The fondest times of my childhood were the annual burst of flowers each spring. Not so for my kids, who sniffle and sneeze their way through pollen season. 

With average temperatures growing warmer, trees here in Atlanta are flowering earlier in the year, blooming longer, and releasing more pollen than when I was a kid. 

That’s led to what I have dubbed FOGO — “Fear of Going Outside” — for my children.

They live with weeks of nasal congestion, sleepless nights, tears, frustration, missed days of school, poor performance on spring tests, and this year, a refusal to go outside during school — almost an entire month of school recesses spent sitting inside alone with a teacher instead of playing outside with classmates.  

When I discuss these experiences with other parents in my circle, many share the same sentiment. They, too, are feeling FOGO, along with a companion emotion I call “FOLGO” — Fear of Letting (them) Go Outside” during days of extreme heat or air quality alerts in a warming and traffic-congested Atlanta. 

“They’re just more scared to go outside,” a friend told me recently amid record-high mid-spring heat and humidity in Georgia. “And quite honestly, a lot of times I don’t want to let them go play outside either.” 

For friends in New York City, smoke from massive Canadian wildfires recently added yet another climate threat, with clearly visible evidence of risk from hazy air pollution.

And friends in Texas have been sweltering under a weekslong record heat wave, making outdoor time oppressive for their kids.

Why focus on children’s health? 

In her recent book, “Children’s Health and the Peril of Climate Change,” Frederica Perera shares the scientific evidence behind the changing climate’s impacts on the physical and mental health of fetuses, infants, and children. 

Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health and director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University, notes that almost every child across the globe is already at risk from at least one climate change-related threat.