What Happened When I Decided To Stop Using AI For My Kid’s Schoolwork
The fluorescent light over our kitchen table hums, and I’m wiping spaghetti sauce off a plastic placemat when my 8th grader, Leo, sighs so loud his shoulders shake. It’s 7:45 on a Tuesday, he’s halfway through an outline for his Great Depression project, and he’s stuck. I grab my phone from the counter, thumb already hovering over the AI app I use for exactly this kind of moment. I’m about to type in my question when the screen goes black. I forgot to charge it after my work conference call that morning, and the outlet behind the couch is blocked by a hamper of clean laundry I haven’t folded yet. No quick fix tonight.
I got into the habit of using AI for kid stuff last fall, when Leo started middle school and the homework load doubled. I work full time as a graphic designer, my younger daughter has soccer practice four nights a week, and by 7 p.m. most nights my brain feels like mashed potato. A mom I know from the PTA told me she uses AI to check her kid’s math homework and brainstorm project ideas, and it cuts her nightly homework time in half. I downloaded the app that night. At first it was just small things: checking if Leo solved an algebra equation right, coming up with nut-free snack ideas for his class party. Then it got bigger. When I didn’t remember what a thematic statement was for his English essay, I asked AI. When I needed a quick note to excuse his early dismissal for a dentist appointment, I asked AI. When I was too drained after a long day to come up with a story to tell my daughter at bedtime, I asked AI. It got to the point where I reached for my phone before I even tried to think through a problem on my own.
When my phone died that Tuesday, I sighed too, and pulled out the chair next to Leo. I was already mentally crossing answering my work emails off my to-do list for the night. “Okay,” I said. “What do you already know from class?” He stared at the blank Google Doc for a minute, then said his teacher talked about the stock market crash and people losing all their money. I asked him what he remembered from the documentary they watched in class the week before. Slowly, he started talking: about people lining up around the block for bread, about how kids dropped out of school to work. He remembered me telling him once that his great-grandpa was 10 during the Great Depression, and he sold newspapers on the corner to help his family pay rent. Fifteen minutes later, we’d drawn a messy timeline on the back of a grocery receipt, and he had way more to write about than any AI outline I’d ever pulled up for him. As I folded up the receipt and stuck it in his notebook, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time we’d actually worked through a problem together like that. I’d been outsourcing all the hard, messy thinking to a machine, and that night I decided I wanted to stop.
It wasn’t as simple as just deleting the app. I still use AI for work design brainstorming sometimes, so I just moved it off my home screen to a folder three pages deep labeled “Utilities,” so I don’t see it every time I open my phone. I made one simple rule for myself that I stick to most days: before I even consider opening AI for anything related to the kids or their school, we spend 10 minutes working through it together. We start by pulling out his class notes, write down everything we already know, and talk through what’s confusing. If we’re still stuck, we check the school’s online library database or his textbook first, not AI. If I don’t know the answer, I just say that out loud: “I don’t remember how to do that, let’s figure out who can help you instead of guessing.” That means more emails to teachers, more time sitting at the table, but it also means Leo has to practice working through confusion instead of expecting an instant answer.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, Leo spent 25 minutes stuck on a geometry proof, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how tangent lines work from 10th grade. I almost pulled AI up, but instead I reminded Leo to write down what he’d tried, and email his teacher before homeroom. She helped him work through it the next day, and he came home saying she realized he’d missed the lesson on tangents when he was out sick, so she stayed after to catch him up. AI couldn’t see he had a gap in his learning that he needed extra help with. Some nights, after a 10-hour work day, I’m so tired I can barely string two sentences together, and I really miss the 20 minutes AI would save me. I slipped up once a month ago, used it to write a quick absence note to Leo’s teacher when he had a fever, and I felt silly guilty afterward. It’s just a three-sentence note, but it’s still a habit I’m unlearning.
What I’ve realized is that most of the time, we don’t actually need AI for all the small parenting and school stuff. I’ve been a mom for 13 years, I know what my kid likes, I know how to work through a hard problem even if I don’t get it right the first time. The biggest thing I didn’t expect is that when I stop reaching for AI, Leo stops reaching for it too. A few weeks ago, he told me he stopped using it to write his discussion board posts for science class, because he’d rather just write what he thinks and get actual feedback from his teacher.
It’s been two months since that Tuesday night with the dead phone and the Great Depression project. I haven’t cut AI out of my life entirely, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be 100% done with it for kid stuff. But Leo brought his finished project home a week after that night, and he got a B+, with a note from his teacher in the margin that said “Great personal connection—this made your project stand out.” I taped that note to the fridge, right next to my daughter’s soccer trophy. Some nights we still run late, we still get stuck, it still takes longer than it would if I just pulled out my phone. But so far, the extra time feels like it’s going to the right place.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What Happened When I Decided To Stop Using AI For My Kid’s Schoolwork