For all of us anxious parents trying hard to break ties with our phones, we are now also negotiating daily screen time with our kids. In Jonathan Heads Anxious GenerationHe argues that the nature of childhood has been secretly swapped under our noses – a game-based childhood has been traded for a phone-based one. In the UK, the A smartphone-free childhood The movement – started by two mothers in 2024 and now signed by more than a million parents – has turned that concern into something collective: Ban on under-16 social media Announced last week, and due to be enshrined in law by summer 2027, it was a victory and a wake-up call for how we negotiate tech broadly. Jonathan Haidt’s own prescription is almost wonderfully horticultural — more unstructured play, more real-world freedom, more time outdoors, more work with his hands. A garden is one of the few places that offers all that in one afternoon.
But the big question is how. How can we lure our children away from the pleasures of the mind? Paw patrol The slow pace of the compost pile? The truth is that it’s not always easy, but over the years, I’ve worked with plenty of patient, experienced people who have offered hard-earned ideas on how to get started.
You might think that a good place would be schools. I set up a school gardening club a few years ago, and paranoidly expected it to sell out, with children queuing up for the excitement of growing their own carrots. It turns out that football was more attractive to many people. But thanks to the wisdom of Ida, who has run a community garden in our town for years, the gardening club is no longer a fixed weekly club, but part of everyday life at school: raised beds sit in the field, the kids dip in and out as they please, and I go to check on things once a week. As a result, it is very popular.
The same applies at home. Children have a sixth sense for organized fun; The trick is to let them find it. Run by Lara Honor Allotment of award eligible children in Somerset (and Instagram is a brilliant resource) knows this all too well: ‘Never force children who say they find gardening boring. If you’re out pottering in the garden, chances are your baby will want to come out and play near you; Cats and dogs will also want to join. It’s a feeling of togetherness and good times.’
Another early lesson for me was staking your turf. Kids are territorial (and so, it turns out, am I), so giving them their own patch—which saves you from them begging, in a barely concealed rage, not to trample your precious plants—is key. Children love a sense of ownership, their own kingdom, whether said kingdom is a single raised bed, half a barrel, or a den full of toys of questionable aesthetics.
