The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

by Jonathan Haidt

Christians ask, “What would Jesus do?” Secular people can think of their own moral exemplar. (I should point out that I am an atheist, but I find that I sometimes need words and concepts from religion to understand the experience of life as a human being. This is one of those times.)

The simple act of eating together, especially from the same plate or serving dish, strengthens that bond and reduces the likelihood of conflict. This is one deficiency the virtual world can never overcome, no matter how good VR gets.

Lenore and I recommend that schools assign the Let Grow Project.[16] It is a homework assignment that tells students from kindergarten through middle school, “Go home and do something you’ve never done on your own before. Walk the dog. Make a meal. Run an errand.” Students confer with their parents, and both generations agree on what the project will be.

Once she got the little girl dressed and fed and put her on the bus, the seventh grader said, “I felt so grown-up!” But it wasn’t just that. “It seems small. But in the moment, when I saw her get on the bus and it drove away, I felt really important to her, important to someone.” That’s what was so new to her. At last, instead of feeling needy, she was needed.

Gopnik says that a better way to think about child rearing is as a gardener.

Our job as parents is not to make a particular kind of child. Instead, our job is to provide a protected space of love, safety, and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish. Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows.

What young children need is a lot of time to interact with you, with other loving adults, with other kids, and with the real world.

Many of the best adventures are going to happen with other children, in free play. And when that play includes kids of mixed ages, the learning is deepened because children learn best by trying something that is just a little beyond their current abilities—in other words, something a slightly older kid is doing.