I Replaced My Kid’s iPad With AI.
Here’s What Happened.
Every parent has made this deal.
“Just ten minutes.”
Ten minutes becomes thirty.
Thirty becomes silence.
And silence feels like success—until you realize nothing is happening upstairs.
The iPad didn’t cause a problem.
It solved one.
It kept kids quiet.
That’s the issue.
Silence isn’t learning.
Silence is sedation.
I’m not anti-screen.
I’m anti-passive.
And once I saw the difference, I couldn’t unsee it.
The iPad is optimized for one thing.
Consumption.
Tap.
Scroll.
Swipe.
The child isn’t thinking.
They’re reacting.
No curiosity loop.
No feedback.
No friction.
It’s not evil.
It’s efficient.
But efficiency is not education.
AI is different.
AI talks back.
That single fact changes everything.
When my kid started using AI instead of an iPad, the room got louder—not quieter.
Questions started flying.
“Why does that work?”
“What if we change this?”
“That answer doesn’t make sense.”
Sometimes the AI was wrong.
That turned out to be the best part.
The iPad is a closed loop.
You consume what it gives you.
AI is an open loop.
You have to engage to get anything useful.
If you ask a bad question, you get a bad answer.
If you ask a better one, the response improves.
That alone teaches something school struggles to teach at scale.
Thinking has consequences.
I watched something unexpected happen.
My kid started explaining things back to me.
Not parroting.
Explaining.
In their own words.
That’s comprehension.
That’s confidence.
You don’t get that from tapping icons.
There’s a quiet benefit no one talks about.
Kids stop being embarrassed.
They ask the “dumb” questions.
The obvious ones.
The ones adults stop asking because we’re afraid of sounding uninformed.
AI doesn’t judge.
It doesn’t rush.
It doesn’t sigh.
That safety unlocks curiosity.
Let me be clear.
This isn’t about outsourcing parenting to a machine.
The AI is never treated as an authority—only a tool.
Real play still matters.
Boredom still matters.
So does reading books that don’t talk back.
This is addition, not replacement.
The real lesson isn’t technology.
It’s posture.
The iPad trains kids to wait for stimulation.
AI trains them to initiate.
One absorbs attention.
The other reflects it.
That difference compounds.
I don’t want my kids fluent in apps.
I want them fluent in thinking.
The iPad keeps them quiet.
AI keeps them curious.
And curiosity has always been the real upgrade.
Have a wonderful Saturday
Eric
PS If you’re experimenting with this at home, I’d love to hear what’s working and what isn’t. I’m documenting our process—what you view as guardrails, prompts, mistakes, and wins—as we go.