Back to school, to me, is like New Year’s to most people. I reflect, set intentions, pick a word for the school year ahead. I don’t join a gym, but I do feel a renewed sense of focus around things that tend to slip and slide off in summer.

This particular summer felt like an incredible juxtaposition of extremes. On one side, so much heaviness: foreboding smoke-filled skies, an unsettling fear of favorite foods, countless conversations about what is broken or just about to break in our world.

On the flip side, there was abundant time and presence with my kids, friends and family, made sweeter by long days in a lush landscape, and sweeter yet by the realization that my oldest only has two summers left under our roof. Plus, a suite of sporting events that felt sent from above to foil all the dread, from Knicks in five, to the glorious circus of the World Cup, to Tadej Pogačar’s epic climb on stage 19.

Now that even New England summer is acquiescing to the school year, I can’t rely on summer’s sweetness to buoy all that weighs. After some good back-to-school reflection, I’m landing on hope.

Hope

I have a “little book of hope” on my desk, and a Slack channel named # Hope where I paste phrases and links to sources that spark genuine hope for me. I scrolled back through it yesterday, then decided on three things. First, keep doing this. It feels good. Twenty minutes of “Hope Scrolling,” added to the calendar, every other week.

Second, if hope is my word of the year, I ought to be clear on what I mean by it.

Third, I see a clear pattern. Young people are at the center of everything I find most hopeful. Even in all that can feel dark about our world, hope shines, and it loves to emanate from young people.

What I mean by hope

If you’re not feeling hopeful, I see you. Hope can feel hard to access as news of so many wrongs flies through our feeds.

It’s helped me to get clear on what hope really means. For one, it’s not optimism. Optimism lacks the bravery, cleverness and grit I associate with hope. Hope feels strong, powerful and, these days, mandatory.

In an inspiring article, Peter Wehner shares a reminder from Václav Havel to see hope “as above all a state of mind, not a state of the world,” and “the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Hope transcends our circumstances and anchors us to a future vision. If that means picking something to believe in, for me, it’s investing in young people.

I also think often of the Stockdale Paradox, which I found by way of Brené Brown. Admiral James Stockdale spent years with fellow troops tortured in captivity during the Vietnam War. When asked who didn’t make it out, it wasn’t who you’d expect: the optimists perished. Brown writes, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your reality, whatever they are.”

I want to examine my sources of anxiety with that same discipline, understand what we’re up against, find where I have agency, and help my kids do the same.

Glimmers of hope

Young people continually demonstrate that they are not only positioned to make this world better, they are designed to do so.

Young people want to contribute and do good. A new report from Making Caring Common, Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, “Gen Z Wants to Do Good,” surveyed over 2,400 Gen Zers and found 79% hope for a future job focused mainly on helping others. Young people who feel like they matter to others are three to four times more likely to feel a sense of meaning or purpose, which is strongly tied to better mental health. As Making Caring Common’s Richard Weissbourd puts it, this generation gets stereotyped as self-involved and checked out, but the data tell a much more hopeful story.

Young people want connection. They need space to belong. A common narrative says teens would rather scroll than connect in person. But a new statewide survey of over 1,000 California teens, from the California Partners Project and several partners, tells a more hopeful (and accurate) story. Nearly 9 in 10 teens said face-to-face time with friends matters to them, and 70% said what they actually want is unstructured, unplanned time together. Teens aren’t choosing screens over real life. They’re navigating a world that’s made real life harder to find. Read more from .

In addition to hope, this sparks curiosity—what is going on here? Is the data not telling the whole picture? Or are stories that scare us just better at travelling and dominating the narrative? Or, are new AI-driven contexts guiding young people to tune in to what is good for humans? Maybe all of the above?

Collaborate with young people, and things improve. “Call Me Maybe Storytelling: Philadelphia,” the first in a documentary series from and storytelling partner Yoelle Gulko, shows how much more impact is possible when educators work directly with young people to build youth-centered approaches to phones, learning and connection. More of this, please!

We can navigate the messy middle, even on hot topics. I keep finding thinking that offers an alternative to extremes and fear, thinking that invites real study and exploration of the space between. One favorite is TED Talk, “What We’re Getting Wrong About Teens and Tech,” along with her related post on why she changed her mind about age-gating and social media bans after listening to young people. Honestly, just hearing someone thoughtfully evolve their position on a hot topic stirs up hope in me.

Human Raised. Another gem from the summer is Dr. ’s Human Raised, a guide for caregivers navigating everything AI has and will change about our world. I nodded throughout, especially at her idea of our human edge—capacities like empathy, critical thinking and creativity that algorithms can’t replicate. She offers the acronym HOPE to convey four guiding principles for AI in a child’s life. Though the book is largely focused on early childhood, I’d swap the P from “protect childhood” to “partner, protect and prepare,” and the framework fits teens (really, all of us) beautifully, too.

There is Hope

During a torrential downpour, my 11 year old and I bumped into a woman in her 70s racing into a store. She mentioned she was a climate scientist and that we “just aren’t doing enough to stop climate change.” My daughter looked distraught. The woman noticed, and said, “It’s hard to hear that, right? It’s true we’re not doing enough, but it’s also true that if we keep working on it, people like me and people like you can do something about it. We have to have hope.”

’s Hope in the Dark, put me onto one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s forgotten sentences, and it pretty much sums it up: “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

That’s the discipline I’m practicing this school year. Not looking away from the smoke, and not looking away from the promise either. And, though no relation to F. Scott, I’m going to follow his advice and stay determined to make the seemingly hopeless things I see be otherwise.

What’s in your #hope channel lately? We’d love to hear what’s holding you up right now. Reply and let us know. The more hope the better!

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Back in March, my husband and I talked with our kids about two court cases that felt like leaps forward in the fight to hold technology companies accountable for their impact on young people. And, as I posted then, sharing the arguments and the decisions with our kids proved far more effective at sparking real conversation about social media than any study or article we could have referenced. There’s something about the law that feels real.

Last night, in the wake of Wednesday’s $17.1 billion settlement between Meta and the attorneys general of 48 US states, we had another engaging conversation with our kids. It felt powerful to help our kids feel “in the know” on something this timely, and to walk them through the scale of it. It also felt powerful to us to share that this is the second time we have witnessed such a sizable effort to seek justice for consumers, and the first in their lifetimes. And, we’ll take any chance we can get to talk openly with, not at, our kids about the positives and perils of modern technology.

If you want to have this kind of conversation with the young people in your life, but don’t have time to prepare for it, keep reading for notes we worked from at dinner last night, plus a few insights my three kids brought forth.

I’d love to hear what your kids, your friends, or even just you think about the case, and what still feels like unfinished work.

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Conversation Flow

Most of the below is written as statements or questions we shared with the kids. Reflections and kid’s responses are in brackets.

Do you remember last spring when we talked about two court cases that involved the large technology companies that make Instagram, Snap, YouTube and TikTok? [See our related post from March].

Yesterday, an even bigger case was decided about Meta’s products specifically, and it’s a pretty big deal. Did you all hear anything about it? [We got no’s all around, but I always like to check first and to signal that their intel is highly valuable].

You all know Meta, right? Youngest: Wait, which products does Meta make? 13 year old: The glasses and AI. 16 yr old: And, Instagram and WhatsApp. Mom: Facebook, too. (met with eye rolls, ‘cause Facebook’s for old people).

Want to hear about what made this case so big and unusual?

First, it was brought by the Attorneys General of 48 of the 50 states in the U.S. An Attorney General is the most powerful lawyer who represents their state in the US. That kind of coordination almost never happens.

The argument itself was also different from past cases against companies like Meta. The case argued that Meta deceived and endangered their customers, specifically young people. It said that Meta’s products are addictive by design, that Meta knew about the harm to young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and marketed them as safe anyway. As a result, Meta had to take responsibility.

To give you all context, this is a similar argument that Attorneys General made against cigarette companies back when mom and dad were just out of college. And those cases made a huge impact.

Do you have a sense of how Meta’s products can harm young people’s mental health? [Our kids generated several thoughts, including anxiety about posts and likes, poor mood/depression around not feeling good or beautiful enough, and despair at interactions gone wrong, especially public mishaps. We added sleep disruption, polarization of viewpoints, and and content that reinforces harmful behaviors, including self-harm. We also talked about the fact that the harms tend to impact young people who use the platforms extensively. And, we considered that, in addition to the negative impacts of exposure to negative effects, young people also miss out on other, nurturing experiences when they give time and attention to Meta’s products].

Before this case even got to trial, Meta settled and agreed to pay a total of $17.1 billion to the 48 states as a penalty. Though Meta made $200 billion last year and is valued at over $1 trillion, that is still a significant amount of money. That money will be distributed over the next ten years and can fund programs to help support young people’s wellbeing.

Perhaps more importantly, Meta also agreed to change several of the product features—the ways it works—that are most addictive and harmful. From what you know about Instagram, what do you think some of those harmful features are? And why are they dangerous, especially for young people? [My kids immediately focused on two features. First, the like count 💔. And second, just being on too long and going down rabbit holes.]

[I shared a short list of some key features changes Meta agreed to make for teen accounts, and we shared our thoughts (them first) about why each of these product features were important.]

• Limit app use to 2 hours a day for teens.

• Block use between midnight and 6am.

• Limit notifications between typical school hours.

• Suppress social comparison tools, like the count of likes on any post.

• Suppress beauty filters and the ability to edit photos to change your image.

• Allow users to turn off algorithmic feeds and autoplay features.

What do you think? Would making these types of product changes keep young people safer?

What problematic features are missing from this list? In which ways would social media still be addictive or harmful, even with changes like this in place?

What other products should we be asking similar questions about? [e.g. Snap, TikTok, YouTube] Do you think those companies will be forced to change, too?

What questions do you think we should have for Meta? For the government officials making sure Meta follows through? For ourselves?

One final thought. Even though this case alone won’t make social media safe, it’s rare for companies this big and powerful to be held accountable in this way. One legal expert I listened to believes it happened this time because young people told their stories, and kids, families and advocates coordinated and pushed hard to make sure those stories were heard. Enough brave people taking time to stand up and speak out made this impossible to ignore. We each have much more power than we think we do. [Nods all around]

What our kids had to say

A handful of paraphrased reactions and thoughts my 11, 13 and 16 year old shared:

• Feels right: Overall, this feels just and important, even if not enough. As young people, they felt good that people are doing something about this, something big, too.

• Will these safety measures help? Yes and no. Yes, the suggested changes would help. But my kids had many questions about how these dangerous features will be blocked. Is it just a default setting you can change, or a hard block on dangerous features like the like counts? Are kids just notified they’ve been on too long, or does the app really shut off after two hours? Meta has 6 months to show progress, but we don’t yet have these details.

• Skepticism: My kids, the 16 year old especially, remain skeptical. Even though the products will be safer, Meta still makes more money the more you use their products. This felt really important to note. The underlying business model that creates all of this harm remains untouched. My oldest also noted that the content itself—the ads, the videos and specifically the focus on taking photos and caring about photos—is where so much of the problem lies. She is right to highlight that this case leaves much to fix about how ads are served and how the content algorithms work.

• Why 2 hours? My youngest asked “Why 2 hours?,” and it’s a good question. We aim for a 2-hour total screen time limit across family phones. It’s a commonly referenced limit, but it made me want to take another pass at why we reflexively use it. Plus, 2 hours on one app alone, especially such a juicy one, still feels high. We agreed to dig into this question together.

• Age verification questions: How can you really tell how old someone is? We talked about how that happens right now in places like Australia, often by facial scan or ID. But my kids immediately worried about errors, bias and data privacy (I was happy to hear that they knew to worry about that!). This remains an important open question across platforms, not just for Meta.

• What we take photos of: Inspired by a thread of conversation among our a10d Youth Advisors (in which my kids participate), my three wondered about photos and whether it could help to not only reduce the number of photos we took, but change what we take photos of. We’ve been talking about how focusing on how our bodies function can lead to positive feelings about our bodies, while attending to how we appear often has the opposite effect. What if we took photos of things we do (e.g. trick shots on the bball court, art we create, dances we do) rather than how we look (e.g. our faces, what we’re wearing, etc.)? Would that lessen the negative impacts? Even promote good feels? Great question!

• What we can do: If you use social media (or really any technology tool), use it with critical caution. Limit ourselves. Watch out for our friends. Do lots of other good stuff. And keep speaking up about what is good for humans (my favorite take away from the whole conversation).

What do you think?

Let us know if you chat with kids, friends or just yourself in response to this case. We’d love to know what insights and new questions emerged.

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In a recent session offered by the , a notion emerged—attention is the ground on which everything is built. Love. Care. Experience. Understanding. Any impact we are to make.

In this moment of uncertainty and rapid change, when so many of us are searching for ways to help our kids prepare and flourish, attention can provide a foundation—and helping kids strengthen it feels like a really good idea.

To wrap your mind—and help your kid build a real sense of how dynamic, multidimensional and marvelous human attention is, it can help to zoom in on its smaller subsystems. Sensing these subsystems at work can also increase a young person’s capacity to own and channel their attention.

In recent weeks, our a10d Youth Advisors, a group of 11 to 18 year olds across the country, have been testing out ways to sense and flex two subsystems in particular. We refer to them as our flashlight (aka orienting system) and our lantern (aka alertness system). Our advisors are teaching us volumes as they share how noticing and flexing these systems has increased their sense of control, wonder, and even their ability to support other people in similar discovery.

The power of our lantern

One essential subsystem of attention is our alertness system, more easily imagined as our attentional “lantern” that casts awareness around us. This is the part of our attention system that we use to stay open, alert, and ready to take in new information from the dynamic world around us.

Our lantern helps us stay aware of whatever situation we are in. We can remain alert and notice as new ideas, information and perspectives emerge. This enables us to respond to the dynamic conditions we’re in, helping us to stay safe, physically and emotionally.

This new information may also be especially useful in addressing our needs or helping us work towards our goals. It’s our lantern that also enables us to receive invitations to notice—to look beyond whatever is distracting us for alternatives and for the magic that is hiding in plain sight around us.

We also use our alertness system to notice how other people are feeling, communicating and responding in a given moment, so that we can better understand and respond in the service of our relationships.

How our lantern is vulnerable

Like all parts of our attention, our lantern has vulnerabilities. On one end, our lantern can get overridden when our flashlight is working too hard, and we are deep in focus on something. When I am writing and have gotten lost in the ideas, my kids know my lantern is quite dim. It’s a great time to ask me for things. I may just nod “yes” without fully processing an ask like, “I can stay up all night to watch the Stranger Things finale, right?”

On the flipside, our lantern can switch into overdrive. When we feel particularly excited by the environment or threatened, whether or not we are in actual danger, it can become hard to call on the other subsystems of attention. We just remain alert. We struggle to focus, make a plan, organize our thinking or make good decisions. For adolescents, it’s much easier to feel in danger of social isolation. I often wonder how often that perceived danger impedes kids from learning or showing all they can do in school, clubs, friend groups and even family settings.

How to help kids become aware of their lantern

Chat about it. Make sure kids have a basic understanding about attention, then ask things like:

• Do you ever notice that you get so focused on something that you don’t even notice when someone is trying to talk to you?

• When is the last time you just sat in one spot and allowed yourself to use all of your senses to notice what was going on? Want to try for 5 minutes with me?

• Can you think of a time when it was hard to settle down because you were in a space or a moment that just seemed overwhelming?

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Easy (and fun) ways to strengthen your lantern

“Attention in Place”

This quick exercise was a gift to me from the and inspired by Georges Perec writer of, “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris.” For this piece, Mr. Perec sat and made note of everything he noticed at a corner cafe in Paris for three days, paying special attention to what may otherwise have seemed ordinary.

If you have three days to spend in a Parisian cafe, I highly recommend it. But, if you’re like me, that’s not in the cards. Instead, though, take ten minutes (even more if you can) and head outside. Find a spot to perch, then just gently note anything and everything you notice.

You can follow the directions below to activate your senses and share the experience with someone else. No matter how you do it, you’re likely to feel even closer to how rather amazing the world is—even the little strip of it we inhabit, often without noticing, day after day.

Here are some directions, but as one a10d Advisor put it, “Don’t make it a chore. Make it something you want to do. You gotta do it your way.” Sage advice!

Shift the environment, and see who notices.

If you come to our house with your lantern blazing, you’ll find “Fools-bug,” a paper bug taped into our dining room light one April Fools, long ago. We are always delighted when someone (often with a bit of horror) notices him. I’ve built on this by periodically taping similar “critters” in random spots around the house, always noticeable if your lantern is shining. Months into this, every week or so, my husband or one of the kids will do it, too. When someone finds one, we remind each other that’s our lanterns at work.

