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Canadian parents were put on the spot by their children this week.

You see, climate change is the hot subject at schools across the country. Teen activist Greta Thunberg is in the news. Children were asked to take part in Thunberg’s Global Climate Strike.

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This led to kids asking difficult questions of their parents: Is it OK to miss school to protest? Is climate change real? Is there anything we can do about it?

When I was asked these questions by my own daughter, I answered carefully, partly because I wanted her to make up her own mind, but also because I wanted to avoid the relentlessly dark talk about climate change, talk that is harming our kids.

This phenomenon is so pronounced that a new term has developed to describe the psychological impact on people: eco-anxiety.

As Psychology Today describes it: “Eco-anxiety is a fairly recent psychological disorder afflicting an increasing number of individuals who worry about the environmental crisis.”