Pint-size ecocops monitor parents' choices

Environmentally aware kids make parents proud ... and drive them crazy

By LISA W. FODERARO | New York Times News Service • Published October 11, 2008

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Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, 10-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Eliza.

The Acura MDX she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again?

Tsk, tsk.

"I have very, very environmentally conscious children - more so than me, I'm embarrassed to say," said Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

"They're on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs."

Ross' children are part of what experts say is a growing army of "eco-kids" steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture who try to hold their parents accountable at home.

Amid their pride in their children's zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size ecopolice, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.

They pore over garbage bins in search of errant recyclables.

They lobby for solar panels. And, in a generational about-face, they turn off the lights after their parents leave empty rooms.

"Kids have really turned into the little conscience sitting in the back seat," said Julia Bovey, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental group that recently worked with Nickelodeon on a series of public service announcements and other programming called "Big Green Help."

"One of the fascinating things about children is that they don't separate what you are doing from what you should be doing," Bovey said.

"Here's this information about how we can help the environment, and kids are not able to rationalize it away the way that adults do."

In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. "He'll come over and turn it off and say, 'Every day is Earth Day,' " Schmidt said. "He learned it at school."