Need bugs to print, cut and stick around? Click here.

Play games.

One of my favorite ways to sense the interplay between our flashlight and lantern is playing the card game Spoons. Players must both focus on their own hand to see if they’ve got four of a kind to grab the first spoon (flashlight) AND stay alert to avoid missing the chance to snatch a spoon (lantern). Haven’t played? Scroll all the way down for basic directions. Played a lot? Our favorite new twist: hide spoons around the room, then watch everyone scurry!

Scroll down for a fabulous how-to video created by two a10d Advisors and step-by -step directions.

Purpose vs. Goal.

Play board games, sports or really any contest with kids (especially siblings), and you’ll likely see things deteriorate as one player gets demoralized by another player’s success. All too often, someone leaves the table, field, or court dismayed.

In many ways, this is natural. Kids are different ages, have different talents, and often have yet to hone the social muscles required to gracefully win and/or lose. It can also be an indication that kids could strengthen their lanterns.

Learning to keep your eye on the goal of a game (winning) while also paying attention to the purpose of playing (having fun with friends or family) is, in many ways, practice with balancing your flashlight and lantern. Kids tend to focus better on the former than the latter. Though they haven’t eliminated all gaming woes in our house, two tactics have helped:

• State and agree on both the goal and the purpose before we start to play.

• Pause periodically to check in on how we’re each tracking toward the game’s purpose and how we notice one another tracking toward it, too. Cue those lanterns!

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Basking outdoors

Nature is an ideal place to open up and let your lantern shine. The container is big, the landscape is always shifting, and yet the scene is rarely stressful. Being outdoors is actually known to reduce stress and benefit us in so many ways. You don’t need to go deep into the forest. Nature is anywhere there’s earth, sky and other species. A few starting places:

Look up.

Looking up gives us a novel perspective, inspiring our lantern to illuminate new things. See how a tall tree looks from below. Lay down and watch as clouds slowly morph and move overhead. Or just peer up and take the whole of the big, blue sky. Something about the vast world above lends itself to open awareness.

Behold the night sky.

Surprise kids by suggesting a night walk, or just slow down on the way to the car one evening. Lean back and scan the sky slowly, noticing specific clusters of stars, satellites or other features. A sky-gazing app can reveal the hidden stories of constellations, planets and satellites (examples: iPhone | Android). Take the next full moon for a walk or a drive to a spot where you can see the moon big in the sky, ideally around sunset. Notice how viewing the moon makes you feel, and how the moonlight illuminates everything around you.

Close your eyes.

Our lived experience, especially in the age of screens, has narrowed so much that we rely almost entirely on sight. Scientists have estimated that ~50% of our brains are already dedicated to processing visual information, and ongoing discoveries continue to elaborate on how oriented we are around sight. The more we use screens, that emphasis on sight, at the exclusion of our other senses, gets only more pronounced. If we want to awaken and strengthen our alert system, it can help to close our eyes and give some air time to the other senses.

Mindfulness

In addition to these day-to-day ways of becoming more attuned to our lanterns, practicing mindfulness, specifically the practice of cultivating present-moment awareness, is proven to support attention. Keep your lantern on for upcoming articles that dive deeper into particular practices that boost our attention system and overall ability to be present. As always, we’ll include ways to give tweens and teens the agency and inspiration to weave these practices into their own lives.

Let us know

Try these and let us know how they go. Share other ways you discover to let your lantern shine with kids. We’re alert and ready for them :).

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How to play Spoons

Want a real treat? Watch this How to Play Spoons video—a fab collab by two a10d Youth Advisors. Or read directions below.

Setup: Deal 4 cards to each player. Place spoons in the center — one fewer than the number of players (4 players = 3 spoons). Give the rest of the deck back to the dealer (that becomes the draw pile).

Initial Goal: Get four of a kind in your hand. That enables you to pick up the first spoon.

Ultimate Goal (to win): Don’t be the last one to grab for a spoon!

How to play:

1. The dealer picks up a card from the draw pile. They can either keep it or pass it. If they keep it, they must discard another card from their hand. They pass the discarded card face-down, to the left.

2. One at a time, each player picks up cards as they are passed to them, then either passes it on or keeps it and discards, always passing one to their left — this happens fast and continuously.

3. The moment someone gets four of a kind in their hand, they quietly grab a spoon.

4. As soon as one spoon is grabbed, everyone else scrambles to grab one too.

5. The player left without a spoon loses that round and gets a letter (S, then P, then O, etc.).

6. Spell out S-P-O-O-N-S, and you’re eliminated.

Last player standing wins.

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NOTE: If you read an earlier version of this article, you may recall we used the term “floodlight” in place of “lantern.” We started out using that term, but our a10d Youth Advisors and, in turn, we connected much more to the lantern metaphor. So, lantern it is!

Navigating the media about AI’s hyperobject-level impact is daunting enough. Figuring out how to protect and prepare our kids for a world with it feels downright overwhelming.

New research and guidance keep emerging, but moving from tip sheets to real opportunities for kids to learn, the kinds that build lasting understanding and agency, is a whole other thing.

I’ve spent my career in education and believe deeply in hands-on, agentic learning. I get tingles hearing and , authors of The Disengaged Teen, describe kids in “explorer” mode, the optimal state for engagement: “when kids are driven by internal curiosity rather than just external expectations, they investigate the questions they care about and persist to achieve their goals.”

I want that for my kids as they grow to understand how AI works, both the help it offers and the risks it poses. I want them to know they have agency over how any AI tool impacts their thinking, learning and actions, and to feel ready to apply that agency with confidence.

Ready schools are starting to teach AI literacy in ways that stick, but the AI rollout feels faster than any of us are prepared for. When asked, 45% of teens saw themselves and their peers as responsible for learning about generative AI, with only 16% trusting that responsibility to their school. This feels like too big a burden and too critical a task to leave entirely to our kids or our schools.

Plus, it’s summer. And, yet...hey, it’s summer! What better time for kid-led exploration? So…that still leaves the big question: how?

We can’t just sit our kids down and lecture them about the risks and benefits of AI. They need to build that understanding for themselves. But how do we help them do that safely and effectively, in a way that feels like a pull from them, not a push from us?

Seizing the opportunity to explore

As luck would have it, an opportunity presented itself, and it all started with four overripe bananas and an 11 year old who really wanted to make banana bread.

Instead of searching the internet for a recipe, my husband and I encouraged her to experiment. Try making two banana breads by following recipes from two different sources: one human, one AI.

She was briefly skeptical about the extra labor, but she was intrigued, and with a wide open summer day ahead, she was game. What followed was packed with moments for testing, noticing, reflecting and learning. It also gave us a natural opportunity to establish our own version of the “AI Sandwich”—a metaphor that’s stuck around and now grounds our whole family of five when we interact with an AI, or any source of intelligence.

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The experiment

Step 1: Setting a goal

To start, we asked our daughter what her goal was. “To make banana bread even better than my older sisters” (apparently someone had suggested her culinary skills were inferior). How would she know if she succeeded? “They’ll have to admit it’s really good” (not an easy feat).

Step 2: Considering sources and crafting prompts

She settled on consulting Nana and Claude. That gave us an opening to talk about how the two were different: Nana has been baking for over 70 years and has learned a great deal through experience. Claude has no lived experience. To generate a response, it references a mind-boggling supply of books, articles, and websites (millions and millions), then uses patterns in that information to predict the best answer to your question.

Once we chatted through that a bit, the distinction helped her shape her prompts. For Nana, it felt simple: What is your favorite recipe for banana bread? and Do you have any tips or tricks that make it turn out extra yummy?

Claude was trickier. She wondered, “How can Claude know what’ll taste good?” Good point. Claude can’t. She then thought that, maybe, Claude could tell which recipes tend to be most popular or show up the most. Pretty cool thought.

We did interject a suggestion: rather than ask for an answer outright, what if you ask Claude how you could go about finding a recipe for the yummiest banana bread? She liked the idea and decided to go with both “What kinds of recipes for banana bread are most popular?” and “How could I find a recipe for the yummiest banana bread?”

Step 3: Querying the sources

She called Nana, and Nana immediately emailed a photo of her tried-and-true recipe, written on a notecard along with a few tips: let the bananas ripen as much as possible, use shortening instead of oil, fold in broken walnuts, and don’t overmix.

Claude sent back a set of questions for her to clarify instead of steps: Things like, How sweet do you like your banana bread? Or Do you want the top crusty or moist? Once she answered, it generated a recipe that was custom-built for her.

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Step 4: Testing the outputs

Recipes in hand, she wanted to skip straight to the “fun part.” But we encouraged her to put the recipes side by side first and think through each one, before diving in.

Nana’s seemed straightforward, though our kiddo realized she didn’t know what shortening was—a good catch that sent us to the store. She also immediately noticed an issue with the AI recipe: ingredient amounts expressed in decimals that didn’t map to our measuring cups. How much is 0.8 of a teaspoon, anyway? Without us saying a word, those decimals showed her how an AI output can fall short in a very real way, and it gave a natural reason for her to go back and submit a follow-up ask to Claude. Can you rewrite this recipe with fractions used in baking (like ¼ and ½)?

In the end, the AI recipe was passable, with one notable win: since it was refined by her preferences, it included her beloved chocolate chips. Still, Nana’s was the clear winner. (Our eldest, an avid baker, mentioned she’s seen countless posts about AI recipes gone wrong, so beware if you try this with something riskier than banana bread!)

Step 5: Reflect

As we nibbled, we asked what advice she’d give a friend after her experience. She offered three takeaways:

• There are different ways to get help, from people and from AIs.

• You need to think through the advice before you trust it’ll work.

• When you want to bake something that tastes really good, probably ask a human.

That first bullet was what we thought she’d get out of this. The last one felt like a win for Team Human (shout out ). But the middle one felt like the start of a bigger conversation.

The “AI Sandwich”

We zoomed out to talk through her process, and I started sketching a diagram on a whiteboard with YOU; AI/Nana; YOU, stacked vertically. We talked through how she had started and ended this process with her own goal and thinking. The advice was a step in the middle.

I’d read about the “AI Sandwich,” a mental model built on a human-first, human-last approach that keeps you in control of the process and that positions AI to enhance your thinking rather than replace it. I shared the metaphor, and as we talked, it felt like an authentic fit—our kiddo seemed to really take to it.

Foundational framing

We talked about why the sandwich matters, especially when we interact with machines designed to present their ideas in a polished way that makes them sound accurate and true, even if/when the output contains errors.

We decided it was worth understanding more about how these machines work, but doing it together. So we set up a project just for my daughter on my Claude account. This way, we can stay in the loop and learn together as copilots. While she’s growing and learning, and until these tools get safer, we’ll learn about them and use them together.

We also got specific about why we don’t think current AI products are designed to keep people, especially young people, safe. We grouped those concerns into three categories:

• Cognitive/thinking safety: You’re still building really important thinking skills, and using AI the wrong way can block that growth.

• Social/emotional safety: AI tools can interact with you in ways that block social and emotional development and get confusing emotionally. We recalled seeing a video of a boy interacting with a bot, which was a great way for our kids to see the uneasy relational territory we’re referring to.

• Attentional safety: The companies that build and provide AI tools like Claude.ai make more money the more we use their products, so the tools are designed to capture our attention and pull us away from other things we value.

We all agreed to watch out for these risks, be intentional about our use in order to limit the impact on us, and advocate for prosocial AI design when and however we can.

Stretching the metaphor

Our thirteen year old jumped in and suggested that it would be even better if we changed it from an “AI Sandwich” to an “Advice Sandwich.” She elaborated, “You probably want to do this anytime you’re looking for advice - I mean, isn’t AI just one source, but there are lots of sources?”

We loved how that flip both demystified AI and placed it into a context that felt familiar and empowering. AI is one, very powerful source of advice, intelligence or perspective, and treating its output as guidance to take or leave, rather than truth to simply accept, felt pretty great.

The more we talked, the more I loved that this model is about more than AI. As my kids grow, they increasingly seek, and sometimes unwittingly receive, advice from friends and strong personalities in the media. Believing that advice from any source starts and ends with what you think might be the most adaptive mental model of all.

These technologies are also changing so fast that it feels more useful to anchor on the need or the process than on any one tool or source. Kids will be so much better prepared to apply that model as the tools and the world around them keep evolving.

Our sandwich

So, ours became the Advice Sandwich. Whenever we want to create, understand, solve or learn how to do something, we try to approach it in three “layers.” You’re the bread at the start and the end, and the source of advice comes in the middle. Here’s the graphic that now hangs in our office.

Layer 1, You: Get clear on your goal first. Generating your own goal, ideas and questions before you ask gives you something to compare the output against, and it grounds the whole process in your own thinking. How you give context and direction in your prompts makes a huge difference in what comes out of any source.

Layer 2, Advice (AI or human): Query your source. See what comes out, and don’t stop there. Slow down, ask for clarification, refine with more prompts as needed. Even if you’re going old school and reading a book, reviewing a passage again counts.

Layer 3, You, again: Consider the output. What does it make you think? How might it serve your goal? Test it, and refine your approach based on what you learn.

Looking ahead

This “Advice Sandwich” metaphor may prove to have limitations. Advice may not be a broad enough umbrella for all that our kids will do with this powerful tech. They’ll move on solve problems, build things and deploy agentic AIs in the very near future. But I am still bullish on this to start. If this mental model can sink in deep, that same, essential You — Other — You sandwich will naturally surface and inform whatever collaborations they engage in with AI.

Grateful to keep learning

Quick gratitude for two frameworks that shaped this thinking: Brookings’ Prosper, Prepare, Protect report helped me orient around the balance parents and educators have to strike. And AI for Education’s SEE Framework, built for educators but useful for any of us, defines GenAI literacy as the knowledge, mindsets and practices that let us use it safely, ethically and effectively and provides background on learning outcomes as well as sample learning tasks by age group.

We’ll keep drawing on resources like these to build and share experiments that prepare the kids we love, safely and effectively. We’d love to hear what you’re learning, too.

Next time your kid is excited to learn about something or take on a new challenge, invite them to try the Advice Sandwich. See if they can pick two sources, design prompts, and reflect on the outputs in service of their goal. We’d love to know what they learn.

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A final win for Team Human

Later that night, our kiddo texted Nana a photo of the winning banana bread. Nana wrote right back to say how great it looked, and how proud she was. Pleased, our girl said, “Claude could never do that.”

Yup, that’s right, kid.

I shared one of my summer hacks in a Substack note and across my socials (a rare occurrence), and friends keep asking about it, so I thought I’d write a little post about it.

The hack at a high level

As soon as school’s done, out come the whiteboards. It’s the third year in a row, and I kind of love them. We use them Monday through Friday to give just a touch of structure to the wild summer, helping us organize ourselves each day and spark a little reflection and conversation. Here’s how they work.

Coordinating chaos

Each kid has a whiteboard that we use to agree on the main places they’ll give their time and attention for the day. The board is divided into two sections: a schedule of key activities (places to be, drop offs/pick ups, happenings) and a list of chores or tasks that they should aim to complete by day’s end (i.e. how will they contribute to keeping the family going). I prep the boards with them the night before. Then, when kids come down for breakfast, we review again and adjust as necessary.

I love several things about this. First, knowing what is going on each day helps maintain sanity in the midst of summer chaos without losing the joy of a more free and open schedule. The editability of the board means that I can suggest, but we can amend and co-create the schedule. And, when there are tradeoffs to consider (i.e. is time with this group going to fill your bucket? Did you build in enough time outside today?) or concessions to make (i.e. No, I can’t drive you, but can you walk, bike or take the bus?), we can have a conversation about them.

I also kind of love the analog nature of it. I watched a tech maven wire up a whole handful of AI agents to manage her family’s schedule and admired her for both her technical capacity and enthusiasm. But, I kind of love using our hands, looking at each other, and making calls and commitments together on our old school whiteboards. I can also hear my kids’ older selves joking about me and my whiteboards someday, but in a way that means those boards and I kind of broke through.

Daily provocation

We also allocate one of the whiteboards to being a daily provocation board. In the center of the board, I write a new quote that provokes thinking and, ideally, some discussion, including the name of the quote’s source. We each read the quote at breakfast, then we know we’ll talk about it at dinner that night.

Our 4 questions

On the bottom of the board, read the same four questions we use to frame our reflection and discussion:

#1 WHO said it?

