Imagine for a second this sweet moment: You’re tucking your kids into bed, telling them how proud you are of them for the soccer goal they made that morning or for the way they helped their little brother put his shoes on at the park. They still sleep with a bunch of Squishmallows, and they smell like baby shampoo because you refuse to buy the grown-up kind yet. You’re giving them the last few hugs when they stop you and say, “Wait, can you tell me a story?”
You sigh. It’s late. You’re so tired.
They’re only little once rings in your head like a clock counting down. You only get 18 years of childhood. One day will be the last day you ever tell them a story — and you won’t know it.
“Please?” they ask.
You can’t resist. “Just one,” you say. You sit down, you snuggle back into their blankets with them, you pull them close…
And then you pull up your favorite AI bot and ask it to come up with a “good bedtime story with princesses and dragons for a 7-year-old girl and make sure the princess’s name is Ava and—”
STOP THAT RIGHT NOW.
Apparently (!) this is a thing we’re doing now. Grown adults with their very own children are using AI bots to come up with bedtime stories. Not just looking up a prompt or texting a friend, “Hey, how do you start bedtime stories with Zack?” but relying on some robot named Grok or Claude or Big Idiot Who Wants To Turn Your Brain Into Mush for this precious moment.
And it’s so damn bleak.
I get it. I really do. You’re tired, and the last thing you want to do is tell a bedtime story when you’ve been going and going since 6 a.m. when your kid woke you up with an elbow drop to the tits. But hear me out — because I think we’re giving something up here that we can’t get back.
Everyone who uses AI has a “good reason” for it. They use it because they’re insecure about their email writing skills. They use it to “clean up” their documents. But if you never write your own email again or proofread your own document or come up with your own ideas, you’re never going to get better at those things. You just… stop. And eventually, you forget how.
Too tired to come up with a bedtime story? GREAT NEWS — the world has books. You could go to your library, Barnes & Noble, or the local indie bookstore and pick one out. You could ask your mom what she used to read to you at night. You could even Google “children’s books” and find a bajillion of them with reviews and everything.
You can also just be a human person. Not everyone whose kid asks them to tell them a story is going to come up with some magical novel idea that Scholastic would buy and Warner Bros. would turn into a theme park in a year. And that’s how it’s supposed to be!
Stumble over the words, forget that you said the princess was named Ava and start calling her Ellen halfway through, let the story twist and turn without knowing where it’s going until your kid is howling with laughter because how on earth is a dragon supposed to get out of a birdhouse that’s been cursed by a witch?
Tell a story about your childhood, like the time your grandpa found a baby raccoon in the backyard and you named it and left oatmeal cream pies for it. Tell your kid the plot of Angels in the Outfield. Make up a story with the word “fart” and “butt” at least once every three sentences — your kids just want you to stay in bed with them and talk. That’s all this is! But you’re making it out like if you don’t have a perfectly curated bedtime story, then none of it matters.
I know AI has its place. But let it have its place in the mundane things that take up too much of your time. Upload your school calendar and let it add all the dates into your family planner. Ask it how to divide cookie dough so you can set aside enough of it for the kid in your child’s classroom with a peanut allergy. Have it split up your grocery list into sections and then by the stores you need to go to so that you can make your errands more efficient.
And do all of that while remembering this is the point of AI — to simplify your lives. Not to take over them. Let AI handle all the stuff that takes up too much brain energy so you can let your brain jot down funny notes in your friends’ birthday cards and write emails from the PTA and tell your kids bedtime stories.
You don’t need all that blue light glow in your face at bedtime anyway.
Disclaimer: This content was automatically imported from a third-party source via RSS feed. The original source is: https://www.scarymommy.com/lifestyle/ai-shouldnt-be-telling-your-kids-bedtime-stories-thats-your-job. xn--babytilbehr-pgb.com does not claim ownership of this content. All rights remain with the original publisher.
