In her regional Victorian classroom, teacher Lindy Bellman often hears her grade 3 and grade 4 pupils discussing natural disasters.
“After there’s been floods or fires somewhere else, [the students] hear it on the radio, see it on the television, and start talking about it,” Ms Bellman said.
To help address their worries and to help prepare them emotionally and mentally to cope in an emergency, Ms Bellman has brought the Pillowcase Project into her classroom in recent years.
The Pillowcase Project
The combined Australian Red Cross and Australia Post initiative teaches Australian primary school students in high-risk areas how to prepare for a major natural disaster “before they are in the thick of one”.
Students aged eight to 10 decorate a pillowcase to take home as the bag for their own emergency kit. They learn what to pack and how to prepare themselves.
“Now when it comes up they say ‘we’d have our pillowcase, and we would do this’ and you just hear there’s an automatic calm,” Ms Bellman said.
“They know what they would do and the power they have in that situation.”
Australian Red Cross Chief Executive Officer Penny Harrison said the pillowcase workshops strengthened community resilience and empowered children.
“As disasters increase across Australia so does the impact on our communities and wellbeing,” Ms Harrison said.
“The impacts of these events on people can be significant and long-lasting, especially in children. They extend beyond the physical to their psychological and social wellbeing.”
The state of extreme weather
In 2022, about 70 per cent of Australians lived in a local government area impacted by a natural disaster.
Data from the Australian Actuaries Climate Index, which tracks changes in the frequency of extreme weather conditions, has shown an increase in high temperatures and sea levels since their records began in 1981.
The climate monitoring tool follows changes in temperatures, extreme rainfall, extreme wind, consecutive dry days, and sea level rise to assess changes in the frequency of extreme weather overtime.
Between 2018–19 and 2021–22 the Australian Government spent about $3.1 billion in natural disaster recovery payments, a figure that’s expected to double by 2026.
Eco-anxiety in children
Research shows young people are more likely to report feelings of distress about the state of the environment than other factors.
Environmental psychologist Susie Bourke said children were “increasingly aware of the threat of climate change” and advised parents to talk to their kids about it.
“This is an enormous part of what’s happening to their world,” Dr Bourke said.
“That information, knowledge and participation helps children to have a feeling of a sense of control that can be reassuring and empowering for them.
“The United Nations convention on the rights of the child states that children do have a right to be informed about the things that will affect them.”
Dr Bourke said children can be taught to manage eco-anxiety in three steps: anticipate, identify and manage.
The anticipate step is about helping kids think about what might it be like if a bushfire or flood happened nearby,” she said.
“Asking questions like ‘how would we know about it?’, ‘what might it sound like?’, ‘what might it smell like?’.”
Identify raises awareness on where in their body a child might feel stress or anxiety and what thoughts they might experience when they felt anxious.
“That might be noticing a fast heartbeat, shallow breaths, or sweating … or thoughts like ‘this is going to be terrible’ or ‘I can’t cope’,” Dr Bourke said.
Management involves addressing those feelings.
“A nice slow out breath is a good place to start, so parents might teach their children to breathe like a sleepy labrador that’s lying in the sun,” Dr Bourke said.
It covers the things parents might do to help their kids manage when those feelings and thoughts come up.
In Ms Bellman’s classroom, students are encouraged to present their pillowcases to their families and start a discussion about emergency planning.
“It empowers them to feel comfortable in what their role would be in the case of an emergency,” Ms Bellman said.
“So it’s a really nice space that they’re in when we talk about that project.”