CONSCIOUS PARENTING • SUSTAINABILITY • COMMUNITY • WELLBEING

> with music, theatre, dancing, face-painting, food and a wonderful crowd of like-minded fellow rebels. Local marches have been fantastic for forging connections and uniting our community, and Youth Strike 4 Climate events are imbued with that incredible feeling of hope as young people stand up and have their say.

Of course, protesting doesn’t have to be noisy. This year we joined forces with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and worked to rewild areas of our community, which felt like a slower, more peaceful act of rebellion against clipped hedges and vast, green deserts of grass drenched in herbicides. As we watched our wildflower meadows flourish and the pollinators flow in, our hearts were lifted. On the side we made seed bombs and engaged in the occasional act of guerrilla gardening.

Within this though, it is vitally important to be sensitive to your child and their responses, their individual worries and fears. The threat to our environment is terrifying for us all, and for children it can naturally be a huge source of fear and insecurity which can feel out of their control. It is up to us as parents to decide how much we expose our children to and how we frame and scaffold the big issues at hand. For some, joining a protest can help to allay fears, through the simple act of being a part of the change. It can make you feel hopeful about a situation that so often can feel hopeless. But for others, it may bring to the fore some big and scary worries. My older two daughters love joining me on protests, however, my youngest does not, and we respect this.

The crowd, the noise, the presence of the police, the energy – it can be overwhelming. In October 2019, we engaged in a mass act of civil disobedience, and gathered together with 1500 other rebels on the steps of Trafalgar Square. We found ourselves surrounded by police and riot vans and, understandably, my 9-year-old daughter started to feel a bit anxious. So, after

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