Does AI Make Kids Worse At Sitting With Confusion? A Teacher’s Observations and Practical Tips
Last Wednesday, I was wiping crumbs off my 7th grade math desk after the final bell when Mia, one of my quietest students, lingered by the door with her homework notebook crumpled in her hand. She was stuck on a rate word problem about a leaking water tank, and before I could even ask what part was tripping her up, she pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket and opened her AI chat app. I held up a hand and asked if we could try just two minutes of no AI first. She huffed, shifted her weight, and said what I’ve heard dozens of times this year: “Why do I have to sit here confused when I can just get the answer right now?”
I’ve been teaching middle school math for 12 years, and this question feels newer than any curriculum change I’ve navigated. Five years ago, if a kid got stuck, they’d slump in their chair, complain to the neighbor next to them, cross out three wrong answers, or stare at the wall for five minutes while their brain sorted things out. Now, 8 out of 10 of my students reach for an AI tool before they’ve even reread the problem a second time. It’s not just math, either. My sister told me last month that my 10-year-old nephew was working on a dinosaur research project at her kitchen table, and when he couldn’t remember which period the Allosaurus lived in, he grabbed her phone before he even opened the dinosaur encyclopedia he’d checked out from the library sitting right next to him. When she told him to look it up in the book first, he crossed his arms and said, “I hate not knowing right now.”
That line stuck with me. Sitting with confusion – that vague, uncomfortable, itchy feeling of not having the answer immediately – is something most of us don’t like doing either, but it’s a skill kids have to practice to learn how to solve problems on their own. When you’re confused, your brain is actively digging through old information, testing connections, and stretching to fit new ideas into what you already know. That’s the work of learning. If you jump straight to an answer from AI before you sit with that confusion, you skip all that stretching. It’s like going to the gym and having someone else lift the weights for you. You don’t build any muscle.
Back to Mia that afternoon. I made a deal with her: we’d put her phone face down on the back counter, set a timer for two minutes, and all she had to do was write down every single thing she already knew about the problem, even if it felt dumb or irrelevant. She rolled her eyes, but she agreed. For the first 45 seconds, she just tapped her pencil against the paper and glanced at the timer every 10 seconds. Then she frowned, wrote something down, and said, “Wait. I thought the tank was filling up, but it says it’s draining. That’s why my number was wrong.” Two more minutes of working through it, and she had the right answer. When she finished, she leaned back and said, “Huh. I thought I was going to be stuck forever.” I asked her how it felt to get it herself, and she shrugged, but she was smiling a little.
I’ve started testing this small trick with my students and I’ve shared it with parents at conferences, and it’s low effort enough that most people can stick with it. The first thing is the 2-minute rule: when your kid gets stuck, don’t let them reach for AI or Google immediately. Say, “Let’s spend 2 minutes writing down everything you know about this first. If you’re still stuck after that, you can use AI to help.” It’s short enough that it doesn’t feel like a punishment, and it gives their brain time to start working through the confusion before they get an answer handed to them.
The second thing is to model sitting with confusion out loud. Last week, I was trying to hang a new bookshelf in my living room, and I messed up the instructions twice. My 12-year-old daughter was sitting on the couch scrolling, and I said out loud, “Hmm, this doesn’t make sense. I’m confused, so I’m not going to look up a YouTube video yet. I’m just going to step back and look at the pieces again.” She looked up and asked why I wouldn’t just look it up, and I said, “I like trying to figure it out first, even if it feels weird.” Kids don’t pick up this skill from us telling them about it; they pick it up from watching us do it.
Third, name the feeling to take away its power. Most kids think that if they’re confused, that means they’re bad at the subject or they’re stupid. Instead of saying “don’t give up” (which means nothing to a kid who’s already frustrated), say this specific line: “That confused feeling just means your brain is working right now. It’s supposed to feel weird.” It turns that uncomfortable feeling from a sign of failure into a normal part of the process.
I don’t think AI is the root of all evil, for what it’s worth. I use it to sort through grading rubrics and generate extra practice problems for kids who need it. It’s a useful tool when it’s used after the work of thinking is done. The problem isn’t that AI exists – it’s that it’s made skipping the hardest, most important part of learning too easy. A lot of parents I talk to worry their kids are going to get too dependent on AI to do their work, and that’s a fair worry, but I think the bigger problem is that kids are losing the ability to tolerate being wrong or not knowing for a little while. That’s a skill they’ll need far more than any algebra formula, whether they’re solving a work problem, fixing a broken bike, or sorting out a fight with a friend.
I saw Mia in class yesterday, and she got stuck on a new problem about bike speeds. I watched her pause, tap her pencil on her desk for almost a minute, and work through a couple wrong answers before she raised her hand to check her work with me. She didn’t reach for her phone once. It’s a small change, and some days half my class still grabs their phones before I can blink. We’re not fixing this in a semester, and there’s no perfect answer for how to balance AI tools with building old-fashioned problem-solving skills. But for now, two minutes of sitting with confusion is a good place to start.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Does AI Make Kids Worse At Sitting With Confusion