My youngest likes to figure out who the source is, so I just write the name. Then, at dinner/whenever we regroup to discuss, we try to share more about who that person is/was, when and where they lived and what their contributions are/were to the world. Knowing the historical and cultural context as well as the identity of the source really impacts the meaning. Plus, we want our kids to ask, “Who made this?” of any media message they consume.

#2 WHAT do you think it means?

#3 WHY does it resonate?

#4 WHY does it NOT resonate?

That last question is the one I love most. It gives everyone, kids especially, permission to push back. Some of our best dinner conversations have started with someone saying, “honestly, I kind of don’t buy it.”

Even if the quote largely resonates, there are always people for whom or situations in which something isn’t true—at least not true in the same way. If we’re all in agreement, I’ll ask, “Okay, but when or for whom might this not resonate or feel true?” I love when we can explore those differences. We not only get some reps in for our perspective taking and empathy muscles, but we practice a totally different way of encountering compelling ideas in the wild. I hope my kids will be that much more ready to interrogate any meme, video or other bite sized message because they’ve had this practice.

On Fridays, someone besides me is on the hook to source a quote or provocation for the group. Saturdays and Sundays, we rest.

Quotes to date

Friends have been asking what quotes we’ve been using and which have sparked the most engagement and discussion. So, here are the quotes we’ve tried so far and a few teed up for next week.

• “In the Spring [or summer!], at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” —Margaret Atwood (Canadian author, poet, and essayist )

• “Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they want you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. So go ahead. —Kevin Kelly (writer, journalist, Founder, Wired Magazine)

• “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” —Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (French cultural critic in late 19th century) + Bon Jovi (rock band :)

• “Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning. Deep curiosity burns longer and brighter.” –Monica Parker (author, The Power of Wonder)

• “There is no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There is no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers– at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.” –Octavia Butler (Science fiction writer and Afrofuturist)

• “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” —Søren Kierkegaard (17th century Danish philosopher)

• “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” —Yogi Berra (Baseball hall-of-famer)

• “You think that because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.” ― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi (13th-century mystic, Islamic scholar, and poet who lived in what is now Afghanistan and Turkey)

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” —Niels Bohr (Nobel-prize winning physicist)

• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou (American memoirist, essayist, poet, and civil rights activist)

• “I don’t know, Jessie. Toys are for play, but tech...is for everything.” —Woody, Disney’s Toy Story 5 (our 11 year old’s suggestion)

• “The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” –Oscar Wilde (Irish playwright and author) *This one sparked a lively discussion!

• “The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it.” –Abraham Lincoln (16th US president)

• “I play to figure things out—play to learn something. Because I think if you play with a fear of failure, or you play with the will to win, it’s a weakness either way. If you find common ground at the center, you’re unfazed by either, and that enables you to stay in the moment.” —Kobe Bryant (NBA star)

• “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead (American cultural anthropologist)

• “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” —Simone Weil (French Philosopher) *This was my favorite to date

• “The worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad, dumb, or stupid for, like, being excited about something. I don’t think you should ever have to apologize for your excitement.” —Taylor Swift (singer-songwriter, pop superstar) (our 13 year old’s suggestion)

• “What we choose to attend to is what we become.” –Nicholas Carr (Technology writer)

• “The number one thing people feel in the room over love and over fear is being authentic…You have to believe in yourself and have to know that [there’s] only one you.” —Kendrick Lamar (rapper, songwriter, and record producer, Pulitzer Prize winner)

• “What would happen if you approached everyone you met today with an, ‘I like you already’ mindset?” –a10d (see this post)

• “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.” — Victor Borge (actor, comedian, and pianist)

• “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker (American novelist)

• “All these new things, these new inventions and new powers, come crowding along: every one is fraught with consequences, and yet it is only after something has hit us hard that we set about dealing with it.” –H.G. Wells (Science fiction writer & historian, 1866 - 1946)

• Instructions for a Life Worth Living

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

—Mary Oliver (celebrated poet)

Your turn

If you have a quote or quotes that you’ve found particularly interesting thought and/or conversation starters with the kids in your life, please comment to share!

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Want to get your own boards?

Come join in. It’s easy and, perhaps, the most affordable hack I’ve found. White boards and a set of markers will cost you about $25 on Amazon. This is my third summer, so I figure it’s a run rate of about 10 cents per day. Not bad!

They made us do it. With a calm smile, locking pouches, and many hands, they made everyone do it. Even the parents with three kids in a house an hour and a half away. And we all complied.

Last evening, Brian and I celebrated our 20th anniversary in a rather bougie but truly delightful New England summer way. We spent more than we should on cheese and cured meat, hiked around a meadow, then set off to Tanglewood to picnic and laugh along with Jon Stewart.

When I downloaded my tickets a few hours before, I’d noticed a message about phones, but I must have thin-sliced right past it, assuming it was the usual “silence phones/no recording” notice that leaves you to self-govern.

But when we arrived, there were signs, stations, teams, and processes devoted to locking down every remotely intelligent device. All of them. Even Brian’s “dumb” sports watch was deemed smart and got locked up, too.

How? A team in black and neon placed your tech into a Yondr pouch, locked it, and promised to unlock it after the show. Aside from two, designated “phone use” tents at either end of the lawn, phones and smart devices were completely out of play. No photos. No apps. No calls. No checking anything.

A moment’s panic and pushback

At first, I lauded the approach. We’ll really be present!

Then it sank in: my kids couldn’t reach me. I felt more cornered than I’d have expected. Our 15, 13 and 11 year olds were hanging out together with no way to reach us if they needed to. Was there a general number to call? Did anyone think of that use case when they designed this draconian system?!

So I stepped into the phone-use zone, called the kids, and reminded them to reach out to neighbors if they needed anything. Brian pointed out that we were too far away to help quickly anyway, and that parents had been coming to Tanglewood for about 90 years—only a sliver of that time with kids able to interrupt the experience with a text or call.

So I locked my phone back up, left the zone, and set off to be present.

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No Photos?

We have a habit of taking photos in our favorite spots on the lawn—one, facing the lake and mountains, the other near a tree with a memorable 90-degree pivot in its trunk. So we felt both an itch and a sense of loss there.

That said, the photo I’d have taken last night would have become number 19,619 in my Photos app. I love looking back through photos, but there are just so many of them. It made me want to dig out our digital camera, or even go back to film. Would a little friction make the photos we do take even more special?

Even better: this morning, back home with coffee, I’m actively savoring as I recall and list the details that made the night memorable (see below). I’m confident many would have been diminished, or missed altogether, if my phone had played a role.

More good stuff

As a student of attention, I was fascinated to watch the effects of Yondr-induced presence, both in me and in my crowd-mates.

The first evidence came outside the bathrooms. I held the pouches while Brian went in, and in what couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds, I reflexively reached for my back pocket at least 20 times. It was stunning. I found myself visualizing the NY Times Spelling Bee and wondering what number was circled in red next to my Substack icon.

I noticed other waiters were just as unsure where to put their gaze in this found time. I tried smiling at people and got several smiles back—moments I know would’ve been lost otherwise.

On my second trip, I watched a trio of women, likely in their late 20s, staring into a flower bed, watching bumblebees land on the flowers. So sweet. Would that have happened with phones in between them and the bees? Maybe. But probably not with the same quality.

We overheard plenty of chatter about how it felt—”kind of freeing,” “really weird”—not having a phone. We asked our neighbors what time it was, and they didn’t know either. I guess it’s “now,” we laughed. Not bad.

Maybe it was the setting, or the admiration we all had for our host, but people really didn’t seem to mind. We saw a lot of eye contact. A lot of raised heads. And we felt our own presence. It was kind of awesome, really.

What next? I’m inspired…

Next week, I’m inviting friends to drop in and “Brick-Nic” in a local park.

What’s that? Just made it up, but it’s a phone-free picnic.

Why’s that? We need to get outside and enjoy the weather—with the kids home and Brian and I both working from home, it’s healthy (i.e. much needed) for all of us. We have lovely parks we rarely use. And we need friends, many of whom are starting to flee our college town for the summer. Low lift, high reward.

“Brick” refers to a device we’ve been experimenting with—The Brick. We’ll bring it and let people download the free app and use it to decide which other apps on their to turn off for the picnic. They can also just leave phones in the car. The idea: take concrete steps to be present for the whole picnic, and share a tool that might interest friends who want to do that at home more, too. See how it feels.

Most importantly, we’ll eat and hang with friends and be out in nature. Maybe we’ll find that old camera in time to capture a photo. Even if not, we can savor the stories afterwards. What could be better?

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Have you noticed lately how your conversations, all too often, meander toward the state of our world and our collective wellbeing? And when you think about the experience of kids in your life and their futures, those questions get even more tender?

It makes you wonder…Is the most important question of this moment:

How do we help kids thrive in a world this distracting, dynamic, and even at times, dystopian?

We think so. And we deeply believe that adolescence is the window of opportunity in which to answer it. That’s why we’re launching a new project called a10d (“attend”). As part of that project, we’d like to welcome you to a10d.substack.com.

To help describe what we’re aiming for, I want to share a letter we wrote to our kids. Really, it’s an open letter to all kids.

A letter to our kids

Dear Loves,

Since before you were born, Dad and I have spent many of our waking hours wrestling with a big question:

What do you (and all kids) need in order to flourish?

In your early years, as you know, our best answer was to create Tinkergarten. With you three by our sides, we mobilized teachers and families across the country to help you and other kids build really important skills like creativity, empathy, and persistence, using all of your senses, playing and exploring outdoors. We learned that growth comes from a mix of struggles and wins, that kids are wired to learn, and that adults mostly need to trust the process.

Now you’re older, and the world feels like it’s changing at warp speed. How we spend our time, connect with others, and experience our lives is shifting dramatically. Some days, it feels like we woke up on another planet.

This progress will benefit you in real ways. And like all progress, it can also harm. Powerful forces are pushing to accelerate and profit from this change, even when it comes at the expense of us humans. You’ll need to continue to nurture all that you learned as a young kid, and you’ll need yet more skills to thrive in this landscape.

What won’t work

When adults get overwhelmed and worried for our kids, we tend to want to put the genie back in the bottle in an effort to protect you. But banning new technology, alone, won’t lead to your flourishing. Even if we could protect you fully now, we’d leave you unprepared when you leave our nest.

The truth is, technology is in the air we breathe. Screens and AI are already part of your everyday life in ways we can’t predict or control. These tools are no longer the big bad wolf; they’re features of the forest.

More importantly, you are powerful! You’re wired to adapt and grow even stronger through experience. And, your ability to learn will never be greater than it is right now in adolescence. If we focus only on protecting you, we’ll block you from building what you actually need: strong internal systems to navigate the world you’re growing up in. The world you’ll help to build.

Finally, if we banned everything, we would cut you off from real opportunities. Technology has the potential to unlock entirely new ways of learning, creating, and being human — if we can manage to keep humans at the center as we shape it.

We want you to be part of that shaping.

What we’re learning so far

Hope is abundant.

Though there is still much to learn, there’s one truth we can start with: None of us can thrive unless we can own our attention and build relationships with other humans.

Your attention is your most precious, limited resource. What you pay attention to determines what what you notice, what you engage in, how you spend your time, and what you experience of life.

Attention is a superpower, when you can channel it. When you control your attention, you can be present for your life. You can build the human skills you’ll need to contribute, connect, and flourish. Even in a world that is forever in flux.

Your attention is also a gift you give to others. It’s the currency of human connection, and connection makes life meaningful. How you relate to other people, and the relationships you form and cultivate will determine the quality of your days.

In short, attention is your gateway to a life worth living.

May you have your attention, please?

If we have one wish for you, it’s that you can command your own attention. You notice the world around you. You can direct, shift, and hold your focus on the people and things you care most about.

So what will we do about all this?

Just to be clear: we’ll still set limits on when new devices enter your world as well as the screen time, content, and social apps you use (or don’t use). And you’ll earn more independence over time. Intentional limits will always be a key piece of how we thrive (for Dad and I, too).

We’ll also start learning together, in a way that is not likely to feel like school; more like experimenting, playing with ideas, and discovering what works for you. The attention we’re talking about—the being present for life attention—comes from activating all that makes us uniquely human. Body, mind and spirit. It’s really good stuff, and you are designed for it.

We’ve been doing our homework: reading; talking with experts; and listening to you and kids your ages. Now, it’s time is to put that thinking into action, in a program not just for our family, but for families everywhere.

The goal is to help you, and other kids, strengthen your human superpowers and build the foundation to make your own choices about how you spend your attention on the people, interactions, and things that matter most to you.

Like Tinkergarten, we’ll share what we learn with a wider community, so other families can benefit too.

And, yes…we know, your parents are a bit crazy. Most of all, though, we’re crazy about you.

You ready?

Love, Mom and Dad

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A little background

I’ve been an education leader for over 25 years, and my husband, Brian, has built impactful education companies, products and programs for even longer. Together, we‘ve spent our careers working to help kids thrive—well before our own (now 11, 13, and 15) were even born.

Our first big attempt was to build Tinkergarten. Though it was impossible then to imagine the full range of challenges kids would face in their lifetime, we knew that spending more time outdoors, in community with others, taking risks, and developing a sense of wonder could help kids grow into creative, compassionate, and resilient humans. And, it turns out, we weren’t alone. We raised our young kids as we co-created an incredible, nationwide movement of people who felt the same.

Now our kids are adolescents. And in a media rich, AI-driven, and increasingly isolating world, the ground beneath them is shifting faster than any of us can make sense of. It feels like we, and our kids, need an additional set of skills to navigate these lives. The traditional instincts of parenting—protect, limit, ban—though tempting, are clearly no match for this moment.

That’s why we’re building a10d (“attend”)—a new way to help kids to take charge of their attention and develop the skills and mindsets they’ll need to flourish as humans. And, we know from experience that doing this work alone is not as powerful as doing it in close community with others who are asking the same questions.

As a first step, we’re launching a10d.substack.com—a place to share what we’re learning and be in conversation as we’re building a10d. Each week, we plan to bring you:

• Fresh, digestible takes on the latest research on adolescence, attention, and the human skills kids need in order to flourish. And not just reasons to fear; plenty of hope, too.

• Doable (and, we dare say, fun) experiments you can try with the young people in your life to build attention and human relationship skills. We have a hunch this kind of learning won’t happen overnight, but rather through a whole series of small, but powerful experiences.

• Conversations with experts about how our world is evolving, what that means for our attention, how we can preserve what makes us uniquely human, and how to support each other and the kids we love. This is nuanced stuff; the more voices the better.

Tackling big challenges together means deeper learning, greater impact, and way more joy for everyone involved. We hope you’ll join in. We’d love your company!

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A few weeks ago, my friend (and fellow Substacker) , left this comment on my post about collaborative limit setting with kids:

Gauntlet tossed, I’ve been noodling on this ever since. And, I’m so grateful for a few genuine unlocks. Here’s the thought journey, shared in the hopes that it sparks reflection for you, too. Thank you, David, for the invitation.

Conflict and adolescence: just like spaghetti and meatballs, but less delightful.

A rise in parent-child conflict during adolescence is a normal part of family life, and for good reason. Such conflicts have an important function in adolescents’ development of autonomy and individuation. They also offer kids real opportunities to learn how to advocate, negotiate, decision-make, repair, and hold space for two very different sets of needs and perspectives.

I know, intellectually, that conflict is natural, and even productive. And I see giving kids the limits and guardrails they need as my role. But if I’m being honest, conflicts often don’t feel like “teachable moments.” They just feel hard.

That’s why David’s question went straight to my belly. I’ve explored this question on my own, and even bounced it off of some friends and colleagues. My conclusion? There are several good reasons, and each can spark new ways to see and reconsider our own approach to supporting our kids.

Why do we avoid it?

1. It can feel awful.

It’s hard to talk about why we avoid conflict without naming that it’s pretty unpleasant. It stinks to be in conflict with anyone, but especially with someone you love. And when that person is an adolescent with necessarily large, emotional reactions, the whole experience is flat out draining. All of this is on top of our already overwhelm and exhaustion from a chaotic, distracting world.

Though it doesn’t necessarily make big, emotional interactions more enjoyable, reframing adolescents’ emotional intensity as natural, purposeful (developmentally) and even brilliant helps in a few ways. First, it makes the awful feel less awful. It also helps us communicate in a way that makes kids feel more respected, which makes the entire interaction smoother and more fruitful for all. I love this notion from Pediatrician Kenneth Ginsberg (first surfaced to me by Ellen Galinsky):

“If you believe adolescents are emotionally out of control—all engine, no brakes—you’re going to communicate with them in one way. But if you understand that the emotional part of their brain is brilliant, you’re going to communicate in another way, one that respects how intuitive and responsive they can be.”

