Parenting Pointers - We’re Raising Generation AI. Here’s What Parents Need to Do Now.

I spent about 15 years working in technology before my life took a very different turn. I went from tech executive to stay-at-home mom, then back into the classroom as an educator, and eventually became the founder of Kid Laboratories. Somewhere along the way, the question I asked about technology changed. Instead of simply asking, What can it do? I started asking a much more important question: What is it going to do to our kids? 

When generative AI arrived, I went down the rabbit hole. I studied technology, read the research, read Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence, and listened to educators, technologists, and researchers. Much of what I learned eventually became part of my book, Future-Proof Kids: 10 Minutes a Week. Our children aren't simply growing up with AI. They are becoming Generation AI, and keeping them in a bubble isn't an option. 

So, what do we do as parents? I don't believe we should panic about AI, but I also don't believe we should hand our kids a chatbot and say, “Well, this is the future. Good luck!” Our job is somewhere in the middle: educate, guide, question, and talk. You don't need to become an AI engineer, but you do need to understand the basics. Know that AI can sound incredibly confident and still be wrong. More importantly, understand the difference between AI supporting your child's thinking and AI replacing it. 

In Future-Proof Kids, I call this the TYT: Ten-Year Test. When technology enters our home, I ask: If my child uses this regularly for the next ten years, what might it develop—and what might it replace? Is it strengthening a skill or outsourcing one? Is my child using AI to become a better thinker, or is AI beginning to do the thinking for them? For me, the goal is simple: co-intelligence, not co-dependence. 

And then we have to talk about it. Apparently, the birds and the bees weren't enough. Now parents also have the bots, the chats, and the facts. Ask your kids what they're using. Try AI together. Ask questions like, “Do you think that's true?” and “How could we check it?” Talk about when AI is useful and when it crosses a line. AI literacy shouldn't be one awkward conversation we check off our parenting list. It needs to become part of family life. 

One MIT Technology Review piece about kids' attitudes toward AI particularly caught my attention. What I found encouraging was that young people weren't blindly embracing the technology. They seemed to have their own internal “cringe meter.” Some were comfortable using AI for learning or experimentation but much less comfortable when it replaced something personal, creative, or authentically human.

There is another side of that cringe meter parents should notice, though. Kids seemed much less bothered by AI when they were simply playing with it, particularly experimenting and creating images. That may seem harmless, but image generation can be substantially more computationally intensive than text generation. And there is another resource I'm equally protective of: our children's attention. Every hour spent generating pictures or disappearing down another digital rabbit hole is an hour not spent drawing, playing outside, being bored long enough to invent something, or simply talking face-to-face with another human being. 

Perhaps one of the most valuable questions we can teach our kids to ask about any technology is: What am I gaining from this—and what am I giving up? 

The reality is that AI is going to be in our children's classrooms, phones, entertainment, creative lives, and future workplaces. The question isn't simply AI or no AI. The more important question is whether our children encounter it educated or uneducated, guided or unguided, thinking critically or simply accepting whatever a machine gives them. 

I've now experienced this issue from three very different perspectives: technology executive, stay-at-home mom, and educator. Those worlds have collided in a way I never expected, and I'm still learning alongside my kids. But I've become convinced of something: We don't have to know everything about our children's future to prepare them for it. 

We need to educate ourselves enough to enter the conversation, keep human connection at the center, and teach our kids to question the machine rather than simply obey it. And sometimes, we need to close the laptop and let them struggle, create, play, and figure something out for themselves. 

Because we're not simply raising kids who know how to use AI. We're raising humans who need to know when not to. 

Elena Czarnowski, M.Ed., is a former technology executive turned educator, author, and founder of Kid Laboratories. She is dedicated to helping parents prepare the next generation with practical education in AI, money, critical thinking, and character.