How Not to Freak Out!

In recent weeks we’ve talked about simple ways you can protect your family from arsenic and lead in soil. In upcoming posts, we’ll start learning about some other chemicals and toxins in our environment that can affect children’s health, and talk about relatively easy changes you can make to protect your family.

Please don’t get overwhelmed and feel like you have to make all changes at once. Here are some things to think about:

*Baby steps are a big deal! Every small change you make really does add up to a healthy difference for your family, and often for the planet. One of my favorite blogs is EnviroMom. The two Portland moms who write it are huge subscribers to the baby step approach, and will admit to hardly being “green” before they took a Master Recyclers course a few years ago. Their blog is filled with really easy little changes (Air out your house! Wash and reuse baby wipes! Try growing your own tomatoes!) and some bigger ones too (Reduce your garbage to one can a month!) that demonstrate how baby steps add up, and eventually might even make the bigger changes seem easy.

*Knowledge is power I’m a big believer in sharing as much information as I can with parents so they can make the choices that work best for their families. I work for the government, and I’m telling you that the government is not protecting our children from all of the potential environmental hazards out there. There are some new laws in the works that will help, but at this point it’s still really on us as parents to make the choices that will best protect our kids. We can’t do that without a lot of information.

*Do what works for your family With so much information, you might feel like you need to completely overhaul your life/cupboards/refrigerator/toy box. If that works for you and makes you feel better and you can afford to, go for it. But some of the things we’ll talk about cost more money (replacing plastic storage containers with glass, choosing organic produce, buying new baby bottles), and some take more time (building raised beds for your garden, vacuuming more frequently), and some just won’t work for you or your children (your toddler hates the cloth doll you bought and only wants his ratty old vinyl baby doll). I encourage you, and will encourage you again and again, to not get overwhelmed and to do what works for your family. Make the changes you can now, make more when you’re able, and know that you’re doing your best. Here’s a personal example:

I was off work for about five months after my son was born, and then came back three days a week. He was nursing at home, but would need to have a bottle the days I was at work. When he was born almost four years ago, it was still hard to find baby bottles made without Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical you’ve probably heard about and that we’ll talk about in more detail soon. I was hoping to use glass bottles, but my husband could not get him to drink from one at home. About $100 and a big bag from Babies-R-Us later, we found a bottle he’d drink from. Turns out it wasn’t one that contained BPA, but if it had been that’s what I would have sent him to daycare with. I knew a bottle with BPA wasn’t the best choice for him, but I also knew he needed to drink milk when he was away from me. We were making a lot of other “safer” choices at home that I felt would even things out to some extent.

I hope this blog is a source of information that helps you “even things out” for your family! Soon we’ll start diving in to some of the major chemicals of concern, and I’ve got exciting news to share about an upcoming event where you can learn lots more about making safer, healthy choices for your kiddos.