A little help from AI
When baby stress peaks, moms say chatbots can offer fast solutions
Katherine Vance, her husband, Brandon Cline, and their son, Ronan Cline.
Emily Lubow and her son, Baker.
PARENTING
Katherine Vance had a rocky start as a new mom while her son struggled with extreme gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD.
The condition can lead to a host of issues in infants, including poor weight gain, irritability and respiratory issues, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. It made breastfeeding excruciating for both Vance and her son.
"He was sobbing and crying and spitting up," Vance says. "That lasted for months. I was at my wit's end."
When her son turned 6 months old, she decided to wean him, but she wasn't sure how to wind down her pumping schedule. Out of insurance coverage for a lactation consultant and often overwhelmed by the vast amount of parenting advice online, the Nashville, Tennessee, mom contemplated her options.
"I could Google, but I was just so tired," she says.
So Vance turned to ChatGPT. It asked her specific questions, adjusted and refined information and gave her a detailed schedule to print out. It was a relief, Vance says. But something else about the interaction caught her off guard: The artificial intelligence, or AI, encouraged her after she mentioned how much she was struggling.
"It was really, really nice," Vance admits, adding that it was both disarming and a little embarrassing that AI made her feel validated.
Vance says she's also used AI to help her create a postpartum-friendly plan to train for a triathlon. However, she says she's careful not to rely too much on the technology and is alarmed by how quickly it's advancing. She also worries about the environmental impacts and costs of data centers that power AI, but is encouraged by officials making moves to regulate it.
Emily Lubow, another Nashville mom, voices similar concerns about leaning too much on AI and its tendency to get things wrong at times.
But she also says it has been a "lifeline" as she navigates being a first-time mom. As she and her husband prepared to travel to Hawaii with their daughter, she decided to ask AI for advice.
"The logistics of traveling with a baby are intense," she says.
The technology cut hours of research down to mere minutes for Lubow. It gave her everything from a packing list to a plan to adjust her daughter's sleep schedule so she could adapt to a different time zone.
Like Vance, Lubow also found comfort in consulting AI when exhausted and frustrated. Still, she tries to challenge herself to solve problems on her own or without its help first.
"I don't want to lose critical thinking," she says. "And I don't want that to happen to the next generation."
AI prompts for parents
Curious about AI or still figuring out how to use it as a parent? Prompts for Parents (promptsforparents.org) offers a wide variety of questions and prompts to enter into AI platforms.
Here are five of its vast library of suggestions.
„■Explain photosynthesis to my 10-year-old like you're telling a story. use simple words and a fun example.
■„ Design a calm morning routine for my family with time estimates, a visual checklist, and "what if we're running late" backups.
■„ Give me five rainy day activities for kids ages 5 through 9 that don't involve screens and use things I probably already have at home.
„■Create a grocery list for five dinners, five lunches and snacks for a family of four on a tight budget.Organize by store section.
■„ Help me make a home emergency plan (fire, storms) with roles for kids by age.