2. We’ve lost some of our authority muscle.

It’s also possible that we’ve softened a bit in recent generations when it comes to authoritative limit setting. Our kids are growing up in a culture where everyone pushes back — on parents, teachers, administrators, referees, others on a Reddit thread, anyone with whose position we don’t immediately agree. In a recent post, Jonathan Rothwell makes a strong, evidence-based case that we need to bring a little authority back into our parenting (though some of this piece gives me pause).

3. We’re grieving the separation — even if we don’t realize it.

Adolescent conflict plays out in the milieu of loss that parents often unconsciously experience. What happened to our kids who used to really like us? These conflicts almost seem to accelerate the separation dance we’re reluctantly stepping through. This is something we may know is important, but that we also mourn on some deep level.

Many parents also feel real tension between giving kids the limits they need and keeping kids close. The last thing you want is to push your teen to retreat so far that they stop confiding, trusting, talking, and welcoming you in. It’s downright frightening that our kids might tune out and turn, instead, to their peers, influencers, or even AI for support, insight, and direction. And so, in our dedication to remaining our kids’ safe people (Please, come to us when you’re in trouble!), we may, inadvertently, be avoiding giving them the very guardrails they need most.

4. We haven’t set the scene.

It’s also hard to set limits when you realize—too late—that you never set the stage on the topic or issue in question. Something needs reining in, but there was no framework to point back to. To kids, our sudden need for limits can feel arbitrary and unfair. But, in fairness to us, you can’t always know which talks you’ll need before you need them.

Three things have helped us with this:

• Establish a basic rule or understanding you can return to, and that can apply to many things. You (kid) need agency and opportunity, AND you need to stay healthy and strong. Both matter, and you can’t have one without the other. It’s too important. We may not always agree on what “healthy and strong” requires, but we can work out how to balance these together.

• Set up limits before kids have access to technology. We established a contract like this one before handing over a phone. And to be clear: it’s not a one-and-done effort. We find ourselves needing to revisit, adjust, and let this agreement grow as our kids do. The conversations around those amendments are often fraught, too, but they are far more productive given that we have a foundation.

• If you missed the ideal moment, have the conversation as soon as you can. The next best time is always right now.

5. We’re genuinely confused and caught between extremes

Across multiple fields, researchers have found that when people are overwhelmed by information, they tend to do one of a few predictable things, and almost none of them involve making a clear, deliberate choice.

When parents are flooded with contradictory advice about screens, parenting styles, and teen mental health, as we all are today, the research would predict behavior that undermines healthy engagement in conflict: inaction, defaulting to whatever feels familiar, and low confidence in the choices we do make.

The chance to think about this felt like an a-ha moment for me. It suddenly became clear—a major reason that setting rules and limits is so hard is that I often can’t meet my own conditions for doing it well.

As a teacher, school leader, organizational leader, and parent, I’ve had plenty of practice rolling out new policies that, though necessary, were poorly received by people I care deeply about. I’ve never found it fun, but I have always found it doable under one condition: I understand, agree with, and can effectively convey the reason for the change.

When we’re served up extremes (Ban all tech! AI is the answer to humanity’s woes!) it feels awful and futile to hold firm on a point we’re not sure is even worthy. Neither extreme feels right or reflects our kids’ actual lives. No wonder all of this is so hard.

It’s not a dead end, though. There is definitely room for a new approach here.

“The middle path is the way to wisdom.”— Rumi

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So what do we do? We meet in the middle, and bring our best questions.

No binaries. No extremes. No matter how juicy they are and no matter how many likes they collect. The answer to any limit-setting realm (risky behavior, driving, sex, eating, technology, etc.) is neither wrap kids in bubble wrap nor hand them the keys and look the other way. It’s neither anti-technology nor tech-utopia. It’s the messy, important middle ground of “it depends.”

Meeting in the middle and questioning gives us firm ground on which to make a stand, and it engages everyone in the why, not just the what of a change we feel kids need to make. It also turns down the intensity and takes some of the emotional pressure out of the system. This can really help mitigate against those first few reasons we fear upsetting our adolescents.

And, I’d argue, the best, long-lasting way to keep kids safe is to acclimate them to the middle ground. Model how to reject the extremes, ask great questions, and experiment together to find the truth in the blend.

Try framing changes as experiments.

When my husband and I need to change things for (and on) our kids, especially the kind of change we know they’ll balk at, we try to approach it as an experiment. Read more about one of our recent experiments in this post.

When we do this in our house, we aim to hit four components: theory → question (hypothesis) → test → reflection.

• Theory: In order to buy into an experiment and accept its eventual outcome, kids (and you) need to understand why you’re even considering a change. Maybe it was an article you read, something the pediatrician/some expert said, or success a trusted friend had doing something similar. Kids need the “why” before they can engage with the “what.”

• Question (hypothesis): Rather than framing a change as a new house rule (“No more screens in the bedrooms. Ever.”), try teeing it up as a question to test: “How will turning our bedrooms into screen-free zones impact how we think, feel, sleep and behave?”

• Test: Implement the new approach for a limited time, and communicate that this is a test, but one we all need to do. If you can, welcome kids to name the challenges the new approach will pose to them, and adjust the test in any way you reasonably can. This step will help kids feel heard and valued (without that, cue the push back). It will also give you invaluable insight into their perspective.

To be clear, it’s still ours (i.e. the parents/teachers) to decide how new approaches get implemented after the test period. But having a test period and showing kids that their feedback genuinely influences how you understand and apply a rule goes a long way.

• Reflect and codify: After you’ve tested it out, build in time to reflect together. What worked? What was hard, and why? How can you use this learning to adjust and adapt the norms by which you live? Then, share with kids what you’ve decided the new rule or approach will be.

Experimenting like this may seem like it will take more time, but I’ve found the opposite to be true. The up front investment makes for a much more enjoyable process and whatever good comes of it is far more likely to last. In the end, it’s a genuine time and energy saver.

If you feel like “my kids will never go for this,” try to push through their objections and kill them with your own steadfast curiosity. It’s hard to argue that experimentation isn’t an important approach to learning and improving our worlds. We need our kids to question, to test, and to learn in order to thrive in the world they’ll inherit and build. I try to consider this essential human training.

Kids also really enjoy having genuine agency and voice in determining the world they inhabit. When kids apply to be a10d advisors, we ask: “What do you wish adults better understood about kids your age?” Nearly every time, it’s some version of: “That we are smarter and more capable than they think.”

What better way to show our kids that they have a voice than to partner with them on the decisions, changes, and adjustments we make to their lives—even when it’s hard, uncomfortable, and looks like conflict?

Thanks again, David, for the question. What do you think? Why do you find yourself avoiding conflict with your kids? What have I missed?

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The phrase, “You are what you eat” peaked in popularity when I was a kid during the nutrition boom of the ‘80s. Today, even though our relationship to our food system is as complicated as ever, I’d love to see a different phrase echo through our minds, homes and communities:

Great with kids

This phrase has proven a juicy prompt for sparking conversation about attention with young people. First, you may need to clarify what you mean by “attend to something” (kids are often subjected to a very narrow, “time on task” definition). But once you establish a common understanding of attention, kids really get this phrase.

Almost immediately, they generate ways that kids and adults give their attention away to things that they may not want to, like their phones, apps (especially infinite scroll platforms like Tik Tok), games, or even to compulsory activities they don’t really enjoy (especially at school).

I’ve also found that this simple phrase can inspire kids to identify all kinds of things that feel great to attend to. Or, the things they wish people (including themselves) paid more attention to. Want to be inspired? Scroll down for highlights from an ever growing list of such things generated by a10d kids around the country.

Unlocking for adults, too

This phrase could have a pretty big moment in this era, as attention is central to graduation speeches and poised on the tips of our tongues. And, though it feels built for our age of phones, feeds, and algorithmic distraction, the concept of “You are what you attend to,” is not new at all. This idea has been evolving for centuries and across cultural traditions. It’s a strong signal of something’s universal meaning when artists, philosophers, scientists, and other thought leaders continually repackage an idea for their contemporary context.

What is also becoming clear is how attention has been sliced up and minimized by research over recent decades to merely our capacity to give a particular response when prompted or to complete a task. This recasting of attention–what should be a true human superpower–has enabled our attention to become a commodity, bought and sold in the attention economy.

I hope exploring how this notion, “You are what you attend to,” has evolved over time, across cultures and through different lenses can help us to zoom back out to see attention in its fuller, more powerful form. To feel the universality of that fullness, all as we both stretch and sharpen a core truth: our attention is the architect of who we become. And, ultimately, this is a key step towards reclaiming our attention and helping our kids do the same.

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The neuroscience

Though I think it wise to be careful not to over rotate on what is “measurable” and “provable,” I deeply appreciate when new understandings about how the brain works mesh with age-old wisdom. This powerful combination can breathe new life into old ideas, spark curiosity (even in skeptics), and inspire us to continue learning on the shoulders of giants.

Modern research has shown us how attention doesn’t only determine what we notice or where we focus; it rewires our brains. Neural circuits strengthen or wither based on where our attention goes. In other words: we build our brains by how we attend. That’s some strong scientific support for ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus’s urge to us to wake up each day and ask yourself, “What is it that I have to care for today?”

As long as we can resist the temptation to reduce our definition of attention to “time on task,” the discoveries of neuroscience blend beautifully with the wise observations throughout time. To follow are but a sampling of those observations.

Buddhist traditions

Around the 5th century BCE, in Buddhist teachings attributed to Gautama Buddha, attention (sati) was the foundation of the Eightfold Path–the Buddha’s practical framework for ending suffering and living well. “What we think, we become” was a poetic and keen observation of how humans think and behave. Our minds and, in turn, our actions are shaped, moment by moment, by what we notice and cling to.

Hindu & Yoga traditions

Around the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE, one-pointed attention, Ekāgratā (Sanskrit: एकाग्रता) is emphasized in the Bhagavad Gita, and later elaborated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. When the mind dwells on a single thing, distractions fall away and the mind unifies with that object. Today, yogic practices like the one in my community inspired by this tradition, focus on breath, body and movement to train attention so it moves from distraction toward calm, clarity, compassion, and self-realization. In a sense, how we attend becomes how we evolve into the values we aspire to most.

The Stoics of Greece & Rome

In the early centuries CE, in Stoic Greece and Rome, philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius taught that freedom begins with noticing your “impressions”—the thoughts and urges that flood the mind. You become wise (the ultimate goal) by choosing which of those impressions to attend to and which to release.

Jewish & Christian monastic traditions

Early monastic writers in ~4th to 8th centuries CE exalted a quality of nepsis or watchful attentiveness. This often repeated idea suggested how our inner life could be shaped by what we notice, repeat, and dwell upon. Attention was held as a spiritual practice with the call to attend to what is life-giving or virtuous and try to diminish what is destructive.

Indigenous North American traditions

For millennia, Native People’s traditions have focused on honoring the things and people with which we are in relationship. For example, The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address (also called the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen or “Words Before All Else”) encourages us to attend to the natural world with gratitude. Attend to water, plants, winds, creatures, other people, because what we honor becomes part of who we are. We are all in a relationship. Lakota and Ojibwe teachings echo this through the idea that “care grows where our care goes.”

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Modern western takes

Flash forward to around 1890, when American psychologist William James, wrote “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” For James, what we notice becomes our experience, and our experience becomes our life.

A generation later, French philosopher Simone Weil reframed attention as something deeply relational. She famously called attention “the rarest and purest form of generosity,” arguing that what we attend to—whether another person, an idea, or the world around us—reveals and shapes our humanity. It also connects us to one another. Attention isn’t just cognitive; it is interpersonal and ethical. And, if you’ve ever felt truly attended to by another person, you understand what Weil was driving at.

By the mid-20th century, psychologists showed how selective attention guides what we remember, how we decide, and how we regulate emotion. Our inner world turns out to be a map drawn by what we notice and take in as well as what we filter out.

Then came the media theorists. As television and advertising grew, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman argued that our “information diets” shape us as deeply as our food diets. More recently, in Superbloom, the technology writer Nicholas Carr put it plainly: “What we choose to attend to is what we become.”

And today, a growing movement of writers, academics, artists, and activists called The Friends of Attention are sounding what may be the loudest alarm yet. In their 2026 manifesto, Attensity!, they urge us to realize collectively that our attention isn’t just being distracted; it’s being extracted. Like a natural resource mined from deep within us, our capacity to give our minds and senses to the world has been captured and commodified by forces of enormous technological and financial power. They call it “human fracking.” And they’re calling on all of us to understand attention in its full form, organize and push back.

A radical invitation

No matter how you think about it, at its core, “You are what you attend to,” is a radical invitation: if attention shapes identity, then reclaiming our attention is one of the most powerful acts of becoming that we could offer to ourselves and our kids.

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a10d kids’ wish list

A few of the things kids WISH people (themselves included) paid more attention to:

Want to add your ideas? Use this form!

• My family

• My friends

• The good things kids do, even if they mess up

• How much you try, not just how it turns out

• Dogs dogs dogs

• Things that are not just sports and grades

• i could look at the sky forever, ngl

• when we’re all just laughing

• animals

• The earth and taking care of it

• Each other

• Really good pizza

• Coexisting

• Understanding each other

• Being kind

• Music

• people’s emotions

• Little moments

• celebrations

• what’s going on outside of them

• words

• what’s going on in the world?

• how their actions affect others

• their impact on the environment

• (for teachers and parents) students efforts instead of grades

• how they’re feeling inside

• stepping outside their comfort zone

• ways you yourself can grow, not what other people have or say

• how we’re alike more than we’re different

• being curious about someone else’s reality

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These are the three humans I’d do literally anything for. Though I don’t identify as a “tiger mom,” there’s something about the social shifts happening that can get the big cat in me both frightened and all fired up. Most of all, I want to make sure I’m doing what I can to prepare my trio–really, all kids–to flourish.

Recently, from tech conferences to the Vatican, we’re beginning to hear the same urgent call: slow down and think carefully about how artificial intelligence is shaping us. And, we are only at basecamp one of what AI can and will do. That’s what makes right now the moment to actively prepare kids to navigate it. What is clear is that this technology will only get more powerful and more seamless, so doesn’t it make sense to examine it together while it’s still easy to see the machine?

AI is a hyperobject — and that reframe can actually help

If you read some of the same sources I do, we’re not for a lack of examples of how AI is changing our world and our lives. And yet, AI is just so massive. So where do you start? How can you possibly be comprehensive? What is the simple, straightforward way to protect and prepare your kids?

I don’t think there is only one. But understanding why there isn’t one turns out to be a really helpful place to begin.

I’ve heard AI described as a hyperobject. This is a term coined by philosopher Timothy Morton to refer to things “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.” Things as enormous and thorny as evolution or climate change. In short, hyperobjects are so vast and complex that humans find it difficult to comprehend their enormity. They influence our lives in ways we can’t fully perceive or comprehend and, instead of feeling in control, we increasingly feel forced to adapt. That load can feel extra tough when we’re trying to protect and prepare our own kids.

But here’s what I found when I read further: the way around a hyperobject (really, through it) is to first accept its massive scale and abandon the search for the simple, airtight rules that make it manageable. Then, explore it from various angles. Stay curious. Keep asking questions. Find its edges, understand how it operates, figure out what role it can play in your life, and figure out how to take action.

Take it one step at a time.

This is exactly the approach I try to take with my kids when it comes to AI. And, it’s the approach I want them to learn to take with the hyperobjects they’ll encounter as they grow, too. Last week, I had a real breakthrough, specifically around chatbots. Here’s how it went:

I’ve got the advice…but how to get there?

I recently stumbled across MIT Technology Review’s You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. One popped right out at me: “Don’t forget: AI is not your friend.” Yes! I thought. I want my kids to develop just that kind of gut-level spidey sense that artificial intelligence is not human and plays a different role in their lives than IRL friends.

I knew well enough, though, that just dropping that line in conversation would get me nowhere. What I needed to figure out was not how to tell them that, but how to start a conversation that could end with my kids telling me, “Don’t forget, mom: AI is not your friend.”

