How to Use AI for Parents to Have Better Conversations With Your Kid

You’d practically have to be living under a rock to not know that artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded over the past few years. From answering questions to planning vacations, technologies like ChatGPT and Claude are firmly a part of everyday life. But did you know that there is some great AI for parents that can help you improve your communication with your child? 

What is AI for parents? 

At BrightCanary, we believe that AI can be harnessed to help parents maneuver difficult situations with their children. In fact, we’ve built our app around this premise. Here are several ways BrightCanary’s AI tools can help you in your parenting journey:

• AI monitoring. The BrightCanary app uses AI to monitor your child’s online activity and text messages for concerning content. When the app’s advanced monitoring detects an issue, you’ll be able to review it. 
• Parenting support: The Ask the Canary tool is a judgment-free resource  where you can pose your toughest parenting questions and get practical advice. Most importantly, it can help you find the language you need to discuss tricky subjects with your kids. 
• Text message summaries. This feature allows you to see summaries of all your child’s text message conversations — which is particularly useful if your child is a prolific texter because it provides you valuable insight without having to read every message. Messages are grouped into two categories: Concerning and All Activities. There’s also a nifty Ask the Canary message box right under the summary where you can ask for more details or get advice on how to address the situation. 

What is Ask the Canary?

Ask the Canary is a chatbot powered by large language model (LLM) algorithms, which scrapes the internet to generate relevant answers to your questions. Instead of Googling your question and then wading through page after page of info to find something useful, Ask the Canary is designed to answer your question for you. So instead of spending hours looking for help, you’ll get useful, targeted advice and practical solutions in a matter of seconds. 

Using AI to start conversations with your child 

Let’s face it: knowing how to broach difficult subjects with our kids is hard. We’re worried we won’t be helpful or that we might say the wrong thing and actually make the situation worse. That’s where AI can be really helpful — it functions as a sounding board, helping you to brainstorm different conversation-starters and directions. 

To test it out, I posed some questions to Ask the Canary to see what it suggested. Here’s what I found: 

Scenario 1: Child is receiving hurtful texts 

My prompt: “I got an alert on BrightCanary that people are sending hurtful texts to my child. What are some conversation starters I can use to talk to them about it? 

Ask the Canary’s response: “I noticed some of your friends have said hurtful things in your text messages. How does that make you feel?” 

Scenario 2: Child is making inappropriate posts  

My prompt: “My child is posting inappropriate things online. What are some conversation starters I can use to talk to them about it?”

Ask the Canary’s response: “I noticed something that worried me in your posts. What was your intention when you posted this? How do you think these posts align with the values we cherish as a family?” 

Scenario 3: Finding out more about what a child is watching

My prompt: “I want to know more about a show my child is watching. What are some conversation starters I can use to ask them about it?” 

Ask the Canary’s response: “Can you tell me about the show you’re watching? How does this show compare to other shows you like?” 

Quick tips for using Ask the Canary

No matter how I posed my questions, Ask the Canary came back with useful advice. But I did notice that certain things helped me get even more out of the experience. Here are some tips: 

• Key phrase. When I wanted examples of specific wording I could use (rather than paraphrasing), including “conversation starter” in my prompt got me the best results. 
• Ask follow-up questions. If Ask the Canary’s advice brings up further questions for you, go ahead and ask them! 
• Refer back. Ask the Canary saves your conversation thread in the app, so you can look back on it later if you need to refresh your memory. 

Summary

When facing difficult parenting situations, it’s hard to know what to say to your child. Luckily, there are some fantastic tools using AI for parents that can help. Ask the Canary provides targeted advice on your toughest parenting questions right from your phone, including ideas to help you have better conversations with your child. All you need is the BrightCanary app to get started.