Command F: Raising Children AI Cannot Raise for Us

Jenna Arnold: Command F lives between the world we are building and the wisdom we have inherited. We hold AI's astonishing power in one hand and 5,000 years of Jewish thought, ritual, and argument in the other, asking how to navigate what is coming without surrendering what is sacred. I'm Jenna Arnold, and together with some of today's most compelling thinkers, we explore the ancient questions resurfacing inside our most modern technologies. As AI changes how we create, remember, relate, and understand ourselves, we ask whether the questions beneath this revolution have been with us all along. Parenting in the age of AI is often framed as a question of screen time, safety, and technological fluency. But this episode asks something more fundamental. What conditions allow a child to become a sturdy, curious, fully human person? Atiba Edwards begins with the spaces children need for play, experimentation, creativity, and belonging. Dr. Tova Klein moves inward to the emotional resilience built through boredom. Frustration, uncertainty, and repair. And DZ Common extends the metaphor to AI itself, asking what responsibilities creators bear for the intelligence humanity is now raising. The through line is formation not through control, but through environment, example, limits, and care. I am so excited to welcome Datiba Edwards, who is the president and CEO. Of Brooklyn Children's Museum, where his work sits at the intersection of childhood, creativity, community, and culture. As we think about parenting not just as caregiving, but as formation, habituation, and the shaping of a child's relationship to the world, Atipa helps us ask what children need beyond school and screens. Today we'll talk about museums as third spaces where kids learn through play, curiosity, boredom touch, and real human encounter. And What happens when AI enters that same space as tutor, toy, companion, and creative partner? Hiya Tiva. I'm so excited to have you here. Even though we have a third wall of a screen between us and lots of Wi-Fi headed up to satellites, it is still so nice to always be in your presence. I feel the same. It's always great to share a space with you. The Brooklyn Children's Museum is a best in class museum. And thank you for carrying that torch for its next chapter. Yeah, I'm really excited. I think we are looking at the next, I like to say 125 years, ⁓ since we were started as the first children museum in the world. What would it look like to think about the evolution? Because in the eighteen ninety-nine, nineteen hundreds, it was a very different space for children. And we're almost back to that pivotal moment again. Why? When the museum was started, it was founded with What feels like a novel idea at the time, a space dedicated just to children, would have created opportunities for them to have agency, to lead, to be amongst their community and communities through groups, exploration and more. We've then seen almost 400 children's museums and similar spaces across the US. Now we're really at this point where the advent of technology is causing some really interesting conversations and questions around what feels right. What feels like a best practice is not that we are anti-technology, but we like to be very analog. I think for us it's important is to provide that moment of slowness and stillness. Many parents and caregivers ask me frequently and often, what does technology look like for the museum's implementation? We had a guest on another episode earlier this season talking about AI as humans' creation in the same way, and looking at what is it that humans are doing to raise and create AI so that AI sustains itself without all of the potential negative impacts of it. And maybe I can invite you into a bit of my safe space with this audience to be like real about your fears. I think we probably know. where the exciting opportunities may be, but like what's keeping you up at night on this subject? Yeah, so I think about what is a family coming to us for? And we know it's not a screen. And the reason is that play is at our center, plays at our core of everything we think about at the museum. We're the space that we really want to think through, creating moments of play, moments of joy. We are the living large language model, like We want children to meet each other for the first time, learn from each other, interact with each other, and then be better equipped because the folks who are loading up the machine didn't have or for some reason didn't include a diverse experience. So when I think about your question, what's keeping me up at night? One of the best experiments I always talk about doing is putting children in a room with a pencil and paper and putting adults in a room with a pencil and paper. More often than not, the child is just gonna keep going, but the adult's gonna wait for some level of. prompt some level of of direction. So I want to make sure that those adults who are coming in because they spent time with children with us feel creative. Feel like regardless of what they're doing, it's more a matter of what can we create and how can we go about impacting the world in a way that feels positive, but impacting a world that's based on just like a love of learning and a love of identity. Do you think that adults have An inaccurate understanding of what play is and where play is supposed to happen. It strikes me that Brooklyn Children's Museum roots all of the learning around play. Do you think we have misunderstood what that is and should be? I think we've misunderstood the purpose and the ability for it to happen because as we age, particularly as you go through high school and higher education, you're doing a thing, knowing that you're graded upon your output. So we get conditioned to move away from the benefit of play, which is really about the process. It's about the joy of just doing the thing. Like play almost as adult needs to be permission based because we've moved away from the benefit of it. And sometimes it's hard to really feel okay with doing. Well, it feels elementary. Like if I said I'm gonna go play, I think I would be embarrassed. Like I'd be protecting my ego a little bit if I was like, hey, I gotta go. garden or I'm gonna go play pickleball or I'm gonna scrapbook or like the hobby itself protects the act of doing nothing or just being. The irony is that in some cases technology learning machines have given me a little bit of my time back to do that play, yet I'm still embarrassed to be like, yo, Mr. Edwards, I'm gonna go play. Yeah. In a way that particularly in the Western world, like what you're saying is right. AI has helped free up time. But are you just adding more work to that free time? Because that's the other side of it is as you do things faster and you move more efficiently, sometimes like, all right, I've just finished 10 things that normally would have taken me two days, but I'm just gonna do the other ten. It's like, no, you've you've you've got some free time. Right. Go go get lost, go on a walk somewhere. That to me though is the dichotomy of The benefit of AI. Like you said, we're putting aside the real impacts of AI and the things that we don't see because I've got this copy done faster. Yeah. It's somewhere in somewhere else in somebody's data center, but like, I just did this in five seconds. You're a big proponent of showing kids how big the world really is, which is what the ancient Jewish text asks of us. While some argue that technology is a way to show kids what the world actually is, what are your thoughts about exploring? The world on screen versus walking the street with our own two feet. Being able to explore the world on screen actually has its benefits because that's going to lead you to be inspired to go to a place that you have no idea about. You might have read about the Nile River or seen it in a cartoon, but now you're able to open up a book and then say, ⁓ let me look it up. ⁓ that looks beautiful. As I get older, I want to go there. The beauty of technology is that screen. Or that digital landscape is now we have access to everything. We can Google a thing and find it and then set up a desire to go there. So it almost is like a treasure map. I can now map out the things I want to do very differently because I have pictures and boards around, like I want to do this, and I want to go hiking here and I want to go kayaking here, and I really want to swim here. I would have never known it unless I was able to go online to find it. But the flip side is. We can't lose sight of our own backyard. Living in New York, walking a mile sometimes, feel like there's a bus, there's a train, there's so many other ways I can get why would I walk? But then you do it and you start to realize how joyful it is. So the digital world helps to inform it, but the push is to not rest on the digital experience only. Do you find yourself having to train the adults in your space, both parents, stakeholders? Where you have to say, y'all, we can't teach a four-year-old the value of walking if you're all nut. So with the parents and the caregivers, we say out of the way. This museum means something different to them every moment that they're in there. Sometimes it's like, great, I see my child, they're creating art in Color Lab. I'm just gonna I'm gonna mentally take a break. We always encourage the co-making because there is a unique thing that takes place sometimes in that I've brought my children to the children's museum so that they can play and enter and I feel like I've played. But you probably didn't do anything. But you're in this space and it's loud. Kids are laughing. It's like, ⁓ I'm surrounded by joy. I felt like I just played today. And you didn't do a thing but just sit there. That's right. There are some ⁓ adults who get into it though. They really like to see them light up. We had a roller skating rink on our rooftop terrace for about six months. The adults were in a rare state of joy because they probably grew up roller skating. They had children, so they weren't able to get out as much. The level of smiles that were on parents' faces, because a child's on a walker learning how to skate, and the adults just moving backwards, forwards, spinning, because they not had a chance to play. So we always try to remind folks: play is not permission-based. I imagine that's why you trying to define your mandate for the next 125 years looks a little bit different because you are having to introduce very basic concepts, which fortunately are in our bone marrow, but you're protecting the innocence and the natural ways of trying to figure out how to be human in the physical and the emotional. In the mental world, right? Yeah. I would even say we just want to continue nurturing it because anything that's planted that doesn't get water doesn't last that long. So