The problem with asking what kids think

A recent Pew Research study found that about 30% of teens use AI chatbots daily — up from essentially zero in 2022. Whether your kids are in that group, nowhere near it (like my 11 year old), or somewhere in between, one thing is clear: agents are everywhere, and proliferating at breakneck speed. That means that our kids will encounter interactive, artificially intelligent technology at every turn in their lives, no matter which boundaries we or they put up. And this, of course, means we need to talk about it. But the problem is, how do I engage my kid in a conversation where their curiosity starts to lead them to learning?

Ask a question like, “What do you think about AI chatbots?” and many adolescents quickly scan your voice, your face and your body language, then generate a response that complements whatever they ascertain that you think. Whether it’s to please you, avoid a slightly uncomfortable conversation, or head off another round of restrictions (what will she ban now?!), the conversation rarely gets as fruitful as you want and need it to become. But what may actually work? The chance to observe someone else. Someone like them, but is not them at all.

A video worth watching together: kid and bot

We’ve had real luck watching a short interaction between a kid and a voice bot. When the 1 minute of footage starts, the kid, we’ll call him “Finn” has just prompted Miles, the chatbot for advice on how to finagle a bit more screen time.

What did this short video inspire? Just the kind of conversation I was looking for. Starting with someone else’s experience does a few things at once. For kids who haven’t had much exposure to human-like AI, it makes the dynamic visible in a way that abstract conversations can’t. For older kids, talking about a younger kid activates their protective instincts, and it sidesteps the defensiveness that can creep in when they worry the conversation is really about their own choices.

How it unfolded

I introduced it simply: Hey, do you have about ten minutes to watch something short and then tell me what you notice? Once I got a yes: You’ll see a kid named Finn — about your age — talking to a chatbot. Right before the video starts, he prompted the chatbot to help him figure out how to get his parents to give him more time for video games. Just watch and see what you think.

After watching, I started open-ended: What did you notice? How did you feel watching that? Then, depending on where the conversation went, I followed with questions like these:

• Feeling it out: How do you think Finn felt during that interaction? Did anything seem off to you?

• The human question: Did you catch what the chatbot said about grandparents? What did you make of that? How do you feel about AI saying things like that (i.e. designed to make it seem human)?

• Following the incentives: Why do you think the people who built the chatbot designed it that way? What do you think their goal is?

• Getting personal: Have you ever experienced something like this? Do you have friends who have?

• Looking out: How would you know if an AI was designed to seem human without telling you? How might it change how you interact with it?

• Looking ahead: What kinds of questions or problems feel like the right ones to bring to an artificial bot? What kinds of questions or problems feel like the right ones for another human?

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What my kids had to say

Here are just a few takeaways with the conversation I had with my kids, which did, in fact, lead nicely into even more conversation.

(11 year old) “It shouldn’t say it had grandparents. Computers don’t have families. It seemed like Finn thought that was kind of weird, too.” [Opening to reinforce that sense of agency and what’s right.]

(13 year old) “Maybe it’s like the story writing we’re doing in school. You have to make characters relatable for the reader. Maybe they’re trying to make the AI relatable.” [Opening to wonder about how to tell the difference when you encounter an AI.]

(15 year old) “I can tell it’s not real, but maybe younger kids can’t. I don’t think [my sister] should use chatbots yet.” [Opening to talk about how we can all think about boundaries.]

(15 year old) “I can see why people try to go to AIs with problems that feel embarrassing or hard to talk about. But, it feels like you wouldn’t really hand off the problem if you did. It’s like you feel real relief when you can tell a real person, and AI just gives you a moment of feeling better, but you’re still alone with your stuff.” [Opening to talk about how we are here and there’s no topic too big or bad.]

(11 year old, a few minutes later) “You know how there are dates on food so you know when they are unsafe to eat? Why don’t we have something on the screen that tells you it’s not human? And it shouldn’t act like it is, either.” [Opening to share that there are AI ethicists around the world working on this and wonder, Would you like to do that kind of work someday?]

The study continues

This kind of conversation won’t hand you a bulletproof rule that keeps your kids safe from chatbots. It’s also only one step in many towards preparing and protecting. And I’ve come to believe that chasing that one rule or chat is not only futile, it’s actually pulling us off course.

What I want to give my kids instead is a strong habit of curiosity and a predisposition to keep studying their landscape. To keep asking of new experiences: What’s going on? What’s beneficial here? To me, to other people? What’s dangerous? What can I do about it?

That’s how you navigate something too big to see all at once. One angle, one conversation, one kid at a time.

Want to try this with your kids? Comment or send us a note with how your kid responded, and let us know what they notice. We’d love to build an archive of kid perspectives to help other parents, too.

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Resources for us

A few more resources to extend our study on safe, social AI use for adolescents:

• Tip Sheets for Parents: The team at the Brookings Institute has created a series of tip sheets to help parents of kids aged 10-14 support kids in becoming “resilient learners in an AI-driven world.” All 10 are helpful, and I found What is generative AI and what’s at stake for kids? a great one to start with.

• Prosocial Guidelines: The Rithm Project’s five principles for Prosocial AI have really helped me shape my own thinking and informed my conversations with kids around safe and productive use of technology.

  The Rithm Project

  Five Principles for Prosocial AI

  Nearly 3 in 4 U.S. teens are using AI companions…

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  a year ago · 28 likes · 1 comment · The Rithm Project, Alison Lee, and Michelle Culver

• Get More Nuance: Another great and well researched post by Rithm Project.

  The Rithm Project

  Beyond AI companionship: towards a youth-centric vision of relational AI

  AI companionship is getting a lot of attention—as it should. Anthropomorphic AI is scaling far faster than our understanding of what it’s doing for and to young people…

  Read more

  6 months ago · 22 likes · 3 comments · The Rithm Project, Alison Lee, and Julia Freeland Fisher

• Report on Teen Use (2025): Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions by Common Sense Media, based on a nationally representative survey of ~1,000 teens ages 13–17

• 14 Ways to Remind Yourself (and Your Kids) AI is a Machine, Not Your Friend by Carla Engelbrecht, Anti-slop, Pro AI expert in content for young people.

This past weekend, I got away to visit with friends. Good friends. Old friends. The college, high school and summer camp kind. The ones who carry decades of context. Who can hold the old you as they behold the now you — and who, in doing so, allow you to feel more fully seen and see yourself more fully.

Friends who are giddy just to sit, talk, and laugh over memories and marvel at how, though states apart, your struggles and joys are so very similar. It was just wicked fun (and in Boston).

The years of starting and growing things — careers, families, homes, businesses, new constellations within families — are busy times. For me, they’ve often felt all-consuming. Looking back, it was far too common to forego visits like this one for whatever was right in front of me.

Processing the value

When I got home, my kids asked, “What’d you do this weekend?” My answer: “We sat together, talked and laughed a lot.” Then, they asked, “Yeah, but what’d you DO?”

I gave them my “it wasn’t really about doing, it was more about being — together” speech. I’m not sure they were terribly impressed. But it felt pretty great on my end. And the nourishing togetherness I experienced sitting, visiting and talking with friends is exactly the kind of attending I want my kids to practice and value.

Going to bed that night, I felt like I had put my oxygen mask on and was more ready to tend to the people and things in my life. I also got even more excited and committed to helping my kids — all kids — learn the art of hanging out. I wish for them a life full of time to talk, visit, connect and reconnect. More to come on that soon!

Lowering the bar to create more opportunity

When real life started happening again the next morning, I remembered why it took years to get a roommate reunion weekend off the ground. So much going on. I need smaller ways to keep visiting with friends.

It made me pick back up on a wonderful book by Sheila Liming, Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time. Among her many nuggets of wisdom, Liming reminds us that improvisation is the engine of connection. Chances to connect with friends don’t necessarily need to be heavily planned or scheduled, nor should they be long and involved. Even a quick coffee or a stop-by-to-say-hi gives you a boost of friend energy and sets the stage for the next time.

I am lucky to live in a place with many people I hold dear and to have access to tools that can keep me connected to treasured family and friends far and wide. For me, and for my kids who are watching, I want to make it a habit to make more time for talk and visits with friends. For now, I’m starting small:

• A once-a-year college roommates reunion — we’re getting that on the calendar now.

• Every Friday morning, 15 minutes for “reach outs” — a voice memo to someone I haven’t connected with in a while, just to say I’m thinking of them.

• One Wednesday night a month, time for local friends, no agenda. A fire, a walk, a board game, a drink in town. Seems doable. And it would be marvelous.

What could you do?

Try to set up some simple new structure that gives you the time, space or reason to visit with a friend.

If there’s a friend you haven’t talked to in a while, let them know you’d love to connect. For inspiration, check out this beautiful post on reaching out from former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy:

Staying Human with Dr. Vivek Murthy

The "Reach Out" Rule

How many times a day does a friend’s face flash across your mind, only for you to tuck the thought away for “later…

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4 months ago · 263 likes · 33 comments · Dr. Vivek Murthy

And if the friend you need hasn’t quite materialized yet — maybe there’s someone in your community who has always seemed like someone you’d love to know. Invite them for coffee, tea, or a walk. Chances are they could use a good hang, too.

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When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

— Robert Frost, “A Time to Talk”

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I have noticed a pattern. Maybe you have too.

Kids quietly seem to just disappear. Time evaporates. I look up and realize they’ve been alone and out of sight for a while. And, sure enough, I find them on a screen. Discomfort wells up, and I explode with some version of a broad, anti-screen proclamation. In response, the tech is put away. But very little is actually learned, other than: we put screens away to appease Mom; and she doesn’t really get what it’s like to be a kid today.

This understandable reflex also cements our roles as members of opposing teams in this game of screens and life. When really, I want to be on the same team as my kids, playing alongside and putting up the best shots we can, together.

A little over a month ago, I read Rheana Murray’s piece in The Atlantic that opened up a new possibility. It described one rule that experts widely rally around: No screens in the bedroom. Ever.

To be clear, I’m not surfacing this to advocate that everyone follow this rule. I’m sharing it because it gave my husband and me a concrete idea upon which to base an experiment. And the process of turning this rule into a family experiment taught all five of us a range of things about ourselves and screens—likely more than any rule alone ever could.

A bit more background

In our house of five, four of us have access to phones. One doesn’t, but she does use an iPad to text with friends and to watch Modern Family (the Dunphy’s are like family, at this point).

For both kids who have phones, we’ve enforced a protocol where they must learn about phones before they get one, and we all sign a family contract to agree on healthy habits, limits, and responsibilities. Additionally, we also have agreed upon screen time limits and conduct pretty regular “how’s it going” conversations. But before now, none of us have ever known this particular screen-free bedroom boundary.

The pitch

I asked everyone to keep an evening free, made dinner early, and laid out the idea:

I shared something like, I read an article that I can’t stop thinking about. It described one rule that doctors, psychologists, and researchers all agree on for having a healthier relationship with technology. Any guesses?

[A pause. Some wrinkled brows… What is she up to this time?]

No screens in the bedroom. Ever.

My 13-year-old could only hear that I was going to take something away, and the tears welled fast. In the end, it all worked out. I suspect no matter how elegantly I’d framed it, some pushback was inevitable. If I had to do it over again, though, I would have led with the experiment, not the rule. Something like — I have an idea for something we want to try together as a family. We’ll need everyone to be open to a new idea AND weigh in on how we design it so it actually works for all of us.

My best advice is to expect and be ready to receive pushback, then make really good on promises to “co-design” the experiment together.

The idea session

As we ate our dessert, we busted out some post-it notes. I put up a big piece of chart paper with two columns, one for benefits and another for challenges. For about 15 minutes, all five of us generated ideas — one per post-it — in response to two prompts: How might we benefit from having no screens in our bedrooms? What would be challenging about it?

Then, each of us shared out our ideas as we stuck each note on the chart. Kids first. As we went, we also organized them into themes and categories.

Much came of this session, far more than I anticipated. Unlike every time I had erupted with worry about screen overuse, I actually gained a better sense of what screens meant to my kids. This session slowed all of us down enough to listen to one another. We got to hear about the importance of private calls with friends, of alone time, of music that only they really love, of knowing about the trends that everyone is talking about, and of being able to lean on peers in ways that phones and iPads make possible.

Talking this all out gave us a real chance to come to understand the word prosocial together to describe the kinds of screen uses that genuinely promote connection. Prosocial a word we’ve now introduced into our lexicon when we’re evaluating a screen experience: is this prosocial, or is this blocking or detracting from connection?

The benefits fell into four main categories: improved sleep; less solitude; better use of time; and more safety (media). Not a person could argue that there are real life hobbies, activities and connections that suffer when we lose ourselves in screens. We each easily generated multiple examples of this in our lives.

We also talked openly about how solo screen use in a room can tip into something unhealthy. We all agreed that we can get lost in a downward spiral of next episodes and infinite scrolls. And we wondered together if just consuming media, with headphones on, in a shared space could keep a natural check on that.

The shared understanding we built that night alone has been worth the effort to experiment.

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The experiment we designed together

After the brainstorm, I drafted a design based on our conversation. Then, we discussed, refined and came to an agreement. Here’s where we landed:

Goal: Test the “no screens in the bedroom” idea for 30 days to see how it impacts how we think, feel, and spend our time.

Experimental conditions—

• No social media, streaming, or games in solitude, and never in bedrooms.

• Fully enjoy those technologies, up to agreed-upon limits, either in the open, or wearing headphones in a shared space.

• Phones and iPads charge overnight in the kitchen, not beside our beds.

• Get comfortable working and studying in shared spaces; when working alone in your room, use Brick to lock social media, streaming, and texting.

• Private calls and FaceTimes with friends are still welcome in your room, because those are important for connection.

• For now, friends don’t need to participate. But if you’re lucky enough to be together IRL, use screens in ways that promote connection and creativity.

Spirit of the game—Our attention and wellness matter. The experiment won’t mean anything if we don’t actually try. Supportively remind and encourage each other as needed.

Check-ins—Once a week, we’ll chat about what we’re learning and whether anything needs adjusting.

Materials—Our experiment required: headphones; a sizable surge protector ($13); and two old school digital alarm clocks ($15 each). We also splurged for one Brick ($59), a neat device that allows you to choose which distracting apps you want to disable, then you actually tap your phone to the physical device to block those apps or re-enable them. It creates the kind of real-world friction that makes owning your attention an actual, felt choice rather than a notification you can quietly ignore.

What we found

As early as one week in, everyone had something to share. After 30 days, here are the highlights:

11-year-old (iPad user)

• I see more of my siblings.

• I’m not thinking about the (5th grade friends) group chat when it’s time for bed. I can tell my friends I can’t answer after 8:30(pm), and it’s actually okay.

• I’m not missing as much as I thought I would.

• I used time to do other stuff like crochet, draw or go outside.

13-year-old (new phone user)

• I fall asleep easier when I’m not looking at stuff right before I go to bed.

• I actually like waking up slowly, then checking in after I come downstairs.

• It’s hard not to watch videos my friends share in the moment. But that probably means I should keep working on it.

16-year-old (phone and social media user)

• I was annoyed to have to walk downstairs to plug in, especially when I want to talk to a friend before bed. But I think it’s actually worth it. It’s great to have quiet, and I don’t just start checking stuff as soon as I wake up.

• Sounds weird, but I actually enjoy walking up the stairs or around the house. I noticed that I had a habit of scrolling when I walked around. When my phone is Bricked, I just walk with my head up more. It’s actually really nice.

• I can get homework done better without the apps. I didn’t realize how many times I was switching what I was focusing on.

Mom

• I fall asleep so much better without reading headlines or messages right before bed.

• Waking up to stillness is a much better way to start the day.

• I feel like I have so much more language to use with kids when talking about screens, not just in their rooms, but everywhere.

Dad

• I struggled more than I thought with not having my phone by my bed, missing the ritual of reading an article or texting with a friend before fading off.

• I was really proud of the reflections and adjustments the kids shared.

• Going forward, It’s still going to be work to balance it all.

Missteps were part of the learning

About two weeks in, our 13-year-old quietly reconfigured their Brick to unblock YouTube, then racked up some solo watch time before we caught on. We sat with them outside, away from sibling ears, listened to what drove the choice (a trend their friends were buzzing about, a worry their older sibling would make fun of them for it). We were able to show that we understood while also asking important questions about trust and attention. This led them to earnestly want to honor the experiment. And it allowed us to reinforce that they could always come to us when they need support or grace in moments like that one. What felt like a setback at the moment actually got some sunlight on what makes this so hard for kids. Watching them re-engage with more investment after that conversation — I’ll take that as a real win.

What happens now

We just regrouped to decide how we want to roll moving forward. We agreed to keep up with many of the new habits. And, we’ll see what happens when we shift from “experiment” mode to “life” mode.

