No matter your child’s age or aptitude, one fact applies: Your own attitude is the most important factor when igniting a child’s interest in gardening.

Let them follow their bliss. If you let kids get involved at their own pace, according to what catches their interest, you’ll have far better luck making gardening “stick.”

Kids have short attention spans, and they don’t have the same “big picture” view of the work involved in gardening. Forcing a child to participate in every gardening task, such as preparing a garden bed or pulling every visible weed, will create a negative attitude toward gardening. Don’t be disappointed if your child would rather play with worms or bugs—as long as they’re engaged in some important aspect of gardening, they’re learning.

Let them help with the “fun” stuff. Most kids love playing with water, so let them be in charge of the hose or watering can. Kids love to play in the dirt, so digging up potatoes or sticking their fingers in the soil to plant seeds is usually right up their alley. As their interest grows, they’ll be more likely to want to participate in other important gardening chores.

Set them up for success. If you’re going to set them up with their own garden patch, make sure it’s properly prepared with compost and amendments, and situated where you can supervise them from your home. Make it easy for them to reach raised beds and containers, and choose plants that are easy to grow.

Adapt to their perspective. Sometimes we forget what it’s like to be a kid. Children can interpret concepts in very simplistic ways. For example, if you tell a child that plants need water, they won’t automatically understand that too much water is bad for the garden…and the next thing you know, you’ll have a pond in your yard.

If you say that fertilizer is manure, and that manure is, essentially, poop, your kids might just “nope” right on out of the garden, never to return. Or they might think this is the coolest fact in the whole world. So be aware of the wisdom you impart to your novice gardeners, and follow up to make sure they understand the concepts you’re teaching them.

Celebrate failure. Some kids get frustrated when they don’t get things right, so adjusting their expectations is important. When a batch of seedlings doesn’t emerge, or when slugs gobble up their salad greens, help them understand that failure is an important part of learning. Saying “I told you so” doesn’t empower a child, but “Hmmm, let’s figure out what went wrong” does.