how can the museum serve as a garden bed that waters the memories of play that we all have? Play creates core memories that we take with us for life. But as we get older, they get forgotten about. You know, I spent six and a half years doing investment banking. When I'm doing an earnings report, I'm not thinking about that one time I was riding my bike and this girl I liked was next to me and I tried to be cool and I pulled the wrong brake and I flipped over my bike, fell on the floor, and like laughed my tail off. So we always try to think about how do we provide moments of watering, but also reminding the adults that they should also water their moments of play. The Jewish word hnuch means education, but also habituation, dedication, initiation, and the overall forming of a person. When you watch children move through the museum, what kind of habits do you hope the space is forming in them? You use the word protecting, nurturing, but I imagine there is a curation of new experiences. Yeah, we we like to call it risky play. It's this thing that feels a little scary to do. On our rooftop, we have this structure called the nest that was made out of reclaimed water tower wood. And looking at it, it feels a little scary. And then watching a child climb up it, the adult that's with them is almost paralyzed with fear about like, what's gonna happen? And if you get in trouble, how am I gonna get you down? So if we show them it's not scary to do, but it feels intimidating at first, that's the key part where. We're able to take a bit more risk as a child because I I I'm curious about learning the thing and I want to do it. But more importantly, this level of community, because the average person spends about two and a half hours at the museum. For those two and a half hours, they're meeting new children for the first time. And there's this telekinetic kind of way that children move through the space, is they suddenly just fall into different roles. All right, you're gonna do this, I'm gonna pass it to you, you're gonna do that. And For that two and half hours, we want them to enjoy company with what feels like a stranger because the focus on the greater good is play, is laughter. There is obviously something so clear about what town squares or community based squares like children's museums can do for people for the next generation. I'm so glad that you're carrying the torch. Atiba. AI is often sold to parents as personalized learning. Every child gets a tutor, every child gets customized support. That both excites me and it makes me nervous. What about you? I would say it's the same. It is scary for sure. I think all new technology feels that way, especially AI, because it's moving at such a rapid pace that the thing that's most telling is we as adults feel great pride in knowing 90% of the things in our kids' lives. AI is moving at a pace where we have no idea what's going on. We have no idea how to really even master it, let alone help it play alongside in a way that feels good. It runs by itself and it doesn't really rely on us as pace setters, if you will. How are you pace setting AI in your life? So I use it to help make Tasks much more efficient. We do some quick mock-ups because we need to turn something around really quickly. But we're not using it in the general public space of the museum. In the entire museum, it's about 100,000 square feet. We have six screens total. For me personally, AI frees up my routine work to start thinking and ideating more in ways that I just didn't have the ability to because I'm doing sometimes small repetitive tasks. We introduce a level of molasses and slope to the process purposely because that allows exhibits to actually have a lot more fun, have a lot more surprises. You're intentionally protecting the creative process because that authenticity is ultimately going to benefit the child. Are other children's museums, you mentioned 400 nationally, do you think other Play spaces are also wrestling with that, or are there some people who are racing to get there and trying to create choose your own adventures as soon as you step in the door with screens and AI? Some are racing to it and they're still figuring out. You know, they're flying the plane and still figuring out, ⁓ we forgot to put gas in it. But chill museums are slowly moving into it because our core audience is very delicate in the way of we need to think about what we're doing and the impact it's gonna have. When they age out, you know, when they get to seven, eight, nine, ten years old. If they were in front of, let's say, AI for three or four years, did we help or did we hinder their future? So a lot of the field is having these conversations. I don't think we're going to be the last museum standing holding on to old school tactics, the association of children's museums. We do a conference every year. That was a topic this year. That'll probably be another topic for the next three or four years because we're looking at How do museums play a role in children being raised under an AI environment? Do you think parents sometimes outsource the idea of learning to schools when so much of a child's worldview is actually being shaped at home and in museums and parks or sidewalks or in the community? I think parents outsource it because it's the expected process of life. Your kid has to go school. It's a very structured based program, but You learn a lot through schooling. Kids learn a lot. When you watch families inside the museum, do you see parents realizing that learning is not just academic achievement, but also includes the curiosity and the confidence, the social imagination, the comfort with the unknown? Yes, without a doubt. I've seen it and I've heard it from members. Sometimes it's as simple as like, I didn't know they were interested in that. Because at home we don't talk about it. So yeah, there's always parents, always caregivers who are just like, wow. I I never knew this. And the part of it is just the way most kids life is set up. You ideally want them to follow some level of structure. You come in the door, you do this, and then this. And then so a lot of their young life is structured, but when they're young, spaces like the museum allows that to happen. Just go have fun. What do you think children will need more from actual adults in the world, not less? It's a great question. I think it's the importance of human connection in a realm of improvisation. And this aspect of the challenge with the machines is more often than not, they're always going to just shower praise upon you. Maybe that might change over the future, but the human touch element is it's that friend you have that's gonna call you out. Like that was dumb. That was a bad decision. To me, that's the most important thing is allowing for error. So as we think about that future with children being raised, they need to understand they're gonna make a mistake and it's okay. We don't need shortcuts in life all the time. What Brooklyn Children's Museum is doing right now feels so essential because they're reminding us that children don't. Just need better answers. They need richer environments, deeper curiosity, and more human places to become themselves. At a moment when so much of our childhood is moving onto screens, the museum is protecting something beautifully old and urgently modern. The right of children to touch, wander, imagine, make, and belong. Atiba Edwards, thank you so much for being here. My absolute pleasure. It was great to share space with you. Continue playing, even if you have to put it into your calendar. Make time to play. We now welcome Dr. Tova Klein, a developmental psychologist, professor, researcher, and the former director of Barnard Center for Toddler Development. She is the author of How Toddlers Thrive and Raising Resilience. Her work translates decades of child development research into practical guidance for parents trying to raise emotionally sturdy, flexible, and confident children. Dr. Tova Klein, thank you so much for being here. Cool, I'm excited. Thank you for having me. What does resilience today look like in children? So I'm gonna tell you what it looks like today, but what it's always looked like. That's the funny thing about children, they don't change in the ways that they we think they change the world changes, our context changes, stress changes. So what resilience means for children, for teens across ages, is that ability to face the hard stuff. So to adapt, to adjust, to pivot, to be flexible. In the face of hardship, whether that's small hardship, medium, or kind of the big bad things that happen. So it's really this flexibility or ability to shift directions and to know they're not alone. Particularly the younger they are, the more so. But even as children grow up and become teenagers and into young adulthood. So it's really all of that pivoting, adjusting, the ability to face hurdles in life. Sort of smirking, Tova, because it I just don't know if I can say I know a huge amount of adults who I feel like can embrace some of those priorities, behaviors, skill sets. Certainly the people who have faced the most adversity in their lives seem to be the adults that I feel like can embody flexibility, openness, curiosity, humility, stamina when the going gets rough. So here's the thing. We are preparing our children to become adults one day, right? We all want them to become adults and to become, in some way, decent adults, however you want to define that. I appreciate you framing that resilience today doesn't look different than resilience 775 years ago. And I do think that there is this new algorithm that parents step into when it comes to raising their kids today that feels more. Complicated than it used to be, dare I say, we take ourselves far too seriously for this project. I'm the oldest of 25 grandchildren. My eldest is 10. All of my younger cousins are starting to have babies. And there is such a spectrum of how they all are stepping into their role as caretakers, which is either I'm inventing parenthood myself from the very, very beginning. I have to no one's ever done it. No one can no one can articulate how much I love my kid, nor be able to identify the best ingredients that are supposed to be in their food. And then there's the ones that are a little bit more, I don't know if the right word is relaxed or inviting of the rest of the community into their children's lives. But I am more stressed. For parents today, than I think my parents were for their peers and for me. And I fear that it has to do with the algorithm and what the algorithm is telling my younger cousins about how they're supposed to raise their kids. ⁓ there's more comparison culture. But even there's just like these random benchmarks that are suddenly being thrown out from used to be what like, Eating, talking, reading, writing, arithmetic, shaking hands, like