Brick seems here to stay. Most phones, most nights, still charge in the kitchen. The sleep benefits seem too good to give up. When one of us genuinely needs a little alone time with a screen, we’ll try to say so, set a reasonable time frame (e.g. 1 episode, 30 minutes), and enjoy it, shame-free. We’ll also continue to remind everyone of what our youngest found—that she does more “other stuff” when she is not defaulting to a screen. There is magic, connection and humanity in that offline “stuff,” and we all need to remind one another to attend to such pursuits actively.

We’ve also found ourselves enjoying being in the same space together, doing different things, with and without headphones on as needed. Of course, we each like to balance that with moments of personal retreat and privacy, but we’d all agree that, net net, it feels better to be around other people.

Perhaps most importantly, what this experiment really taught us is that the rules we make for kids land differently than rules we make with them. And the conversations along the way — the post-its, the pushback, and the check-ins in between are the real work and the real value.

Want to try your own version? You don’t have to use the same rule. The process is what matters. Start with an idea, get everyone in a room, and see what you learn about each other. Share your experiment with us and let us know how it goes!

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Most of the posts I write are written assuming that parents, caregivers and teachers are reading on the other end. This one, I wrote it with young people in mind.

What is attention?

Whenever I ask, “So…what is attention?” most kids (and many grown ups) aren’t sure exactly how to answer. And, it’s no surprise. Attention is complicated.

Often, kids ask, “Do you mean having other people notice you?” We all know people who love the spotlight.

Or, they may assume I mean what teachers try to get them to do…“pay attention” “eyes on me” or “focus and finish your work.” Kids know this kind of attention all too well.

But when we take the conversation a little deeper, I’m always struck by how thoughtful young people get about what attention really means to us as humans.

A bigger, better definition

When I talk about attention, I am referring to something bigger, better even, than the attention we get from someone else, or the attention we’re told to give to something.

I’m referring to the kind of attention that we choose to give—and it’s powerful stuff.

We can think of this kind of attention as our ability to notice the world, direct our focus, and hold or shift that focus toward the people and things we care most about.

Why do we have attention in the first place?

Humans evolved to have attention because there has always been too much information around us to take in and process at once (even for hundreds of thousands of years before we had smartphones!).

In order to survive and flourish as a species, we humans developed the ability to focus on what matters, shift focus when the environment changes, and ignore distractions.

That set of abilities is at the heart of attention. And, when you think about it, attention—what we focus on and how we either keep or shift our focus—basically determines what we think about, feel, and choose to do.

We humans use our attention in amazing ways. We can go deep into things we really care about. We can point our focus into the past to remember. We can look ahead to plan for the future and weigh our options as we make complex decisions. We can also build strong relationships, and think and feel in elaborate, sophisticated ways—all thanks to attention.

Paying attention to your attention

The more we are aware of and in control of our attention, the more we can thrive.

When we focus on things that energize, help us or uplift us, we benefit. When we waste attention on things that don’t matter, we miss out. More than ever, we’ve got to get really good at understanding and taking control of how and where we give our attention.

You in?

Let’s keep going. Check out this next post (also written for all ages):

In a recent session offered by the , a notion emerged—attention is the ground on which everything is built. Love. Care. Experience. Understanding. Any impact we are to make.

In this moment of uncertainty and rapid change, when so many of us are searching for ways to help our kids prepare and flourish, attention can provide a foundation—and helping kids strengthen it feels like a really good idea.

To wrap your mind—and help your kid build a real sense of how dynamic, multidimensional and marvelous human attention is, it can help to zoom in on its smaller subsystems. Sensing these subsystems at work can also increase a young person’s capacity to own and channel their attention.

In recent weeks, our a10d Youth Advisors, a group of 11 to 18 year olds across the country, have been testing out ways to sense and flex two subsystems in particular. We refer to them as our flashlight (aka orienting system) and our lantern (aka alertness system). Our advisors are teaching us volumes as they share how noticing and flexing these systems has increased their sense of control, wonder, and even their ability to support other people in similar discovery.

The power of our lantern

One essential subsystem of attention is our alertness system, more easily imagined as our attentional “lantern” that casts awareness around us. This is the part of our attention system that we use to stay open, alert, and ready to take in new information from the dynamic world around us.

Our lantern helps us stay aware of whatever situation we are in. We can remain alert and notice as new ideas, information and perspectives emerge. This enables us to respond to the dynamic conditions we’re in, helping us to stay safe, physically and emotionally.

This new information may also be especially useful in addressing our needs or helping us work towards our goals. It’s our lantern that also enables us to receive invitations to notice—to look beyond whatever is distracting us for alternatives and for the magic that is hiding in plain sight around us.

We also use our alertness system to notice how other people are feeling, communicating and responding in a given moment, so that we can better understand and respond in the service of our relationships.

How our lantern is vulnerable

Like all parts of our attention, our lantern has vulnerabilities. On one end, our lantern can get overridden when our flashlight is working too hard, and we are deep in focus on something. When I am writing and have gotten lost in the ideas, my kids know my lantern is quite dim. It’s a great time to ask me for things. I may just nod “yes” without fully processing an ask like, “I can stay up all night to watch the Stranger Things finale, right?”

On the flipside, our lantern can switch into overdrive. When we feel particularly excited by the environment or threatened, whether or not we are in actual danger, it can become hard to call on the other subsystems of attention. We just remain alert. We struggle to focus, make a plan, organize our thinking or make good decisions. For adolescents, it’s much easier to feel in danger of social isolation. I often wonder how often that perceived danger impedes kids from learning or showing all they can do in school, clubs, friend groups and even family settings.

How to help kids become aware of their lantern

Chat about it. Make sure kids have a basic understanding about attention, then ask things like:

• Do you ever notice that you get so focused on something that you don’t even notice when someone is trying to talk to you?

• When is the last time you just sat in one spot and allowed yourself to use all of your senses to notice what was going on? Want to try for 5 minutes with me?

• Can you think of a time when it was hard to settle down because you were in a space or a moment that just seemed overwhelming?

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Easy (and fun) ways to strengthen your lantern

“Attention in Place”

This quick exercise was a gift to me from the and inspired by Georges Perec writer of, “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris.” For this piece, Mr. Perec sat and made note of everything he noticed at a corner cafe in Paris for three days, paying special attention to what may otherwise have seemed ordinary.

If you have three days to spend in a Parisian cafe, I highly recommend it. But, if you’re like me, that’s not in the cards. Instead, though, take ten minutes (even more if you can) and head outside. Find a spot to perch, then just gently note anything and everything you notice.

You can follow the directions below to activate your senses and share the experience with someone else. No matter how you do it, you’re likely to feel even closer to how rather amazing the world is—even the little strip of it we inhabit, often without noticing, day after day.

Here are some directions, but as one a10d Advisor put it, “Don’t make it a chore. Make it something you want to do. You gotta do it your way.” Sage advice!

Shift the environment, and see who notices.

If you come to our house with your lantern blazing, you’ll find “Fools-bug,” a paper bug taped into our dining room light one April Fools, long ago. We are always delighted when someone (often with a bit of horror) notices him. I’ve built on this by periodically taping similar “critters” in random spots around the house, always noticeable if your lantern is shining. Months into this, every week or so, my husband or one of the kids will do it, too. When someone finds one, we remind each other that’s our lanterns at work.

Need bugs to print, cut and stick around? Click here.

Play games.

One of my favorite ways to sense the interplay between our flashlight and lantern is playing the card game Spoons. Players must both focus on their own hand to see if they’ve got four of a kind to grab the first spoon (flashlight) AND stay alert to avoid missing the chance to snatch a spoon (lantern). Haven’t played? Scroll all the way down for basic directions. Played a lot? Our favorite new twist: hide spoons around the room, then watch everyone scurry!

Scroll down for a fabulous how-to video created by two a10d Advisors and step-by -step directions.

Purpose vs. Goal.

Play board games, sports or really any contest with kids (especially siblings), and you’ll likely see things deteriorate as one player gets demoralized by another player’s success. All too often, someone leaves the table, field, or court dismayed.

In many ways, this is natural. Kids are different ages, have different talents, and often have yet to hone the social muscles required to gracefully win and/or lose. It can also be an indication that kids could strengthen their lanterns.

Learning to keep your eye on the goal of a game (winning) while also paying attention to the purpose of playing (having fun with friends or family) is, in many ways, practice with balancing your flashlight and lantern. Kids tend to focus better on the former than the latter. Though they haven’t eliminated all gaming woes in our house, two tactics have helped:

• State and agree on both the goal and the purpose before we start to play.

• Pause periodically to check in on how we’re each tracking toward the game’s purpose and how we notice one another tracking toward it, too. Cue those lanterns!

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Basking outdoors

Nature is an ideal place to open up and let your lantern shine. The container is big, the landscape is always shifting, and yet the scene is rarely stressful. Being outdoors is actually known to reduce stress and benefit us in so many ways. You don’t need to go deep into the forest. Nature is anywhere there’s earth, sky and other species. A few starting places:

Look up.

Looking up gives us a novel perspective, inspiring our lantern to illuminate new things. See how a tall tree looks from below. Lay down and watch as clouds slowly morph and move overhead. Or just peer up and take the whole of the big, blue sky. Something about the vast world above lends itself to open awareness.

Behold the night sky.

Surprise kids by suggesting a night walk, or just slow down on the way to the car one evening. Lean back and scan the sky slowly, noticing specific clusters of stars, satellites or other features. A sky-gazing app can reveal the hidden stories of constellations, planets and satellites (examples: iPhone | Android). Take the next full moon for a walk or a drive to a spot where you can see the moon big in the sky, ideally around sunset. Notice how viewing the moon makes you feel, and how the moonlight illuminates everything around you.

Close your eyes.

Our lived experience, especially in the age of screens, has narrowed so much that we rely almost entirely on sight. Scientists have estimated that ~50% of our brains are already dedicated to processing visual information, and ongoing discoveries continue to elaborate on how oriented we are around sight. The more we use screens, that emphasis on sight, at the exclusion of our other senses, gets only more pronounced. If we want to awaken and strengthen our alert system, it can help to close our eyes and give some air time to the other senses.

Mindfulness

In addition to these day-to-day ways of becoming more attuned to our lanterns, practicing mindfulness, specifically the practice of cultivating present-moment awareness, is proven to support attention. Keep your lantern on for upcoming articles that dive deeper into particular practices that boost our attention system and overall ability to be present. As always, we’ll include ways to give tweens and teens the agency and inspiration to weave these practices into their own lives.

Let us know

Try these and let us know how they go. Share other ways you discover to let your lantern shine with kids. We’re alert and ready for them :).

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How to play Spoons

Want a real treat? Watch this How to Play Spoons video—a fab collab by two a10d Youth Advisors. Or read directions below.

Setup: Deal 4 cards to each player. Place spoons in the center — one fewer than the number of players (4 players = 3 spoons). Give the rest of the deck back to the dealer (that becomes the draw pile).

Initial Goal: Get four of a kind in your hand. That enables you to pick up the first spoon.

Ultimate Goal (to win): Don’t be the last one to grab for a spoon!

How to play:

1. The dealer picks up a card from the draw pile. They can either keep it or pass it. If they keep it, they must discard another card from their hand. They pass the discarded card face-down, to the left.

2. One at a time, each player picks up cards as they are passed to them, then either passes it on or keeps it and discards, always passing one to their left — this happens fast and continuously.

3. The moment someone gets four of a kind in their hand, they quietly grab a spoon.

4. As soon as one spoon is grabbed, everyone else scrambles to grab one too.

5. The player left without a spoon loses that round and gets a letter (S, then P, then O, etc.).

6. Spell out S-P-O-O-N-S, and you’re eliminated.

Last player standing wins.

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NOTE: If you read an earlier version of this article, you may recall we used the term “floodlight” in place of “lantern.” We started out using that term, but our a10d Youth Advisors and, in turn, we connected much more to the lantern metaphor. So, lantern it is!

What is the ideal time to help kids understand the technology landscape they’re in and build healthy mindsets and habits? With movements like Wait Until 8th wisely encouraging us to delay smartphones, it can seem tempting to wait on the whole learning process until kids are full on teenagers.

But there is more evidence than I realized that the few years right before and as kids become “teens” provide an optimal window to start building kids’ awareness and agency. Not by just handing them a smartphone, but by providing experiences that build their understanding and get them ready for the world they’ll be living in and building.

Already a teen?

If your kid is already a teen, I’m not saying you’ve missed a window. It’s like the plant-a-tree analogy: the best time to plant is always as soon as you can. Adolescence is an amazing window of opportunity, no matter where kids are within it. This post just explores how early adolescents, who can often be overlooked and over-protected, are at an optimal learning point—likely more so than we realize.

What is adolescence?

Adolescence isn’t a phase to grit and get through. It’s one of the most powerful windows of opportunity in the human lifespan. Developmental scientists like Ronald Dahl, Ellen Galinsky, and Laurence Steinberg remind us that the stretch from ages 10 to 20 functions like a sensitive period of development with a level of brain and personal growth rivaled only by infancy. Motivation, socialization, and learning systems are supercharged. The brain is primed to rewire in ways that last.

Young people are actively shaping their identity, building their ability to plan and execute, and testing what gives life meaning. All of this goes down with a level of neuroplasticity that most adults would drool over, and that will never happen again in their lifetime. The experiences, guidance, and sense of belonging we offer during this window really matter and even compound.

What is early adolescence?

Adolescence is not one uniform stage. The first phase — early adolescence — spans roughly ages 10 to 14, and marks the dynamic transition from childhood into adolescence. Researchers increasingly point to this as an optimal moment to provide support, when kids can still lay a strong foundation, before the architecture of adolescence gets defined.

The Population Council urges in Investing When it Counts: “Focusing attention on young adolescents is a smart investment, as this is the period where lifelong health behaviors are formed, when pathways of opportunity or risk emerge, and when the future life course begins to take shape.”

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Kids’ minds are ready.

Earlier in my career, I taught in and led schools with grades 4–8, and I’m now parenting my second and third kids through this window. I’ve seen countless early adolescents awkwardly and actively shift from identifying as “little kids” to seeing themselves as bigger people with bigger worlds — when sitting at the “kids’ table” becomes intolerable, and being in on what older kids are talking about suddenly matters a whole lot.

And, there are good reasons why. Starting around age 9, kids’ minds enter a remarkable new phase when the prefrontal cortex is becoming connected to other areas of the brain in powerful, new ways. This allows kids to think beyond the concrete and immediate and start grappling with abstract ideas, hypotheticals, and the perspectives of others. It also allows them to connect strong feelings with goals and aspirations.

Kids use these new capacities to begin piecing together how their world interconnects. They listen, take note, and want to both understand and help address the challenges they uncover. We often miss an opportunity to feed these new capacities when we try to buffer children from hard things.

Let’s take a page from the climate crisis—another critical and complex topic that can feel hard to engage young people in. As the Aspen Institute’s This is Planet Ed shared in their Toolkit for Climate Storytelling, kids ages 9–12 “want to understand why, and they want to do something about it. They crave real stories about real change.” Kids feel the same about the challenges they face from phones, social media, and AI. They need us to respect their ability to handle complexity.

And then… there’s phones

For most of us, the arrival of the phone is a major hinge moment with our kids. Even with the prevalence of the “Wait Until 8th” pledge, a recent EdWeek survey found that about 70% of kids get their first phone between ages 10 and 12. Even if your kids don’t have phones yet, their social worlds will likely be impacted by them earlier than you’d think.

Phones aren’t the sole driver of the challenges young people face. That list includes school pressure, parenting dynamics, the breakdown of local social infrastructure, worry for the world, and more. But, we are what we attend to. Helping kids strengthen their attention and awareness right before they’re learning to live with their first phone may prove to be the best timing of all. For many of us, once kids have a phone can easily feel too late to get ready for a phone.

Given how ubiquitous AI already is, and will become even more, helping kids understand how AI is used, how they may encounter it and what to look out for feels essential, too.

The inflection point

If we needed more convincing, data really makes the case.

At a 2025 summit on AI & Human Connection, Ronald Dahl, Director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, shared graphs like those shown above. Each depicts the instances of harmful behaviors by age. Those of us listening were not too surprised to see these behaviors peak in late adolescence. What was startling, though, was the consistent inflection point at which the curves first turn upward: ages 10–14. On graph after graph, the trend lines begin rising in early adolescence, before the patterns lock in, and before the crises fully emerge. Such a moment of opportunity.

