AI and your kid – Smart Sitting's advice
AI has exploded into our lives in the last few years, and it can feel like both a heaven-sent outsourced brain and a messy source of unreliable information. Parents have to navigate this brave new world not only for their own parenting, but in helping their children grow up in a world where everything – indiscriminately – is at their fingertips. Here’s advice from our childcare experts.
AI and you, the parent
AI seems like it has all the information, and all the answers right at your fingertips.
Want validation that you’re doing the right thing? Advice on parenting styles? 20-minute meal suggestions to combat your decision fatigue at the end of a long work day?
AI will give you all of that, and so confidently that it’s hard to know if there’s any nuance to the answer. Which may matter less in a pasta recipe, but which will matter a lot if you’re tempted to turn to it instead of your pediatrician.
We’ve all heard the stories of some user who uploaded a picture of a weird symtom or their ten years of medical journals and their AI bot found a nearly unheard-of diagnosis that when brought to the doctor turned out to be a lifesaver. And how nice would it be to upload a pic of your child’s rash for a direct answer instead of taking a half-day off work to go sit in your pediatrician’s office?
Critical thinking first
A lot of things can be distorted when you tell your AI bot about your child’s symptoms or upload a photo. Maybe the lightning makes that rash look different. Maybe the AI won’t ask the right follow-up questions to your prompt like your child’s doctor would. Maybe your child has certain circumstances that the AI bot wouldn’t know to take into account, but the doctor would.
Here’s our advice in how to treat AI when it comes to questions about your kid:
Use AI as an assistant – i.e. “How much Motrin can I give my child who weighs 40 pounds” for clear, general answers
Use AI for guidance in when and how to escalate seeking care – i.e. “My child has fever + cough + fatigue. Do I need to go to urgent care? What symptoms would mean it’s time for urgent care?”
Don’t use AI to diagnose your child or start a treatment plan
If, however, you’re looking for advice on different methods to sleep train, or recommendation on reliable sources to learn more about attachment parenting, AI can totally have your back. Critical thinking and the awareness to dig a little deeper than whatever is first presented to you is key.
Also, remember this: your gut feeling as a parent matters. You know your child better than anyone, and your spidey senses will probably be tingling that something is off before anyone else – definitely including your AI. If something feels wrong, it probably is, whether that’s a cry-it-out method with your child or a fever and fatigue that won’t let up.
Children growing up with AI
There are several different ways AI can be a tricky part of your child’s daily life. Two main ones you may already have run into are:
It might be knowing whether an image, a piece of information, or a story are true
It might affect how they learn things – and whether or not they process and learn information at all
Navigating a world of AI is a huge challenge for parents – you’re probably still learning about it yourself – and it’s only going to get trickier.
Teachers are already warning about kids who use AI for all their school work who then don’t retain any information, and the amount of disinformation and fake images out in the world is immense. Kids are going to have to learn a lot of new skills to take this on.
Misinformation is one big risk, and cognitive passiveness is another. Working through a problem, tolerating uncertainty, going to different sources for information to put together into one original piece of information are important parts of learning and growing up.
If you ask ChatGPT to write you a 3-page book report about To Kill a Mockingbird, you’ll get it. But even reading it through once won’t help you remember it tomorrow or understand the important lessons within. Plus, if you never learn to enjoy reading or finding out information because of your own curiosity, you lose a slew of other cognitive benefits in the long run. Scary stuff!
More resources: organizations looking to protect kids against harmful AI
There are plenty of organizations and efforts looking to set up guardrails around AI and future-proof protection, particularly for kids and teens.
Parents Rise is looking to create systemic reform around social media – you can read more about them here.
The Pro-Human AI Declaration – signed by huge names in tech – looks to preserve human power over AI and to set legislative guard rails around AI development. Read more about them and their poll results of U.S. voters here.
Let Good Habits Lead
It might be hard, or even impossible in the future, to say that you are a no-AI household. It’s sort of everywhere.
Instead of banning it entirely, try to build good habits in your family to counteract them:
Ask your kids what they think an answer is before they look it up, help them reason through it
Teach your kids to verify information via separate sources
Sit with them to wrestle through problems
Make open discussions and working through disagreements a lively part of dinner conversation
Just be there – the more you are active in what information your child consumes or how they process it, the more you are able to influence what gets through
In the long run, hopefully this also gives them confidence as they grow into this AI-reliant world. They’ll learn that they can think through things and figure things out on their own, a pretty cool achievement.
Adjusting your AI attitude to your kids’ age
You’re constantly adjusting your parenting approaches as your child ages, and AI should be no exception. The bottom line no matter your kid’s age is teaching them what might be useful, what needs to be questioned, and when it’s better to turn to a trusted human for answers.
No small feat – but you can do it.
For little kids, consume media together, talk about what’s pretend or made by a computer, even if it looks real, and emphasize human interaction and outdoor activities in your day (the WHO recommends that kids age 3-4 should have no more than one hour of screen time in a day, and being outside is such an easy and fun way to reduce time in front of devices)
With school-aged children, you can dig deeper what’s real and not, and present challenges to your kid to figure out what’s AI produced and not; this is also a great age to introduce the notion that AI can sound super confident and still be wrong, as well as the idea that people might use AI to get you to think in ways that you don’t agree with
For older kids who are also starting to use social media, continue honing their skills in understanding that AI and social media are used to manipulate their feelings, and that not everything you see on there is true; you can start teaching your kid about the echo chamber of confirmation bias and the value of struggling through figuring something out on your own
Oh, and if the person in the picture has seven fingers on each of their three arms, it’s probably best not to wire them any money.
The short of it: be mindful
You as a parent have your own ideas about whether or not AI is useful, trustworthy, and reliable. We’re all going to have our own approach to this, but it’s worth thinking through what you want your approach to be.
Remember, your kid didn’t first live a few decades without AI (and, for some of us, without even Google at our fingertips). They haven’t approached tech with the savvy or skepticism or know-how that you probably have. As with so many new things they’ll encounter in life, they need you there to help interpret, understand, and set guard rails.
So just be mindful and thoughtful about the role AI plays in your family’s life. Oh, and if the person in the picture has seven fingers on each of their three arms, it’s probably best not to wire them any money.
If you’re looking for a – real, human, non-AI – nanny or babysitter to help make your life easier, reach out to us here at Smart Sitting. With over 15 years in the childcare industry, we get to know your family’s needs and figure out the best candidates for your position. Click the button below, tell us about your family and what you’re looking for, and one of our Family Specialists will be in touch.