buckling your seatbelt without having to be reminded twenty five times, not losing your mind when your sister takes the remote control. Like, but now there's like twenty nine hundred benchmarks. And so I recognize that resilience is just stamina and a species surviving. And I also think parents have it harder today. Right. Harder and easier. That's the irony. Okay. Right. So for many parents, not all, but many parents are leading a life that has many more options in a good way. Like I may have a choice of where I live. ⁓ although places are getting so expensive, maybe our choices are being curtailed again. We make choices for ourselves, for our children. I'm gonna move to the next neighborhood if I have that luxury of being able to because the schools are better there. there are many more options, but the problem with choices and information is I think it truly becomes a tyranny. It's like the tyranny of choice, the tyranny of information. And so what happens is it undermines us. Right? It's like, ⁓ I thought I had the right idea or I thought I knew what to do, but then I read this and I read that and you know the pediatrician said something and my neighbor said something and my friend said something and my mother. It's just so much input that it actually undermines What do I want? What does my gut tell me? Now, maybe for a parent that they don't have a good compass. Maybe your childhood was really rough and even toxic, or there are parts of it that you're like, I never want to repeat that part. And then you have to think about this is part of my book, Raising Resilience. What do you bring from childhood? Hopefully, some of it is good, some of it usually is not good, and some of it was missing. But we're also bombarded. Barded with information as if there's only one right way to raise a child. Right. And I think therein lies some of the problem. I mean, I was hesitant. My first book is How Toddlers Thrive. I was so hesitant to write it. People were coming to me saying, whether it was in the publishing world, editors or you know, psychologists or parents were like, please write a book that gets your word out. And I was like, I don't want to put more information out there until I realized, wait, I could put information. That hopefully would relax parents and then it'll be funnier actually and lighter. And then raising resilience comes really on the cusp of the world is really moving quickly, shall we call it? Right? Changing. There's a lot of information in it. So, what do we do to figure out the grounding? And then I can look at the science, I can look at years of clinical experience. ⁓ you there's a huge body of literature that can actually guide us that says children need basics. And the kind of watering that children need doesn't actually change that much. So children need love. They need somebody who says, I've got you. And it doesn't have to be a parent. It might be a grandparent, it might be a relative who helped raise you or who is raising you, but they need an adult in their life. Who literally messages them with their like little twinkle in their eye or their cue of like, I got ya. And then also some limits and boundaries. Right. You have a routine and that kind of limits on their everyday life that helps children then feel like, ⁓ somebody's guiding me a little bit, and then I have some room to choose. So we give them this sense of I'm here for you, I'm gonna structure the day, school does that. And so all of that actually helps establish a sense of safety in children. And that sense of safety is part of becoming resilient. You can't handle life if you're vigilant because you're worried about you're unclear about what's next. What's next? Am I gonna be fed? Am I okay here? Am I safe? If you're always looking behind your shoulder, it's very hard to learn anything because you gotta keep yourself safe. But when adults are like, we got this. You don't have to love school, but you go in and you learn like every day reading is the first thing, you do it. Tova, in your book, Raising Resilience, you talk about parents continuing to emphasize the idea that they are bearing witness to their kids. This idea of I got you, the idea that we're in this together, setting boundaries, not for boundary sake, but just so that there's some Outstanding questions that kids don't have to mull over, like who's picking me up from school? What time is bedtime? Where am I gonna sleep? And while there might be a lot of flexibility in pajama choice or which pillow or whether or not they're gonna have carrots or broccoli, that there's still a framework of safety. And I'm wondering, particularly in this age of AI, when kids can get instant answers ⁓ and instant reassurance about. Outstanding questions or where their place is in the world. What kind of uncertainty do you think parents still need to protect this idea of, I'm not sure, that's unclear. Let's find out. How do you think parents should be able to hold both the framework of certainty and uncertainty in today's AI world? Look, the world is always changing. I think we also forget that. Like AI is this thing now. But I am in that camp of we've always handled change. Like I'm not Pollyanna-ish, but we've always handled change as humans and as parents. So I think part of it is even before AI, although AI has been talked about for a long time, but before it got here, let's say before right now in your beautiful podcast, like it's been coming. But before that, what was the big switch? A phone that you could hold in your hand and Googling things. Not to be an advertisement, but however you want to say, we can search for answers. You can think about it this way. The child asks a question, is it that they want an answer to the question? And then it's like, pick up your phone and Google it, or is it an interactive process? And I see AI in this same thing that it's the onus is always on the parents. Sorry to say to any parent listening, because it's always on us. But it's like, huh? And can you sit in that sort of unknowing? Right? Hmm, I don't really know what kind of animal does that thing. How are we gonna figure that out? And when we have those discussions with children, they're actually really excited. They wanna, they wanna be with the parent. And that's true even as kids get older. But the onus is on parents because one is what's our use of our phones and iPads and AI? And what limits are we gonna put on children? Toba, can I offer a really interesting example? Yeah. I'm uncomfortable with. My husband is in youth sports. As a consequence, sports, professional sports, youth sports, sports in general is discussed a lot in our home. Yeah. My son will, I have no idea how he knows it. I guess there's just this telepathy between the two of them of when there's like a game that night. And he goes to sleep at, I like to pretend a decent hour. He'll wake up, he'll come downstairs stressed, shoes on, the routine. And he'll walk over to the Alexa and say, Alexa, what was the score of the blank game? And Alexa immediately delivers it. Now I use Alexa to roll through the news while I'm loading the dishwasher and like sometimes to play music for me. And here, eight-year-old son is like going to get that instant answer from Alexa. There's no exploration in that. No, but there's also and look, and I can go back to like my brothers and I used to fight over the newspaper because every statistic used to be in the newspaper. So who got it first got to get the scores from last night first. Right? Somebody just told me they have a four-year-old who got sports obsessed in the last year. And not only did he get interested in scores, he's very numbers minded. And I said, ⁓ he's gonna love Box scores. You've gotta like find box score, you know, like more statistics for him. So he did. And they get the newspaper delivered on Saturday and Sunday, wherever it is they live. And then like on Sundays, they drive to a cafe and they get like a croissant and that's like their ritual, right? And then he realized that his dad could check the sports scores. And so, you know, once or twice the dad did, and so finally they said to him, you know what, we're gonna wait. And we're gonna get the score tomorrow, which he didn't like, as you can imagine. But I think it's an example of I do think it's up to the parents. If you don't want your child using Alexa for that, then you can't have Alexa around. And I think that's the part that parents grapple with. And so I think it's that piece that is an onus on parents. And I'm always like, I don't want to burden parents anymore, but they watch they watch us. as young ones, as middle and as older. And so if you have a rule like when we come in, the phones go over there and there's no phones at the table, the parents have to follow that too. And we don't, you know, not I mean, it depends on who you are and who's ever listening, but our children know from home you will not have a phone out at a restaurant. Now, would they go into the bathroom and take bathroom breaks and they would probably stagger them. But when they would come back, I would be like, Did you check my team too? Right, right, right. Go ahead and check your team, but you better check mine as well. You know, let me hear who's winning. So but they knew not to have them at the table. And then they started pointing out other people, you know, like, look at that whole family's on their phones. And I'd just be like, Yeah. Mm-hmm. I guess my point here is we as the adults have to really, it's another layer of what am I doing? Because this is what the children absorb and the teenagers absorb. And that's life. So is it shifting? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that AI is coming, but we've had search engines a long time and we've had instant access. But if you do any of those fun things, which can be fun, particularly with younger children, elementary age, you're like, you know, we have a book on the shelf. Go get that book. And the kids are like, no, check your phone. No, we're not doing that right now. But then they have fun with you leafing through and trying to find it. ⁓ yes. As soon as you're on an adventure. of curiosity exploration. And it and it can be like the tiniest little thing to, you know, something like existential and outstanding and never totally. You know, I think what was so clear in your book and and what I find myself trying to do a lot in the parenting space. And for a lot of listeners, I have another podcast ⁓ called Let's Begin, How to Raise Your children and yourself at the same time. And it's a really important log line of like you're raising yourself in order to either one stop cycles that you don't want your kids to have to like figure out themselves. But the the most well-rounded children tend to be, I find, in spaces where parents have done really sincere work. On themselves, confronting their own insecurities, confronting their own, for me, it's perfectionism, self-worth. For my husband, it's something else. And I can see that reflected in my kids. I think what I struggle with, particularly in the age of AI, is this like relationship with immediacy. As I'm thinking about how to raise my children, I have gone to AI. To ask questions about how to ask questions to my kids about how they're feeling. Yeah. So I'm well versed in my feelings, thanks to my phenomenal therapist of five or six years. But there's some things that I'm still learning about my kids. My I'm very extroverted. One of my children is quiet and doesn't always raise their hand when they know the answer in school. And I've tried to get to the bottom of it and I've gone to AI to help me get that instant answer of like, what do you think this could be? ⁓ ask these four or five questions. And AI was right. And so I'm like, I know this conundrum has to do with my behavior. If I want them not to bring phones to the table, my phone better not be anywhere around. I know if I don't want them to have a long relationship with AI and get their immediate answer, I also can't go there. Yep. So here's another piece I think about being a parent today that really is, you know, unique or different is I think parents for a long time just didn't know things and maybe turned to a friend or, you know, co-worker or something and sort of crowdsourced it on their own. Like my coworker says this, I'm hearing that. But now we feel like there's an answer, and I've got to get an answer. And there's not an answer. Like I'm sorry to tell you, there's like 60 different answers. And it it gets back to can I sit in uncertainty? Maybe my child is quieter than I am. Maybe my child doesn't raise their hand the way that I would or would like them to. And maybe if I whisper in their ear, you can raise your hand. Eventually they will. But it's us accepting our children for who they are. But we are in a fix-it culture. What's wrong with my child? What's the label they need to fit in at school, depending on what place you're in, you know, the competition to get into the best, you name it, whether it's a gifted program or art school or private school or whatever you're going for, it becomes like a badge of honor for the parents because it's competitive. And when you start to let go of those things, that's back to like how well do you know yourself? If you can let go of those things and say, My child is separate from me, it's not my job to fix that. It's my job to know them. And to also, I keep pointing people to there was an article recently in one of the papers about somebody like asked AI a medical question and got like four different answers just by changing like one adjective or one word. I mean, that's kind of dangerous, you know. I see this out there, parents building more community with each other. And I think that's the counter that they're saying, I don't want to be on. You know, whether it's a search engine or now ⁓ AI, I'm not sure there's that huge a difference between them. People have been doing this for a long time because we've had access to our p phones and our pump. But they're like they want to be together more. And why do they want to be together more? Because in person they're craving that. But also when you vent to each other about your hard mourning or you cannot believe your child's terrible behavior, and somebody else goes, ⁓ my child did that too. You're relieved. ⁓ yeah. And that you need human connection for. I think it's knowing that we can counter this, but that we must. And it must be intentional. It's not automatic. We're all tired. Yeah, we're all tired. We all have really long to-do lists. ⁓ somebody else said, My fear is not that AI will free up more time. My fear is that AI will free up more time and you're still pounding yourself with your to-do list. What I think I want to double down on as the antithesis of. speedy answers is the importance of building relationships and the long investment that that takes. I am of the belief that the myth, the business structure of the nuclear family, that everyone is supposed to have their own home with their own white picket fence, with their own blender and their own vacuum and their own fill-in-the-blank has absolutely failed us. That there is such benefit in multi-generational living if you have access to things like that in leaning on neighbors. I'm at the point in my relationship with other parents where I can text them and be like, oops, I'm late. Can you grab the kid? And I'll see you when I see you at your house. And that is those relationships are so much more valuable to me and to my children. And I can almost devalue the instant sports score that he gets on the Alexa as an As an exception to it, building that community, Tova feels like it's that ancient parenting instinct and technology that we need to recover now. Yes. And I think institutions are trying, whether they're religious institutions, schools, community. I live in New York City and these stores keep opening. I see them that are like, you know, maybe little gift stores or whatever, but they'll do like community in the evening, you know, come learn to sew. Or you know, sip in and you know whatever it is. I heard a really cute one, stitch and bitch. Very good. Parent needs that, right? And they're like, you don't have to have ever sewn anything in your life, right? So I totally agree with you. What children need is relationships and connection. And I think when we go into it knowing that, but I also think the the part of us that worries so much about AI, I can tell anybody who will listen, AI is not replacing parents. There's no touching, there's no cuddling, there's no looking into the eyes of your child and nodding with them, like, yeah, hmm, that sucks. You know, like that really sucks. Your friend did what? Hmm, not fun. That's human connection, laying down at night to put them to bed or sitting with them and you know, rubbing their hat or whatever you do or kissing them goodnight. ⁓ all of that is human connection. That's not gonna change because AI is here. living in an apartment building, I always say, well, there's the great thing about apartment living. You've got neighbors. Right. That's the best. I miss it so much. Or if the house is close next to you, sending your five-year-old, can you here, take this measuring cup? Can you ask them for some flour? Because I'm breading chicken right now and I don't have any flour. Like, but remembering that's what we're supposed to do. And doing it. I mean, it's funny to say that the town square takes work on the parents' part, but also on the weekend, whether it's playing in your backyard or saying, you know what, I saw this really cool playground the next town over, let's go there. Take something on parents' parts. But the other thing I want to say is those long lists, because my children are now grown, the more we pare down our lists, children don't actually need much, right? And I think that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as if there's a right way or the best way or I have to do it better, or my child asked for six things. That's okay. They're not having all six things, even though they asked for them and you love them. Yeah. And that's the part of childhood that ⁓ they're supposed to be mad at us. They're supposed to not like us. Like that's how you help them build that thing that I'm calling resilience, right? This ability to say, ⁓ I'm really mad at my parent right now. And then finding out that the parent still loves them. Yeah, you threw that fit because I didn't take you to that batting cage today. But you know what? We're good now. Yeah. You're allowed to be disappointed. I was sitting on the sidelines of my daughter's sports game yesterday. And Parents on the sidelines of sports fields should also be its own conversation. Of which I am broadly And universally disappointed by how parents have invested in their kids' performance on the sport field because it feels transactional, it feels loaded with expectations, it feels like the parents see it as a reflection of themselves. And that is, I believe, so overwhelmingly. Toxic and dangerous for a kid because then they spend and they so they spend years, even their lives, trying to make you applaud them, approve of them without them trying to figure out who they are. And once you just wrote my book. There you go. There you go. There you go. It's because it's highly coded. Thank you. Yeah, yes. But what I hope Happens in response to not just AI, but this perfectionism of what we're seeing in the algorithm and your kids' sports scores or your academic scores or the myth of that some sort of university is going to guarantee them some sort of payroll. We are, as a family, moving homes and we're looking at a series of different schools. And my conversations with a host of different admissions directors or superintendents is all about. Where the kids are gonna end up after 12th grade, as if that is any sense of like absolute sureness that that is how they could pay their bills and have a full thriving life. But this series is about the ancient technologies that we can bring forward that are thousands of years old. That can help us find ourselves more and then therefore maybe make the world a little bit more peaceful and loving and equitable. My fear is that parents won't self-correct themselves quick enough. That AI, the machine itself, is going to become more available than the caretaker or the parent. Because I'm doing my to-do list, I'm juggling the amount of jobs that I am, that I that they might be too insecure to ask me questions about puberty or their broken heart or the conundrum that they're in, because they can safely get it somewhere else instead of sitting in awkwardness with their parent. And I am doing the things in life. So my phone is always in my right hand, even though I fully have the intention, Toba, of like. Putting that thing aside. I'm afraid my generation of parents aren't going to have the wisdom to lean on that ancient technology of like community building, sharing vulnerability with each other, complaining to each other that our kids are being brats quick enough to realize that that's actually the only thing that matters. Well, I'm gonna actually argue back with you. And that Pollyan ish, and I I say that as a denial to say, I see the harms. I see the potential harms. But what I see over and over as a person in psychology, as somebody who has studied some of the most traumatic events that happened to parents and children, is that people crave other people. And that's human. And so is it will it swing initially? It's it's been swinging. That's not new. Like I've had it ask people over and over, like, wait, AI, but haven't we been searching? You know, on search engines forever. It's just like the next step. Right. But for your generation of