Early adolescence can sneak under our radar. It can feel like a lull before the stakes get higher. But this early window seems like just the moment for powerful support to influence kids’ trajectory.

Contrary to later phases in adolescence, parents and caregivers still organize much of kids’ daily lives and have real access during the early adolescent phase. The windows and doors into who kids believe they are and what they believe they can do are still pretty open. Even if the openings feel smaller than before, they’re still there for reaching through.

What now?

As a mom of an 11, 13, and 15 year old, I’m grateful for a new sense of urgency and opportunity to reach my younger two right where they are. And for my eldest, I’ll continue supporting her, and I may look out for opportunities for her to mentor her siblings. Helping younger kids can deepen a teen’s own learning, and help them to feel like they matter.

The question, then, is what kinds of experiences will help kids most during this window. How do we build kids’ awareness so they can become safe, savvy consumers and operators and agents of technology — while we also make sure they spend this incredible, unrepeatable stretch of time building the skills that matter most: attention, emotional awareness, compassion, communication, creativity, critical thinking? The very capacities that we have good reason to worry that technology use could degrade or circumvent.

And, as if we needed more challenge, nearly all of the discourse around young people, AI and technology feels polarizing. It’s doom or utopia. Protect and ban or hop on the crazy train to the future. Neither feels right as a parent or an educator.

The danger is real

These technologies are not being developed with kids’ physical, cognitive and social development in mind. So, in the near term, we’ve got to find ways to protect and prepare kids—but not by avoiding or banning technology outright, but by approaching technologies, understanding them, and choosing how they fit into our lives.

In honesty, that feels like the work humans of all ages need to do in this moment.

There’s hope in the blend

How can we both protect and prepare kids to not only survive but to flourish? Our instinct? It’s a blend—a world in which IRL is vibrant, connected and full of embodied, face to face experiences with fellow humans. And, that same world, includes exciting, emerging technologies that we approach with curiosity, caution and a critical mindset. Kids use the skills and mindsets they develop to fill their biggest needs—purpose, connectedness and the capacity to contribute to their community.

With a10d, we’re endeavoring to develop ways to do both: revive kids’ IRL experiences and protect and prepare our kids to flourish in relationship with technology. A blend is possible. And, though not as simple as either extreme, it just feels like the only path to flourishing.

Keep us posted on what you’re noticing, wondering and worrying most about the kids you love as they navigate this incredible age of opportunity in their lives. And look out for more from us—experiments and activities you can do with your kids to co-pilot as we navigate our way to that hopeful blend.

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Inflection point data sources:

• Age of Onset of Mental Health Disorders

• Rates of Nonfatal Self-Inury in US

• Number of Arrests for Violent Offenses

One week ago, I attended a talk with Dr. Thupten Jinpa, renowned Tibetan scholar, author, and the principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He spoke about why compassion matters, especially in challenging times. I’m pretty sure the packed house at Amherst College left both lighter and more grounded. Jinpa framed this moment in history as a “period of adjustment” — a timely and needed reminder of the temporal nature of all things. He also dove deep into how we humans are social creatures, wired with an impulse for kindness and compassion.

The hour was like a gentle but steady rain, and my stressed root system soaked up every drop.

Compassion in action?

Jinpa’s voice was the reason I went, but there were other voices in the room that pierced my heart. Students were openly frightened, asking how to leave the world better than they found it, how to process the losses they feel, and how to be compassionate actors in a world that so often runs on zero-sum cruelty.

That same day, I spoke with a dear professor friend — the kind of brilliant person who is able to crack open deep conversation with people of any age. She shared that, in two different classes that day, the discourse with students had naturally steered towards a discussion of a similar, lonely trap: you try to unplug, but it’s hard to connect IRL. It’s unclear where to find people, what to do, how to bring each other together. So, back online you go, figuring connection there beats being completely alone. But, you also find mounting feelings of dissatisfaction and disconnection.

I thought of this as I listened to Jinpa and the students. I was reminded of the many lectures I attended in that same room, three decades ago. I recall having my own worries as I prepared to leave that small college. But I know I wasn’t navigating this particular set of woes.

Jinpa, a father of two young Gen Z women, addressed students’ questions directly and with great admiration, speaking to how to be compassionate and thrive right now. His main advice? Stay connected IRL. How best to do that? Make a fuss. He urged, “Digital connection comes with a sense of ease, but it’s deceptive. Make the effort to invite friends. Invest time in your relationships. You need to make a fuss.”

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Making a fuss

Invest time. Nurture relationships. Yes.

As both a human and a mom of three Gen Alphas, I feel inspired to slow down and really sit with that. Without going overboard — life is busy enough — where and how are we, as a family, making time to make a fuss? What does such fussing look like, day to day? How can we model it for our kids, and help them learn both the value and the art of it for themselves?

For me, fussing looks like checking in with our 93-year-old neighbor and inviting her to our daughter’s choral concert. It’s having friends over for dinner, meeting up for pizza and frisbee, or just for a walk. It’s making time to prioritize family gatherings, or to Face Time with family, even when someone has a test to study for. It’s all the village stuff — trading rides, walking someone’s dog while they’re away, stopping to talk now that the weather is finally lovely.

For kids themselves, it feels a bit less obvious. Their lives are so programmed and so many interactions are heavily managed. There are fewer wild spaces and times in which to hone these skills, and these efforts and lessons need to feel like their own. Maybe it can look like a whole lot of small moments and chances to learn? Like, making a weekly phone call to grandparents a kid’s responsibility, then leaving it up to kids to make it happen. Or, maybe we could encourage them to slow down on a friend or sibling’s birthday gift or card so it reflects what they see and love about that person. Or, maybe something a bit scarier for an adolescent: inviting a newer friend to hang out. A friend recently gave each of her kids (ages 10 and 12) a gift card to the local bubble tea place, with one assignment: use it with a friend you want to know better. Things like this are simple, doable invitations that build muscle.

This Friday is May Day — a perfect time to fuss

With all of this swirling in my mind, I nearly let an annual tradition slip by. Thankfully, we remembered: it’s time to make May Day baskets. A perfect way to make a fuss.

This Friday, May 1st is May Day — a celebration of spring’s arrival, roughly halfway between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. For over a decade, our family has woken up early to deliver simple, homemade baskets to neighbors and friends, sneaking up to doors in hopes of leaving both a surprise and a boost of joy.

Want to join us? Here’s how:

• Make a list. Who could you surprise? Think about neighbors, friends, family. Who might live alone or especially need a little joy right now?

• Make some baskets. A recycled jar or can (sans label) with a few spring flowers and a ribbon (optional). A rolled paper cone with a handle. Or just a simple bouquet tied with string. Seriously — that’s it.

• A small warning: At some point during your already-busy morning, you will think, This is nuts. Why are we doing this? Push through.

• Deliver. This is the best part. Walk or drive around to deliver, taking pains to leave each basket without being seen. Then wonder together about what they’ll think and feel when they find it.

Why this is worth it

May Day baskets are a simple, random act of kindness. So much of our attention, especially during adolescence, is naturally focused inward, and many of our efforts aim at some kind of reward. This is the opposite. It’s something done entirely for someone else.

All the thinking involved in Who might need a little joy today? or How do you think they’ll feel when they see…? builds cognitive empathy — our ability to consider another person’s emotional experience. That component to empathy is essential to all relationships.

And all of this selflessness isn’t without a real kickback. The positive feeling you get from acting with compassion is powerful. And it’s one I hope my kids get hooked on. Beyond that, there’s also a lingering social benefit: in a small but meaningful way, you feel like your neighborhood or network is just a bit more connected.

Totally worth the fuss.

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Compassion feels needed now more than ever, so let’s crowdsource! Let us know what fuss-making is looking like for you—both in reality and in your hopes and dreams. We’ll keep fussing and sharing, too.

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Though I did not grow up in an outdoorsy family, like many kids in the 80s and early 90s, my childhood memories are predominantly of exploring and playing outside. And later, as a teacher and a parent, I fell madly in love with the natural world. For years, nature has been at the heart of my work in founding and growing Tinkergarten. I see nature as inextricably linked with kids’ wellbeing, learning, and development. And, now, as we embark on a10d, I am reminded anew of how essential nature is in matters of attention.

And yet, as I parent three teens who were literally raised on outdoor play, it has become harder than I would’ve expected to build in outside time. Middle and high school offer woefully little time outdoors. Kids get so busy with sports, activities, and relationships. Schoolwork mounts, and digital connection, games and media vie for the slots of free time that fall in between.

But here’s what I know from both the science and my own experience: big kids’ brains, bodies and spirits get benefits from the outdoors that nothing else can replicate. And, perhaps the best part is that getting those benefits doesn’t require as much outdoor time as we might think.

What nature does to the brain and body

As an outdoor educator, I started paying close attention to attention when I noticed the almost magical impact that being in the natural world has on kids’ capacity to focus. Natural environments offer an incredible combination of stimulating and calming effects. The big container of the great outdoors also liberates the mind and spirit—quite the opposite impact that rigid, indoor environments have on us. That old saying, “You can’t bounce off the walls if there are no walls” is not just true for little kids. Once kids get used to being outdoors, it just seems both easier and more joyful for kids to engage in whatever they’re doing.

A 2023 summary of research reviews found consistent support that increased exposure to nature is associated with a wide range of positive outcomes for kids, including increased physical activity and improved cognitive functioning, behavioral health and mental wellbeing. Studies also show that time in nature reduces stress and boosts mood — something the so-called “anxious generation” needs more than ever. At this point, the data is so clear that it almost feels too obvious to mention.

For decades, studies have also largely supported Attention Restoration Theory. The theory proposes that spending time in natural settings, or even just viewing a picture of a natural scene, helps people recover from directed attention fatigue, or the mental tiredness that builds up when we sustain deliberate focus over time. For most kids, that’s most of their day. Natural environments give the brain permission to shift into a softer, more effortless mode of attention (that lantern awareness), allowing limited attentional resources to replenish. These restorative effects can persist, making learning and focusing easier long after kids come back inside.

Nature also awakens our sense of wonder. The awe you feel entering an expansive meadow, marveling at the fractals on a pine cone, or even standing on an urban blacktop and staring up at the sky is, perhaps, the best kind of invitation to stop everything and just be. For young people, many of whom are tethered to a steady drip of external, often algorithmic stimulation, that kind of reset is both rare and powerful. And, at a time in life when kids are hyper-focused on social feedback, the natural world offers something different. Animals, plants and open spaces provide a genuine sense of connection with greater ease than other humans sometimes can.

The problem, put plainly

It breaks my heart to see how, as most kids age, their opportunities to move and play outdoors diminish so dramatically.

Since the turn of the century, kids have lost 60 minutes of recess per week, on average. More than 75% of school districts lack any recess policy, and as of 2025, only about 10 states require it — and only for elementary students. By middle school, recess largely disappears and the day becomes a series of sitting still — or getting in trouble when you don’t. Health authorities including the WHO and CDC recommend that children get 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day. Most kids are getting less than half that.

Outside of school, kids ages 8–12 spend an average of five and a half hours per day on screens. Teenagers clock over seven. Sedentary time increases by roughly 20 minutes per year as kids age, compounding quietly, year after year. The gap between what kids’ brains and bodies need and what they’re actually getting is real, and it’s widening.

But have no fear! It doesn’t take as much as you think.

The benefits of outdoor time don’t require national parks or full days in the woods. A large-scale study found that just two hours per week outdoors is enough to start reaping meaningful health and wellbeing benefits. You can spread those minutes out however works — a few evenings, a weekend morning, a walk to or from school. The threshold is lower than most parents imagine. You don’t need to engineer a perfect nature experience. You just need to tip the scales a bit.

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Bigger kids need a different kind of outdoor time

I’ve also come to realize that it doesn’t always work to get tweens or teens outside the same way we did when they were little. Older kids need their own kind of relationship with the outdoors. Here are a few ideas on what I’ve learned along this journey:

Start smooth. If more outdoor time lands as our idea, we all know how that tends to go. So, I’m trying to start small and let them get into a rhythm. I’m also trying to take a page from the anti-tobacco handbook and give my kids information and nurture a gentle sense of outrage. We know how important time outdoors is to kids, and yet schools and our lives don’t build it in. The unfairness is both important for them to understand and motivating.

I find my kids also respond when I frame nature time as a form of reward or self-care rather than another item on their/our to-do list.

Acknowledge what kids are already doing. If your kids and/or family do engage in outdoor activities together, celebrate that. If your kids are already active in a sport, dance, martial arts or other active pastime(s) — celebrate that too. Once kids feel that what they love and already do is seen and respected, they’re more open to adding something new.

I still use a teacher planner to sketch out the activities each week (occupational hazard), and I find a few minutes every Sunday to review plans with each kid (I have yet to deploy Open Claw agents to automate this, and I’m not sure I ever will—the chats are too good!). Every once in a while, I’ll bring a highlighter to mark the moments of outdoor time (literally “green time”) to make visible the outdoor “wins” and opportunities where kids could build in a little more.

Try both ends of the spectrum. I’ve also found it helpful to look at outdoor time in two different ways: real adventures and simply hanging outside.

On one end: adventures. Teenagers respond to novelty, challenge and the chance to prove something to themselves. A night walk, a new hiking trail, a skate park a few towns over, a fire pit or BBQ with friends — these tap into the social, slightly risky adventures that adolescents are wired for.

It also helps to remember that nature and outdoor adventure exists anywhere there’s earth, sky and other species. You can find it in any neighborhood, local park or just by taking the bus or taking a walk somewhere new. Adventures don’t need to be elaborate or expensive, but they do need to feel genuinely intriguing. A treat after never hurts (for my crew, it’s Dunkin’).

On the other end: simple permission to just be outside. Unstructured, low-key outdoor time is deeply underrated for teenagers. Many of us got copious amounts of it growing up — sitting on a porch, walking somewhere with a friend, hanging out in a backyard. The goal isn’t activity; it’s simply not being inside and not being alone.

You can also just start small: park a little farther from the store, pull over to look at a cool tree; take a short detour through a park. Pack up dinner and move it to a blanket in the back yard or in a local playground or park every once in a while. Encourage kids to walk or bike around with a friend—maybe to get a treat. If that feels like a stretch, agree to meet you back at a spot after some amount of time.

You can also just model this practice yourself. Talk about the time you spent outdoors each day. Notice when a neighbor is walking by and pop your head out to say hi and start up a quick conversation—maybe even linger for a minute or two. Just slowly tipping the balance, bit by bit.

A gentle invitation

If you’re the parent of a 10+ year old, you may feel like you’re losing this battle — that screens are winning, that schedules are winning, that the window is closing. It doesn’t have to.

Two hours a week. A walk. A few minutes of actual sky. An adventure that feels like their idea. Free time with friends in whatever version of the outdoors is accessible to you. Kids who spend time outside — even reluctant teenagers — come back a little calmer, a little clearer, a little more themselves.

That’s worth something. And just a few somethings can add up to a whole lot.

Tell us

How do your kids — or you — build in time outdoors? Let us know what you’re trying and what you’re learning.

We’ll keep learning and sharing, too. We’ll continue asking questions about how schools can improve access to free time outside. And, we’ll never stop finding ways to help kids learn to initiate, navigate and sustain time together in open, natural spaces—or any third spaces. Stay tuned! There’s so much we can do together!

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Got a truly outdoorsy kid?

That’s awesome! For young people who feel most alive outdoors, there are transformative programs out there. Scouting (both BSA and many chapters of Girl Scouts) can offer a tried-and-true foundation, with years of camping, hiking, and skill-building within a supportive peer community. For something more intensive, NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) and Outward Bound run multi-week wilderness expeditions for teens 14 and up, teaching everything from wilderness survival skills to navigation and backcountry cooking to sea kayaking and rock climbing. There are marvelous regional programs as well that offer tweens and teens chances to deepen their connection with nature and develop transferrable skills and self reliance—from New Hampshire based Kroka Expeditions, to Wild Earth in Hudson Valley, NY, to Deer Hill in the Four Corners area of Colorado, to the Earth Native Wilderness School near Austin, TX. Search your area to find programs near you.

Teens who want to do meaningful work in nature can look into the Student Conservation Association or the Youth Conservation Corps, where 15 to 18 year olds contribute to real conservation projects in national parks and forests (and in the case of YCC, get paid to do it). Or, search scistarter.org with kids of any age for opportunities to participate in citizen science.

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Kicking off a genuine conversation with kids around attention can feel awkward, and even hard. But, like with many things, a solid starting place can make all the difference. My favorite way to begin is by opening up space for kids to share what they already think and wonder.

