Raising Anti-Doomers: How to Bring Up Resilient Kids Through Climate Change and Tumultuous Times

Description

A guide to talk to your kids about tough, existential topics like climate change, war, pandemics, and more, in order to create a healthy home, and process your emotions so that you can take meaningful action.

Everyone–especially young children, teenagers and young adults–now reports higher levels of anxiety than ever before. Yet there’s no playbook for parenting today. From the climate crisis to gun violence to political upheaval to racism, parenting in these times means bearing witness to chronic levels of uncertainty amidst societal and planetary transformation. Many are succumbing to fears and despair by becoming cynical “Doomers” (those who are extremely pessimistic or fatalist about global problems such as climate change and pollution).

In Raising Anti-Doomers, psychotherapist Ariella Cook-Shonkoff reveals that Doomerism is nothing more than fear or despair gone wild. We have a choice in breeding this response further into our culture–or not. Her book helps parents help themselves, and in doing so, help children, and future generations. Ultimately, when we reset our parenting dials to respond to present day needs and circumstances, we breathe hope back into the world by raising resilient generations to come–this book offers that hope at a time when we are desperately in need.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Ariella Cook-Shonkoff
Published: 08/19/2025
Publisher: Balance
ISBN: 9780306833571
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.32lbs
Size: 1.20″ H x 9.10″ L x 6.20″ W

About the Author
Ariella Cook-Shonkoff is a licensed psychotherapist and registered art therapist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with children, teens, parents and adults to help cultivate authentic empowerment, heal and regulate in the face of distress, grief and trauma, rebuild relationships with the natural world, and connect with renewed creativity, hope and purpose.

Ariella previously served on the executive committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance North America, and currently co-chairs the Expressive Arts committee. Her writing has appeared in major outlets, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Glamour, and Salon.