{"id":86170,"date":"2024-09-15T05:59:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T09:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/?p=86170"},"modified":"2024-09-15T22:54:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T02:54:47","slug":"how-to-talk-to-anxious-children-about-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/15092024\/how-to-talk-to-anxious-children-about-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Talk to Anxious Children About Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At 21, Olivia Vesovich has already put more on the line for the climate fight than most people, regardless of age. In 2020, Vesovich was just 16 and wrapping up her sophomore year of high school when she decided to sacrifice her privacy and step onto the national stage as one of the 16 youth plaintiffs represented by Our Children’s Trust in the Held v. Montana lawsuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vesovich first heard about the search for plaintiffs when the faculty advisor for Students Against Violating the Environment (SAVE) approached the club members at Hellgate High School in Missoula about the possibility of signing on as plaintiffs in the suit seeking to hold the Montana state government accountable for not doing more to counter the worsening climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confidently quirky with a broad smile and her signature purple hair, Vesovich was the only Held plaintiff to testify in court directly about her climate despair. \u201cI felt paralyzed\u2026 like I couldn’t live my life, because I knew that every single action I took I was helping destroy the planet. I was so afraid to consume anything,\u201d said Vesovich, whose crippling guilt over her environmental impact extended even to food and water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Youth
Youth plaintiffs conferring with members of Our Children’s Trust legal team before the start of the nation’s first youth climate change trial, Held v. Montana in Helena, Montana, in 2023. Credit: William Campbell\/Getty Images. )<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Only in the last two or three years have educators and therapists started to get a clear picture of just how much damage future uncertainty and feeling constantly unsafe from the planet itself can have on children and their developing minds. One long-time therapist compares the impact of climate change on children to child abuse, noting how in both instances children are betrayed by institutions or people they were meant to trust. Recently psychologists have coined the phrase \u201cmoral injury\u201d to describe the wounds they suffer when they realize those supposedly safeguarding their wellbeing are actively harming them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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