parents, it's new. But the the last 15 years had Google and other things. So, but what keeps happening is parents keep finding each other and they think it's new. They're like, we meet at a cafe on Saturday morning. You know, like the day I just saw something posted from LA, I think these dads meeting up. There were like 12 of them. And they were like all so happy. And I was like, ⁓ that's great. You know, like they've invented the wheel for themselves. And I think humans find each other over and over, particularly when there's children. So I actually think the pendulum might swing and people think, ⁓ AI has all the answers. And then they go and they search for something that doesn't work and then doesn't work. And then they feel terrible because we always blame ourselves. Yeah. But people used to do it with magazines, believe it. Parenting magazine, they'd be like, I followed every step. Right. And I'm like, Yeah, but that that's a lovely article, but they don't know your child. So I think the need for others is so human and for children too. And people are pushing back in those schools throughout the country. Places you might think they would, and places you wouldn't, against the use of technology in their kids' schools loudly. Now Is it a small movement growing? Yes, but it always starts small. Everything starts small with a couple of very wise but also, you know, pissed off parents and watch out, right? And now they're pushing back against AI. And we're gonna have to keep pushing. Tova, do you think this generation of parents are more insecure than previous generations? Great question. Yeah. I think it keeps going up. You know, it's always hard to say generationally. It's hard to say. But I've been in the field over 30 years now. And for years I was like, ⁓ anxiety's higher than ever. And ⁓ I live in a big city and it's always worse here. And each year I would say it. And then I stopped saying it because I was like, anxiety keeps going up, anxiety keeps going up. That's what I call the undermining of well, what do I think in my heart, in my soul, and my gut, and I do a lot of work one-on-one with parents or in parent groups, usually online, but more and more people are asking for those groups in person. Why do you think parents are increasingly ⁓ more insecure in your eyes? And why don't you think parents know what they want? So here's the thing about too much information and what we think is access to information. Right? And I say what we think is because When we go to access information, you're asking a question that's very personal. I'm the I'm a parent. This is my child, but the AI or the whatever sourcing of information doesn't know me and my issues and what I bring and doesn't know this child right now at this point in time. But we get a lot of information. Right. And then you ask it a different way, or you go to a different site, you know, because people will still be going to websites. I think they still will. And you get different information. And then you get so much information that you don't know what to do. And it keeps saying, Don't trust yourself. It's almost like every bit of information is like, no, no, no, you don't know. Try this way. And I think that keeps undermining us. Don't you also think that? We as parents are trying to heal the pressures that were put on our parents, and those pressures were then put on us. Like, I had great parents, largely speaking, and like I still had a dad on the sidelines that was like, girl, hustle a little bit harder to get that ball, or and was still like high-fiving me after games. But like my dad thinks I'm like. The best thing since the stop sign was invented. And there's absolutely a part of me that is like, I don't want to disappoint him. I was gonna say, you're still trying to I'm still trying not to still like isn't that a generational thing? Yes, but it's not one generation. That's what I'm pushing back on. Every group of parents thinks this is just us because we weren't parents 40 years ago. We're only parents now, right? Everybody has their story. Everybody has their context. This is your story. This is my story. My children are now older, right? There's always a context, whether it's war, whether it's ⁓ you know, immigrant story, whether it's I was pressured. ⁓ but if you continue as an adult to try to please your adult parents and don't let go of that, not everybody does that, but a lot of people do. Men and women, this is like equal opportunity, not gender divide. Then we put it on our children. If you're supposed to please me, and we usually put it on the firstborns. Latterborns are always better off. I'm like, if you have five, you didn't notice the second, third, fourth, and then you notice the fifth because that's your baby, and you treat them like they're the first again in in many ways. But if you really want your child to become who they are. Which is the final chapter of my book, but it's not really the final chapter. I'm like, if you only read one, read that. See, you know, it's about seeing our children for who they are, not who we want them to be. We can model to them, this is love, this is acceptance. Even when we, you know, I blow up at you or I do things I wish I hadn't done as a parent, I can come back to you, but I need to see you for who you are. But all of that. rah rah rah, ⁓ you didn't get an A, what happened? Right. Is like the child absorbs, I must not be good enough. That's right. And then we put it over on our children because we're still trying to please our parents. That's right. I can tell you how often I'm working with parents. I do a lot of work with parents, and it's around this. Whose voice are you hearing and who are you trying to please? And then they'll say, I've never been able to please my dad. Never. Right. And sometimes that parents deceased. Then I, you after jokingly, they're still doing it. Never gonna please that parent. Right. So it's really it's all of the above. And being a parent is hard enough. And we live in a much faster world. That's I think some of the biggest changes over the last, let's say, 20 or 30 years. Things move quickly. And in the last decade, the bombardment of news, of media, and then the curated life. We didn't have that before. I'm like, I have to get myself off of Instagram. I'm like, holy smokes, when you see these curated lives on whatever, you know, product people use, like, that's just one piece of life. But being a parent is good, bad, ugly, rotten. And so is being a child. They're good, they're bad, they're rotten, they're wonderful. It's all of it. And so it is moving away from this messaging of, I'm gonna tell you how to do it right and all will be good. I mean Growing up is like a zigzaggy backwards, forwards, zigzag, falling off, coming back. But being a parent is the same way. It's it's just a long journey. And I don't think anybody's prepared for that, myself included. Like here I was in the field and I was like, I'm having a baby, but we all start from like square one. And don't you think that's the mistake? I saw a whole host of aunts and uncles raise their children dramatically different. When I came into my Parenting, I was able to look back and be like, I saw this one do this, I'm doing that. I saw this one do this, and I'm definitely not doing that. Right. And and to me, the reason why I stepped with such confidence into parenting is simply because I had exposure to the fact that. Breastfed or not breastfed, the kids are still gonna learn to ride the bike. If they don't learn to ride the bike or they do learn to ride the bike, they're still gonna be illiterate. If they become literate at age four or they become age literate at age eleven, they're still gonna be able to apply to undergrad. Like I saw that the dominoes never have the sequence of the pressures that we assume. But you have to do that in community. Not only in community, but trul learning to trust yourself that that skin knee or broken wrist because of whatever they were doing is part of growing up. Not you're a bad parent, not you should have stopped them, but that this is part of growing up. And when we step back, we genuinely step back and say, I've got to let them become themselves. And sometimes it's going to be a smooth path and sometimes it's not, then we can stop labeling kids as good or bad or successful or not successful because Every child learns to read in a different way. I mean it's you know, maybe there's a bunch of them who learn down the middle, but lots of them learn different ways. So, but it's it's this idea that children are supposed to grow in some straight line. Water them, they go forward, water them, they go. Look, we all thought that. And then you had a baby. Then if you had a second one, for those of us who have more than what you're like, whoa, this is so different than the first one. Nothing's wrong necessarily. But they're different. And so when we start to accept that. we can fumble with them because it is fumbling and falling and getting back up. You know, that's how it is. But we live in a very, very competitive society, not just as parents, but everything. And so then the messages we get all the time are if you don't do this right, they'll never succeed, however you want to define that. And it gets more and more competitive. I think that's probably the biggest danger for parents. Is the competition amongst each other. And just society's messaging about competition. Don't you want to go get her? Don't you want to go get her? Well, you know, it's a long path between four years old or six or eight and their adult life. And you know what? It may take them a little while or a long while in their adult life too, but they'll get there. Do you think access to AI and a quick answer, whether it's right or not, is going to jeopardize our relationship? to intuition and self and knowing even more than previous generations. Yeah, I mean I worry about whether AI will continue to make parents less secure rather than more secure. Will it undermine like what what do I think is right? Because if AI keeps telling me, ⁓ there's one answer, and anybody who works with children know there's not one answer. They need love. But there's a lot of ways to show love. So it's hard enough to be a parent. You want somebody who says, Yeah, that was a rough day. You did a good job. Don't worry about the right answer. And AI goes, here's the right answer. It's instant. Right? So I do, yeah, I have concerns about that of people thinking that AI is an answer and a quick answer. You know, it might be fine for how do you heat a bottle. I think people need to be very skeptical. That requires that this generation of caretakers break the cycle of The myth of knowing. The myth of knowing. It's a great term. Use that term. Write a book on that. The myth of knowing. Because we don't know. And even when you know for one child, you don't know