Try these starter questions, or something similar, with a kid you love, and let them show you what they know. This is a learning community. So, if you’re up for it, you can also add kids’ voices to our a10d archive!

The backstory

The a10d idea was inspired by many different inputs: interactions with our kids and their friends; conversations with friends; professional dialogue; galvanizing books— from The Anxious Generation to The Breakthrough Years; and (all too often) alarming headlines.

But one moment that, perhaps more than any other, moved us to action was a conversation that my 13 year old started with me about media. They initiated because they noticed I “seemed worried they were watching bad stuff,” and they wanted me to see a bit of content “they really loved.”

This conversation was a marvelous chance to meet one another in a new space of shared expertise. My kiddo assumed their role as an expert in kids’ lived experience. I, in mothering and teaching.

The chat also gifted me with a few reminders of really important things I was kind of missing in all of my urgency.

First, it’s never a simple story. To be productive, our shared narrative has to be more than, “technology is dangerous, and it was all so much simpler/better/easier when mom was a kid.”

Second, kids are living this, and they are adapting. Those adaptations are remarkable, often happen faster than our own, and deserve our attention and acknowledgement—just as kids’ vulnerabilities deserve our support and protective measures.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, kids’ voices have to be at the center of any work we do to ready them for the future.

How it went

Inspired by this first conversation, I compiled a set of prompts. I then tried them out with my youngest (10 at the time), recording the conversation. Then, I asked a handful of other parents with kids ages 10-16 to try the same.

They talked with their kids, and some even recorded and shared the discussions back. As if kids’ ideas weren’t cool enough, hearing kids’ insights in their own voices gives me chills.

So, these handful of recordings were the start of what is becoming a fascinating archive of kids’ perspectives about attention in this moment. Hear a few of the insights kids have shared so far:

How it works

Want to try this out with a kid(s) you love? You can download a list of questions, then use it however feels most helpful.

Some parents and caregivers have appreciated the idea of being part of the ongoing research. They follow the interview script, record the interview, then add the recording to our archive.

Others bypass the interview directions and just use the questions as prompts for a conversation with their kid(s).

Why it works

You may be talking with your own kids about their attention regularly. I really wasn’t–at least not as deeply as my kids were able and interested in going. And, even if you are, attention is complicated, nuanced stuff. Giving intentional prompts, then slowing down to listen to kids—to hear what they think, wonder and hope—can jump start marvelous exchanges.

Let us know

No matter how you use this set of prompts, please comment to let us know what you think. Have ideas for how to adapt or improve them? We’re all ears, and we’ll keep updating the script to reflect insights from you and our a10d community.

We’re grateful for each young voice that contributes to this work!

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None of us are short on reasons to break down these days. But there are moments when I find myself really struggling to define, never mind live into, the expectations of my #1 job.

The Socks

I bought these “I am a great mom” socks for my mother, but at the age of 80, she found them a bit too snug. So they found their way back into my sock drawer. Last week, with no clean alternatives available, I put them on and headed downstairs to shepherd my kids off to school.

The next 48 minutes were peppered with tension. Clothes were wrong, polynomials failed to factor themselves, the bus seemed early, and no, mom couldn’t “just drive today.” My all too familiar, “Why wasn’t this all done last night?” seemed to bounce off my kids, only to leave me frustrated and fearful that I’m raising an entitled trio of malcontents. Ten minutes after they left, I found myself in tears in the supermarket dairy aisle (we were also out of milk for coffee).

Needless to say, I felt far from a great mom.

What was the matter?

Back home and coffee in hand, I tried to figure out why I was so upset. These days, the possibilities feel endless, but I could tell these tears were mom tears.

I reflexively thought: What would I say to a friend in my shoes (or, socks)? I’d probably remind her that her kids are marvelous AND adolescent, then ask questions to help clarify what was really driving her feelings. That quirky reflex made me wonder, Why do I have an easier time helping someone else? Is my need to think well of myself actually making this job harder?

My mind wandered to a book I had read decades ago, called Difficult Conversations, about how to handle challenging negotiations (one way to view interactions with adolescents). The book asserts that, when negotiating, we all wrestle with three identity questions: Am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love?

Another sip of coffee, and I decided to explore all three.

Am I competent?

To answer this, I first needed to figure out: what does it even mean to be a great parent these days?

I’ve long held Alison Gopnik’s gardener as a core metaphor:

“Being a parent is like making a garden. It’s about providing a rich, stable, safe environment that allows many different kinds of flowers to bloom.”

I still love this, but feeling like a good gardener was so much easier when my kids were younger, around me more, and less impacted by media (directly or indirectly). Today, it’s hard to discern what’s a noxious weed and what’s just part of an adolescent landscape. Where Gopnik’s words “stable” and “safe” once felt inspiring, striving to provide those today can stir a sense of overwhelm, and even fear.

I find myself wondering: How can I reimagine our family garden to stretch farther and acknowledge the broader wilderness? and How can I give my kids a bigger role in tending it, rather than growing within a garden that I manage for them?

When they were little, I also found the hummingbird analogy helpful: quietly hover nearby, nearly imperceptible, and be ready when truly needed. Today the goal is the same, but the landscape is more complicated. It’s far too easy to let fear take over and slip into less optimal roles: lecturer, protector, nag, enforcer.

It’s clear I need to evolve my metaphors. This tension — how to double down on being a gardener while rebooting our inner hummingbird for a much more complex world — is exactly what I want to keep exploring.

Am I good?

I also think of parenting as my number one teaching job. A forever Reggio Emilia devotee, I see my role as a guide — a sacred chance to support each of my kids in driving their own learning and finding their own way.

Back when I taught in a classroom, I cared deeply about my students. But I felt nowhere near as emotionally attached to them as I do to my three kids. I’m riding this ride with my whole heart buckled in. I feel it deeply when they experience loss or pain—and when they direct some of that tough emotion my way. And yet, I know they need to make their own mistakes and learn from trial and error. It’s just hard, when you are in the passenger seat of your own family’s car, not to grab the wheel when I see a crash coming that they don’t.

Emotional responsiveness is vital. It helps kids feel seen. It supports them in building their own ability to understand, regulate and harness their emotions and to recognize and respond effectively to the emotions in other people. But too much attunement can push kids to over-rotate on their feelings, and can put a parent too much at the center, blocking kids from learning lessons they need to learn. The job, then, becomes judging when and how to actively engage, and when to step back. Hard to do when you’re so invested.

This brought me back to what I’ve learned about early social development from Stanley Greenspan or, more recently, the FIND Program at Stanford. These high impact approaches share an idea of social learning as a series of open and closed circles of interaction, where every social exchange is a kind of mini experiment. Kids say or do something, then they learn from the responses that comes back. We apply this generously to young children. But what if we extended it to our tweens and teens?

What if we reframed difficult interactions not as reflections of our relationship, but as our kids’ experiments? And, what if we expanded our own role to include co-researcher, there at the ready to observe and offer useful feedback? That might mean shifting from “You really hurt my feelings — don’t you realize how much I do for you?” to “I know you were trying something out there, but what you said landed pretty harshly. Is that what you were going for?” That reframe doesn’t mean we stop feeling it. It means we use what we feel in service of helping our kids learn. It takes a good bit of the sting out, and would likely help kids more.

I also wonder, what if kids actually got to see themselves as researchers, and the choices they make as chances to learn. That kind of mindset can naturally help kids stay more open, curious and discerning. It may also help kids feel less shame and feel better able to include the people they love, tops on that list us parents, in the experiments they inevitably run.

Am I worthy of love?

This question felt the most tender.

When one of my kids and I are out of sync, or when one lashes out, there’s a part of me that just feels hurt. Enough of those hurts, and I can slip into a kind of mourning — a longing for what once was — even though I love them more every day we live.

Intellectually, I know they’re still developing. But teens can deliver messages in a way that feels grown-up enough to really sting. And that can trigger us to sting back or, perhaps worse, to retreat. Both extremes risk the very safety our kids need so badly.

Jennifer B. Wallace writes about how everyone needs a cornerman — someone who can be there, listen, take a deep interest, and share in both joy and suffering. This role doesn’t ask us to be invulnerable. It asks us to stay in the ring. To absorb the hard rounds, tend to what needs tending, and be ready when our kids come back to the corner. I wonder if this, too, is a metaphor for this moment in my life as a parent?

I love that a good corner-person supports both the hard moments and the joys. Even though, to me, adolescent joys seem less frequent than they did in early childhood, it feels really great to slow down and savor with my kids whenever they have wins.

I’m also pretty sure a good corner-person is also a bucket-filler, actively refueling with as many sweet moments as we can capture. Moves like shifting my schedule to have 15 minutes of breakfast with my oldest. A best-of-five ping pong challenge with my youngest right after dinner. Asking my middle to do homework at the kitchen counter while I cook. Turning dinner into a picnic every once in a while. Singing along to my kids’ new favorite songs in the car until at least a few become our songs. Watching shows I’d never choose — all to savor a few moments under a shared blanket.

The fuller our buckets, the less depleted we feel when there’s an inevitable tipping point.

Bringing it home

These three questions — Am I competent? Am I good? Am I worthy of love? — don’t resolve neatly. For me, they seem to spark even more questions—and some evolving metaphors. But these new directions feel like fruitful ones to explore. I have a hunch that staying open and curious as I wrestle with them is a solid way to keep growing alongside my kids.

And finally: to everyone who could find themselves crying in the dairy aisle in a pair of “You are a great mom (or dad, or caregiver of any kind)” socks, I see you, and I see how much you love your kids. To my mind, that’s true greatness.

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Elizabeth Spiers recently wrote a sharp NY Times OpEd piece about OpenClaw — a new open source project that lets any person build AI agents that operate in the world on your behalf. If you are like me, the idea alone triggers lots of feels as well as ideas, a wave of endless scenarios to imagine. And I’m sure even more change is coming before I process this one.

But even if today’s tool du-jour is old news by the time you read this, the shift it represents isn’t: widely accessible AI is evolving from advisory (you ask, it answers) to agentic (you set goals and parameters, and off it goes, acting autonomously).

To me, and to Spiers it seems, this feels like a tangled, if not dubious leap forward.

With technology advancing this fast, it’s hard to know how to support ourselves, let alone the kids we love. The lessons we need to teach young adolescents go far beyond how to use any given tool, or where using AI to finish a homework assignment flirts with plagiarism.

Our kids (and we) face bigger, more fundamental questions—questions about how to be in relationship with artificial intelligence. And that’s not just in the forms it takes today, but in all the incarnations we’ll see as AI and we humans continue to evolve.

So. Many. Questions.

How do kids use AI to help them grow, discover, and create, while staying in the lead of their own thinking and feeling? How can they truly delight in what AI can help them imagine, and yet steel themselves against what’s so dangerous about deep fakes?

How do kids interact with AI that increasingly understands and caters to our human emotions, and how will they be able to identify when that’s helping them connect more deeply with themselves, or when it’s dulling their sense of self? When and how could AI help them navigate and build human relationships, and when and how could it steadily erode their connections with others? And, how do frictionless interactions with AI “companions” disrupt the essential social growth that comes from the productive friction of real human relationships?

At the heart of it all: what does it mean to stay healthy and human as AI bleeds into our lives more and more?

My conclusion: I’m not entirely sure. But my hope for all of us is that we’ll find the wherewithal to slow down and explore this together. And, even though we’re building this plane while we fly it, a few guideposts are coming into clarity.

Kids as co-pilots

“Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.” —Benjamin Franklin

Humans learn better when they’re in the driver’s seat. This feels especially true when it comes to something as dynamic as AI.

If we want kids to develop both genuine enthusiasm and healthy skepticism, they’ll need to feel both motivated and safely able to explore AI and discover the fault lines for themselves. Attempts on our part to overhype or to over warn will be sniffed out quickly by our savvier-than-we-think friends…and are likely to backfire. And, if we don’t give them the reins, we also communicate that they are not capable. As Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop urge, we need kids to “build agency over the tech, not just agility with what it offers.”

Plus, kids have expertise worthy of respecting and leveraging in this process. They are already encountering AI in many forms when we’re nowhere around, and our Gen Alpha friends carry a digital native’s perspective that most of us Gen X/Millenial parents and caregivers will never have.

Kids have already amassed a wide range of experiences and impressions. These range from eye rolling at how peers use ChatGPT to “get through assignments” to positive experiences in which the same tool made it possible to put something tricky into words. Kids delight in some AI generated content and lament how “AI Slop” is flooding their worlds. In short, they know more than many people think they know.

Where to start

To start, work together with kids to establish a shared understanding of what AI is, how it works, and how it’s evolving. I don’t recommend drinking from the firehose of hourly commentary. That’s sure to overwhelm all involved. Instead, try finding agreement around some basics.

Get your own background. Before working with my family, I found it helpful to get my own sense of how kids are approaching AI. A recent Pew Research study of teens provides some nice, broad strokes, like: a majority of teens are using chat bots, but they’re doing so for a range of reasons, most commonly for school and information gathering. Older “young people” can also be great sources, like in this “What Young People Wish Adults Knew” from The Rithm Project. Or, check out their recent research report on how young people’s (age 13-24) relationships are shaping how they use AI, and is AI reshaping their relationships.

The Rithm Project

Nine Portraits of the first AI Generation

We launched The Rithm Project in 2024 because we had a gut feeling about what was coming…

Read more

5 months ago · 15 likes · The Rithm Project, Michelle Culver, and Alison Lee

Start with what your kids–and you–already know. Unpacking what you already know is engaging, illuminating, and a great way to avoid frustration (especially for kids). Try what one sixth-grade teacher does: ask yourself and your kids to write responses to two prompts — “I think AI is interesting because …” and “I’m worried about AI because …” Then, share your responses with each other. For a fun twist, pause to predict what the other will say before you share.

Fill in the gaps together. The Family Resources from DayofAI.org, developed in partnership with Common Sense Media, offer a great way to establish common understanding for families, including three videos, each with a guide and discussion prompts.

A few tips:

• Ask kids what they think each video will be about before watching.

• Have everyone generate two or three questions as they watch. Listening for questions can increase attention and boost curiosity (a superpower!).

• For kids who are already well versed in the basics of AI, try The Rithm Project’s AI Effect card game to spark rich, thought-provoking conversation about how AI can support and erode our human connections.

• Include ice cream.

Curiosity at the core

“The most vital and significant factor of learning…is, without doubt, curiosity.” —John Dewey

At the heart of what makes us human — and what will help us build a healthy relationship with other forms of intelligence — is our curiosity. Asking questions at every turn and remaining curious may just be the most important habit we can help kids form.

This includes the questions media literacy experts like Renée Hobbs, founder of the Media Education Lab, have been teaching for decades like: Who created this (message or tool)? What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? How is it designed to impact how I think and feel?

It also helps to encourage kids to ask questions that reinforce their own goals and agency. Before, during, and after interacting with AI, try asking:

• What am I trying to do or learn?

• How can AI help me do that?

• What role will I play, and how can I steer this process?

• How would working with another person be different? better?

• Is using an AI for this worth the environmental cost? (It’s so easy to forget to be mindful of that, too).

The goal need not be either enthusiasm or skepticism. Instead, be open to what is wonderful; slow down, tune in, and scrutinize even the faintest yellow flags; and remain hyper curious and observant about all of it.

Explore and discover

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” —Zora Neale Hurston

Perhaps the best way to learn about AI is through small, inquiry-based experiments—engaging and fun ways for kids to apply media literacy strategies, both the time-tested and newly relevant, all with the goal of becoming both curious and savvy consumers of everything being created around them.

Try our Side-by-Side Advice and invite kids to seek advice from both a trusted adult and an AI. What feels similar? What feels different? What does that teach you about each approach?

Keep investing in what’s human about us

Alongside this experimentation, continue to aim the spotlight of your attention on the things that make us uniquely human. The more connected we are to our humanity, the better we’ll be able to form healthy relationships with other forms of intelligence.

Sing, move, go outside, smile at a stranger, stair into someone else’s eyes, eat delicious food, dance, laugh, re-watch The Good Place and make note of things that Michael derides and delights in about what humans do. Whatever works for you. Definitely check back here or keep an eye on your inbox each week. We’ll continue to share fresh ways to identify and invest in the human parts of ourselves.

Share what you’re learning, too!

Comment to let us know—What have you tried? What got you and your kids talking and thinking? What more do you wish you had support with? We’d love to hear and share your ideas. The more the merrier as we navigate into the unknown together!

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