How to Discuss the Oil Spill With Your Kids

Every year before summer vacation, Kimberly Hollis gives her kindergarten class at Orange Beach Elementary School a lesson on the ocean. The five year olds draw pictures of dolphins and discuss how to stay safe along the shores of this small Alabama beach community. This year was a bit different.

"We talked about what boom is, and how important it is to stay away from the water," Hollis said. "We talked about their feelings and how it's going to change their summer. Their main thing was 'I'm not going to be able to play at the beach. I'm not going to be able to eat popcorn shrimp, what am I going to do?'"

In the weeks since school let out, the clear gulf waters have turned to an oily sheen. The sand is smeared with oil. These familiar images are now everywhere, and families across the country are having conversations about the spill, who's to blame and what can be done.

Mary Dalheim runs the children's publications at the National Wildlife Federation. She's been getting calls from parents and teachers across the country.

"We're telling them that is an adult problem that adults caused, and adults are working hard to solve it," Dalheim said. "We don't want to kids to feel it's their fault."

The NWF has put out an online guide for parents and teachers on the spill. The first lesson is to be age-appropriate: Don't scare younger children, and encourage them do something close to home.

"Obviously you can't go down to Louisiana and help with the birds, but you can go to a nature center or a rescue area or wetlands and do something locally that makes birds' life better. They understand local better than global anyway," Dalheim said.

Author Richard Louv has written extensively about children and nature, and how over-protective parents have kept kids indoors where they've lost the joy of being outside. He warns that media coverage of the oil spill can create a kind of "eco-phobia."

"Kids can tell you all about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or the destruction of the planet, but they can't tell you about the last time they laid down in a field and looked at the trees," Louv said. "We can't ignore the oil spill, but there has to be a balance of information."

For older children and teens, Louv advocates turning environmental disasters into opportunities to remake the future.

"Everything in next 40 years will change. That's good news to 16-year-olds," Louv said. "That calls for creativity and innovation. That means we have to rethink energy, agriculture and how our cities and homes are designed."

Back in Orange Beach, Ala., the disaster is unfolding in real-time. Parents are losing their jobs and way of life, while local swimming pools are packed.

Kindergarten teacher Hollis says she sometimes struggles with how much to tell her own three young children: "I don't know how to let them know that it's going to be part of our lives for a while."