for the second. You don't know for the fourth. But the answer is this relationship, this very precious relationship. I don't mean precious like you're gonna hurt them, but precious meaning I connect to my child this way and I connect to my other child that way. Like they're two different humans. And so If they're different humans, then it's about our relationship with them. And that AI can't do and never will be able to. One of the first episodes in this series is about the incredible power and importance of protecting the not knowing and the not running to the answers so quickly. And you mentioned earlier how important you thought it was to think about, examine, put through extraordinary rigor. whether we do or don't need screens in classrooms. Absolutely. And then more when children learn and figure it out, they also feel great, even if it was really hard to figure it out. This starts very early in life, probably with infants, but certainly with toddlers. And you know, when you struggled through and you get that piece into the puzzle, that last piece, whether it's a five piece puzzle at a young age or a 500, you feel great. And it's that kind of boost that pushes children on to want to learn more. So just getting the answer actually is often not very satisfying. It's really not. It's like, ⁓ okay, that's the answer. Now I'm done. But the more experiences they have of I figured that out or I figured it out differently than all that advice, you know, when they're like enough and they're pushing us away, like don't tell me how to do it enough, you know, they're sometimes not so politely, but then they figure it out, they're like, huh I got it. And we have to give them opportunities for I got it. Or I didn't get it. And I have to learn to deal with it. That's where they build their reserves of it doesn't feel good when I can't figure it out. Or it doesn't feel good when I don't make the team I wanted, but I'm gonna be okay. And so again, that's where we have to buffer from AI, truly. It's not not that they're gonna not gonna ever use it. We're all using it every single day, whether we think we are or not, we're all using it. You can also point that out to children. You know, you do use AI. Guess what? When you did that thing, that was AI powered. So it's not denying them. The world is filled with it. It has been for quite a while, but it's that do we give them enough opportunities to both struggle a bit and then get it? Because it's the getting it that's just feels so good. Dr. Tova Klein, thank you so much. For taking the time today. What I hear in your work is that resilience is not something we demand from our children. It is something we help build around them and ultimately within ourselves so we can be the role models for whatever comes next. Whatever comes next, because we have no idea. We have no idea. The world is changing and parents need us to say, here's what matters, and it's your connection to your child. Tova Klein's work will be provided in the show notes and you can find her book, Raising Resilience, wherever you get your books. Thank you so much for coming. I I really appreciate it. Yay. Bye. We now welcome DZ Common, our in-house Jewish AI scholar. It's so easy to talk about this stuff. It's it's a lot harder to actually get it done. Yeah. Get what done? What are you doing? Solving AI for us? Great. Yeah, that you know, trying to get consumers better choice in the AI marketplace. What does that mean? Pidge us. Most people don't feel like they have choice about the technology that shows up in their lives. Right? You take what you are given because you don't want to be left behind. You want to have a job in this economy. And that leaves people feeling pretty disempowered. Like even if we live in a democracy, we do not live in a democracy when it comes to technology. That's a problem, especially for technology like AI. So it's a long term project because it requires people to feel like this is something they actually have some amount of control over. And I think right now they don't. You think that there's like this false individualism. Yeah. I'll tell you a story from a couple weeks ago as at this AI conference in Greece. And there, you know, someone raised the question, you know, wouldn't it be great if we just like turn off our phones for a day? And had to be like, you know, that is a practice that some people do have. There is a religious practice where you turn off your wait. Who goes to a religious AI conference and doesn't know what Shabbat is? You would be surprised because it feels kind of impossible. Right. It feels impossible to have a religious practice that revolves around controlling your relationship to technology, even if it's something that you aspire to. There's been a little bit of writing about this, right? There's like been a couple of books that have come out in the last 10, 15 years about like, isn't Shabbat, isn't the Sabbath great as a concept? But actually achieving it within the context of religious community is very hard. Even if you know and admire the idea that turning off your phone for 25 hours is possible, actually doing it is quite difficult. In fact, it's so difficult that I don't know that any other communities outside of Orthodox Judaism have actually managed to achieve it. Now, I think Orthodox Jews themselves kind of got lucky. They didn't really intend to have like a no phone day. Like early on, Jews bought into this idea that electricity and and the Sabbath don't mix. And then like from electricity you get all the way up to phones. So I don't know that they would have been able to make that a choice intentionally, but I think they are happy that they ended up in that place. Isn't that the whole genesis of this podcast? That there is ancient technology that exists that can help us navigate some of the conundrums that we're facing. You will not see orthodox or conservative practices in my home. Yet I am striving to be less technologically dependent, not because I want it to be harder for me to find my kids proper cleats for soccer, or because I don't want the other class mom to be able to send cleats. me photos of the class party that day. Like I want all of those things, but there is something I want less of and I don't know what it is. Yeah. Look, I I'll tell you just as a lived experience. So I'm not Orthodox, but I do observe like the Sabbath and all its various structures. Remember, not all listeners know what it is. So I you observe Sabbath and that is every seven days from Friday night at sundown to ⁓ to Saturday night, there is quite a long list of things that I don't do, including not driving in a car and not turning on and off electrical lighting and not gardening and and all kinds of things along those lines that in the ancient world will have been classified as work. And one of those things, the thing that feels biggest in my mind, although it's a really late edition, is not using my phone. So there is a moment every Friday afternoon, like around dusk, when I put my phone away and I have this like this pull, right? This sense of like, but are you really Ready to turn off your notifications? Like, are you really ready to not have that influx for 24, 25 hours? And I feel that for like three minutes and then it goes away and I couldn't be happier. There was a study out of Ben Goran University that for people who observe the Sabbath in this way regularly, that they get to skip out on the feelings of withdrawal that people normally feel if you just like randomly take their phone away on a Tuesday. Like there's something about the communal aspect to it that actually allows people to feel like it's really okay. At least for today, it's okay. And then of course, you know, on Saturday night it all comes flooding back. But it feels like a different quality of life. Does your relationship with time feel different? And then also I want to know when you go to pick up your phone again, are you ever like, ⁓ I don't want to touch that thing? Yes to the second one. I I don't know if my relationship to time feels different. My relationship to my kids feels different, right? ⁓ perfect segue. There's like a way that you can relate to your kids so you can be like fully present when like you don't have that dopamine device next to you. And there's different kinds of things we do, right? There's like, you know, books we read together and board games that we play. There's like an entire like set of activities that like is basically only Shabbat activities. And sometimes I actually think about like Shabbat as being like book day because it's the one day that it actually feels possible to like to sink into a book. So yeah, it's an entirely different kind of existence. I will tell you, I I feel a little bit weird about saying this, right? Like there's often like a lot of comparisons drawn between like Hanukkah and Christmas. There's like all these like Hanukkah celebrations that are developed that are like, you know, are kind of Christmassy and like, ⁓ we're gonna give gifts too. And like that feels very American. I'm glad it all exists. But I think one thing that doesn't get replicated is if you like read the lyrics of Christmas songs, this deep sense of like. Everything is warm and good and okay, and we're all here together. I mean, Jews wrote some of those songs, but that's not the Hanukkah story. Hanukkah is quite a violent holiday, right? It's like celebrating a military victory that happened like you're on 22, 2300 years ago. So like that doesn't fit. But there is a moment within Judaism that does to me feel very much like a Christmas moment, and that is Shabbat. The sense of like, okay, we're actually gonna commit to like nobody's working for one day a week. It's gonna change the character of our community. We're gonna sit around, we're gonna spend time with family, and we're gonna sing about it. And it's like even striking to me that, you know, the Christmas song, like it's the most wonderful time of the year, right? Stolling how awesome this day is. There is a song within the Shabbat song canon of Yom Zem Chobad Mikol Yamim. This is the day that is more exalted above all other days. This same sense of like, we're gonna like talk about how like we sit around and we eat great food, maybe we do just a little bit of matchmaking and like, you know, there's all kinds of like fun things we do. So there's that same sense, but it happens once a week. And part of the reason it happens once a week is because a specific community decided we're just gonna make our own rules around tech. We're all gonna make our own rules around like work practices, which if you try to apply that on the national level, it fails because the Supreme Court's gonna be like, I'm sorry, you can't apply your religion to Right, right. We need toll booths to work on Friday nights too. Right. It's very hard to do it on a national level. But