own our climate fears and move towards positive action!

My son is five and a half months old and loves his playmat. Every day I watch him exploring on his tummy, reaching his hands forward, preparing to crawl. He is able to move quite far by rolling, shuffling and hanging onto the edge of his mat!

Parenting books remind me to babyproof our home without delay. On a recent shopping trip, I spotted an overwhelming selection of products designed to make my home safer. Tackling our flat (which is on the first and second floor of a victorian building) is not going to be easy, so I decide to take one task a week. This week I’ve ordered plug socket covers. Next week, the exciting task of moving our cleaning products into a higher cupboard awaits me. Then we really need to think about the various stairs in our flat!

Childproofing our home, I found myself thinking of the story about a man who builds his house on the sand. The image of his house being washed away, which I remembered from my own childhood, flashed in my mind. We can proof, guard and pad our homes into submission but without working to tackle climate change, it seems we are effectively building our homes on the sand.

Of course, I do intend to make our flat as safe as possible for our soon to be crawling baby! However above all I’m inspired to get involved with some of the exciting environmental campaigns happening at the moment, such as the fossil free divestment campaign.

We have bigger tasks ahead to make our homes and our children’s futures safer. It may be hard to get our heads around childproofing the planet (especially when we’re so sleep deprived!) but our protective instincts are strong and we can use this strength to take action. I look forward to getting involved and to really starting my babyproofing!

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Tag Archives: parenting

Owning our Fear

Babyproofing the planet