on a communal level, of like we're gonna set a norm for our community or for our family about how technology looks. It can be really, really powerful. I'm sorry if that was like a complete tangent of what you actually wanted to talk about. No, no, no, no. I think it's really a good DZ. I mean, I think we're basically saying this is a parent's problem, which sucks because it's all parents' problems and we're already drowning. Yeah. Look, I think I have so much trepidation in telling parents what to do as parents. Parenting is so difficult, right? Like my my first experience of becoming a parent was just. the wall of choices that it needed to make that all felt ⁓ incredibly consequential and how quickly they needed to be made and how little feedback I would have about whether I was making the right choice. And it feels like that is just parenting over and over again. You don't know whether you're making the right choice. And technology just kind of adds to it because nobody knows. And like when people were canning their kids' iPads, no one had any idea what that was actually going to do. When you put Alexa in the kitchen, no one has any idea what that is going to do. You know If you're a parent, like have some sympathy and kindness for yourself about the difficulty of the situation. Nonsense. It's okay. It's okay. And it is okay to try things out and see what works and see what does not work. And it's okay to to iterate it. It's okay to try things and if they fail, then they fail. Okay. What does a parent child relationship look like in Judaism? So it's a little bit asymmetrical. So there's an obligation of parents towards children, and there's obligation of children towards parents. The obligation of children towards parents in some ways is relatively straightforward, right? You do what your parents want you to do, right, within some limits. And, you know, the the rabbis in the Talmud will talk about, you know, what those limits are and will praise people who go to great lengths to be kind to their parents, right? There's an entire story in the Talmud about a person who is rewarded for not waking his dad up. when someone wants to make this like amazing sale. Like they would have made a huge amount of money, but making the sale would have involved waking his dad up. So in some ways like that obligation is relatively simple. But there's also an obligation of parents towards children that is in some ways a lot more interesting and a lot more complex, right? What do you actually need to do to be a good parent? So there's a story in the Talmud, the Talmud being kind of one of the foundational books that the rabbis wrote. This book was written between the third and sixth centuries CE in Babylonia. ⁓ in modern day Iran. And it writes the following. It says a father is obligated to do the following for his son, to circumcise him, to redeem him if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a trade. So let's just kind of like go through the list. Like to circumcise him, redeem him if he's a firstborn. Those are kind of like technical obligations that the that the the Torah that Judaism kind of like puts on ⁓ a father in particular, but then to teach him Torah. Right. So like education. ⁓ there's an obligation to make sure that your child is literate. And I think like for the purposes of our conversation, we can swap out like father to son to from to like parent to child. So teaching them Torah, finding them a spouse, right? Which maybe we could generalize to like making sure that this person is like set up well in the world, set up well. Like has community, has relationships, knows how to be in relationship with other people. Okay. And to teach them a trade, right? Make sure that they can eventually eventually be self-sufficient. But then there's like a last line at the end that's Totally fascinating. Others say, meaning, like the rabbis saying, like, there are some rabbis who s who add to this list, teaching them how to swim, which is so great. Like there's there's a Jewish obligation to teach your children how to swim. But also just kind of like metaphorically, the idea that, like, the world's a tough place. World's a complicated place. And like you have to teach your kids how to like roll with the punches or like. Keep their head above water. Keep their head above water, right? You know, like actually you kind of don't need to translate it because like it it works so well, like the in the modern meaning of like what it means to swim. What is tricky about that list is that like actually getting your kids to do all those things can be very easy or very simple depending on who the kid is. One of the first experiences I had within the first few months of being a parent was like there is like so much baked into this human being already that has nothing to do with me. Yeah, that's right. They're like their characteristics are already so set. But I don't think that is universally known by most parents. I think parents see their kids as a school project they have to deliver. Yeah. I think we do a lot. I think we like, you know, there there's a lot that we can contribute. And at the same time, there are things I know that I had nothing to do with that might just my kids came into the world possessing. There is a Jewish theologian ⁓ named Mara Benjamin. Who I'm a huge fan of. She has a book called The Obligated Self, which is kind of like feminist Jewish theology. Her notion of like what is the obligated self? That's the parent, right? To become a parent is to be signing a blank check effectively to your kid, to whoever that kid may be. And you are responsible for adapting, you're responsible for adapting to whatever that kid requires. And that is in some ways a much weightier and much more extensive obligation than the more straightforward do whatever your parents tell you obligation that kids need to follow. I find that a really helpful way of thinking about AI actually, in that like we are also kind of like raising this thing that is huge and very powerful and growing and we don't really know how it's going to be developing, but we have an obligation to it regardless. You've alluded to this in some other conversations and other people reference this that the Best kind of parents are the ones who know themselves the most. Technology makes that even more difficult because as our previous guest, Dr. Tova Klein, mentioned, is that there is this tyranny of information. But I just wonder how we can root ourselves more in the ancient technology of asking each other for help on Shabbat. We'll use that as an example, or being more vulnerable with ourselves when it comes to raising our kids, or really relying on the village to help us do what we can't do a hundred percent of the way. My mother has always been clear she could only raise me 47% of the way and relied on the rest of the world to do it. She was able to curate some other amazing women up until I was in like my early twenties to fill in the gaps that she couldn't, but then that at some point she had to Rely on me as being a constructive critic of the amount of information I was ingesting about who I was and how I was going to show up in the world. It's something I struggle with myself as someone who is not who is a parent but is not a parenting expert. That it is tough to follow the line of trying to make sure that your kid is engaged in all the things they want to be engaged in and you know has access to technology and that you're not so restrictive. And at the same time, you're making the right interventions in the right moments so that they are protected from the things that you think are dangerous or are not worth the potential risks. I think there is that kind of ⁓ general anxiety that I see around parents around did I make the right choice? Am I going to regret this in next year or in five years or 10 years when this person grows up? What would guardrails for your children using AI look like? So I am gonna start with a pretty blunt place. After the experience, the kind of fiasco with social media with exposing kids to phones at early ages, I would like to see pretty strong evidence that using AI at early ages is actually beneficial. Meaning, I don't think the burden of proof is on parents to say this is a dangerous technology and maybe we shouldn't use it. I think the burden of proof is on The AI companies to say using this technology at early ages is actually going to help your kids. And I don't know that that case has really been made. Is anyone even trying to make it? I think there is a general sense, and especially in American society, that technology is good. And there is a concern about the job market and a concern that if you ⁓ are not sufficiently experienced at a given technology, that you're not going to be equipped for the future. But there is also kind of growing backlash, right? If you are kind of reading the temperature. Of students on college campuses, there's so much resentment about the use of AI and the way that universities have like put AI in every, you know, ⁓ informational packet and it shows up everyone in the university, out of a sense of like this is what we have to do to be the university of the future, and not necessarily because it is beneficial for students or makes their education better. I think that is true to an even greater extent when you're talking about kids who are, you know, six, eight, fifteen. I think you would actually have to show that these things are beneficial. And and I think there's a really good reason to say that they can be harmful. One of the ways that I like to think about this that I find helpful is you may have had the experience of interacting with AI on a question about which you are competent, and then interacting with AI on about a question for which you have no freaking idea what the right answer is, right? There's all kinds of physicists today who get these emails from people who are like, Listen, I don't I solve physics. I was talking to Claude for like two hours and I solved physics. Because you don't realize they're moving from territory that they understand to territory that they don't understand. So one of the areas where we believe ourselves to be competent is the self. And that's true to a degree, right? But nobody has a perfect competence in themselves. And when you interact with an AI, especially for kind of more personal issues, if you're using AI as a therapist, if you're using AI as a romantic partner, it is easy to move from this is me understanding myself. using AI based on that to actually there are pieces of myself that I don't really understand. And the AI, because it is just mirroring me, is masking the fact that I don't understand myself well. And that's true for adults. Now imagine what that's like for kids. Imagine what it's like to gain a sense of self when your sense of self is still rapidly developing in the presence of AI. Like what is it like to gain the presence gain a sense of yourself in front of a mirror at all times? I think that is incredibly dangerous. Right. I think it avoids this necessary friction that we need with other people to understand who we are and what we're about and what works for us and where we struggle. So I have a lot of trepidation around using AI with kids at all. And I kind of want to start with like a position of before you make the argument of here are the situations where you shouldn't use AI for kids, like make the case for me that actually using AI when you're eight years old serves some real function. I'd like to see someone make that case. I don't think I've seen it directly. Dee Z, does Judaism care more about what a child knows or what kind of person a child is becoming? I think it's a good question. I would say that the two are supposedly interlinked. Right. Part of the reason that it makes sense to study Jewish text, the reason that that is emphasized is out of a sense that that will improve your character. And I think that happens in a few ways. First of all, like there's actually messages there that are valuable. But at the same time, there's something in the process of studying that can be helpful in like developing a person's character. So I don't know that the two ⁓ are entirely disconnected. I will say that there is within Judaism a gendered component to this because not all Jewish communities understand men and women and boys and girls as having the same obligation to study Torah. But taking like a kind of egalitarian frame for this, you can say that. There's a sense in which studying Torah is important for building your character, right? The process of learning it is supposed to be the thing that inspires. The process of spending time with another person, the process of trying to decipher something together. That's what's supposed to be inspiring. So if AI can answer almost any question, what happens to the Jewish value of wrestling with the question, which as we alluded to earlier in the season, seems to be the foundation of arguably that Jewish identity. Yeah. I don't remember if I if I use this knowledge before, but in some ways, Jewish learning functions a little bit more like skiing or snowboarding, in the sense that, like what you're doing is not trying to download all the information about skiing or snowboarding well into your head. The point is to actually do the activity, right? The actual practice of being with another person, studying a text together, like that is the goal in and of itself. And skills can help you with that, right? If you're studying in Hebrew. Then knowing Hebrew is a useful skill to get you to that point where you can have that experience together. People who like start doing Jewish learning often encounter this problem of like, I'm trying to figure out like what is the book in this canon of texts that is most inspiring to me. And like there often isn't a an obvious choice because the subject matter of the books is not really the point. The point is like the experience of studying those books together. And in that process, then you get to kind of, you know, a more interesting and more helpful place. This might be really nuanced. But then what does it mean to raise children who can live with mystery? Like how do you insert mystery into the process, which is what Atiba and Tovo were referencing throughout this conversation, that it has to be, you have to maintain the wonder because that's where curiosity gets to grow and thrive. And that's where your kids will have an entertaining life for the rest of their lives. Yeah. One of the funny things about Jewish learning is. Sometimes you're learning it and like you're trying to like just understand what is the text saying, but a lot of the time you're actually trying to fight the text, like you're you're trying to find holes in it, meaning there's something very combative about it. And often the process of Jewish learning in in sophisticated environments is a process of people who are fighting each other often quite bitterly about the meaning of particular texts. And part of what it means to be doing the learning effectively, I think, is to give people permission to feel like you're allowed to fight in this too. So In terms of the mystery, there's mysteries everywhere. Right. The point is never to suppress that and be like, well, that's what the text says. So I guess that's the end of the story. One of the first things I learned with my kids ⁓ is don't just assume that because you read this in a book that like we've a stamp we that we've stamped as being holy, that everything in it is about people who are doing things that are good and right. ⁓ in fact, there's many, many stories in these books that are quite troubling. And part of what it means to read them and to and to contribute to that conversation. Is to say, like, yeah, that's really troubling. Because if you don't say that, then like you're just a reader. You're not a writer. You're not contributing to the conversation in a way that allows you to add to it. All you can do is just say, I'm gonna walk away from this because I don't like what I'm hearing. So I don't see an alternative. You kind of like have to go in that direction. And I I find that helpful for them in like being able to trust their own instincts to say, like, there's something wrong here. There's something that I wanna, I wanna fix. There's a part of me that maybe I'm lazy in how I am introducing some of these ancient technologies to my kids because we're not holding the microscope over these stories. We're looking at today's headlines and being like you and saying to them, you tell me what feels unethical and you tell me where your responsibility is to make change. I'm hearing you say that you're you use ancient stories. And why do you use that story and not our current headlines? ⁓ I also use the current headlines. Okay. I I see the kids respond to it. And the fact that kids respond to it tells me that like it's doing something that they find valuable. Kids like to be judges, right? They like to understand situations and like to kind of like give their input. And so kind of like giving them the ability to kind of like to to shape their impulses around text, I find, I find helpful. If You are using these stories as tools to identify injustices and draw clear boundaries. And that's what's always been used. Do you think those tools have been sharp enough if there's so many injustices in the world, particularly injustices being done in our name? It's a difficult question. It's a question that keeps me up at night. It keeps me up at night that a lot of the times when I see people who like wear my particular head covering ⁓ in the news, it's not for doing the best things. I am acutely aware of the people who went through the same educational programs as I did and ended up doing pretty terrible things. So there's definitely something else going on. That's as best as I can understand it. That there's something that that corrupts whatever messages are being taught. Or the messages aren't being taught well enough. I don't know that I have a better answer for that, but it bothered me. Do you think that there's a way to lean on some of these stories? Do you think that the technology that we've inherited is good enough then? Because there isn't safety for everybody in the world. I don't know that there's any technology that can ensure that a person is a good person. And in particular, I think community really matters. I think personal life experience really matters. I think the ability to be empathetic, to understand other voices, other opinions really matters. ⁓ and those things can be tied into text and can be reinforced by text, but are not necessarily. And it's entirely possible to use these many texts from the Jewish tradition and twist them in ways that ⁓ I find personally pretty abhorrent. I don't know that there's a way around that. I mean, that that's part of what happens when. The texts are freely interpretable by anybody who wants to interpret them. They can be turned in all kinds of awful directions. I'm going to give you a quick final question. So is Shabbat a kind of parenting technology in an always on world? Shabbat has meant something especially important in the last couple hundred years. It used to be that we lived in worlds where it was clear when people had to stop working, like When the sun went down. And we now live in a world where work never needs to stop. The only stops that we have are the ones that we put in place ourselves. And so teaching kids from an early age, we have the power to create our own boundaries around technologies, whether it's through Shabbat or through some other means, I think is really, really crucial to understanding that we have agency here. DZ, thank you. Thanks, Jen. We began with the world around a child and ended with the character of the creator. Atiba reminded us that children need museums, neighborhoods, homes, and third spaces where curiosity can become embodied experience. Dr. Klein showed us that resilience is not produced by removing difficulty, but by helping children survive it without losing connection. And DZ turned the parenting metaphor back on us. If AI is learning from humanity, then our responsibility is not only to make it capable, but to shape the conditions under which it develops. Better parenting in the AI age may not require us to become more technologically sophisticated. It may require us to become more emotionally sturdy, more deliberate, and more worthy of imitation. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Command F. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. You can find a summary of this episode along with all the links and resources we discussed at the landovand.live. Follow The Landavand on Substack and YouTube and join our live community on Twitch. There's so much more to come. The ideas and opinions shared on this podcast belong solely to the host and guests. They reflect our thinking at the time of recording and may evolve as we continue to listen, learn, and encounter new information. They do not necessarily represent the views of any sponsor, partner, or affiliated organization. Command F is produced by the Land of Ande in partnership with Common Era. This series would not exist without DZ Common, whose questions helped inspire its inception, and whose voice has been essential to its intellectual and moral foundation. Our deepest thanks to Rabbi Joanna Schiller, Chief Research and Development Officer of Common Era, and Mikhail Humboldt, Christina Gilliutin for their partnership, trust, and support in bringing this work to life. Special thanks to our production team, senior creator producer and story editor Marn Marshe, Senior Livestream Producer Janice Matsko, and producer and editor Sarah Jacobson.