I gave my students a problem recently that I solve regularly in my own work, except I usually solve versions of it with the help of artificial intelligence. They had paper and pencils, no shortcut to a polished answer, and enough silence in the room that I could almost see the thinking happening. One student scrunched his brow because he knew there was an idea in his head but could not quite get the right words onto the page. Another pushed hard enough into the problem that we stopped and talked through what he was trying to express, using the words he already had before reaching for better ones. I found myself smiling because the exercise was slower than the way I often work, but something valuable was happening in that slowness. The students were not just trying to locate an answer; they were discovering whether they could build one.
That distinction matters more to me as artificial intelligence gets better. The question is no longer simply whether kids will use AI because they almost certainly will, just as adults already do. The larger question is whether they will know what to do when the tool is absent, wrong, incomplete, or unable to understand the human problem in front of them. Dr. Kathy said the prospect of a world without thinkers is genuinely concerning because kids who never learn to ask good questions may struggle to create new ideas, or contribute beyond reacting to what somebody else has already produced. That is a much bigger concern than whether a student used AI on one assignment. We are talking about the habits of mind our kids will carry into leadership, work, family, church, and culture.
Efficiency Can Quietly Remove the Part Where Learning Happens
Technology is very good at removing friction, and most of the time we celebrate that. Spellcheck catches the word before we have to wonder whether we actually know how to spell it. Navigation gives us the turn before we need to build a mental map. AI can suggest the phrase before we have finished wrestling with what we mean. None of those tools is automatically bad, and I use many of them myself because they allow me to work faster and sometimes more thoroughly. But efficiency creates a strange educational problem when the thing being removed is the very effort that would have developed the skill.
Dr. Kathy described a university classroom where one professor prohibited devices and students actually appreciated the difference because they had enough time to think instead of merely capture information. In another setting, technology allowed so much material to be delivered that students could record more while processing less. That should give parents and educators pause. More information is not automatically more learning, and a faster answer is not automatically a stronger mind. Sometimes the delay between the question and the answer is where understanding begins.
Kids Need to Discover That They Are Capable of New Thought
One of the lines Dr. Kathy said during the conversation was simple: You are capable of new thought. I think kids need to hear that more often because technology can subtly train them to approach every uncertainty by asking something outside themselves what to think next. A child starts writing, and the software completes the sentence. They are unsure what to say to someone and ask an AI system to write the message before deciding what they actually believe. Over time, convenience can become dependence without anybody intentionally choosing it.
The corrective is not pretending technology does not exist. We can teach kids to use tools wisely while still requiring moments when the tool stays closed, and the child has to generate something first. Write your own answer before comparing it with AI. Sketch your own solution before asking the program for another approach. Say what you think the paragraph means before reading the summary. The child needs repeated evidence that a blank page is not an emergency and that their mind can begin before the machine does.
Thinking With Other People Is Different From Receiving an Answer
Something else happened in my classroom that mattered as much as the individual thinking. The students looked at one another, smiled at something I said, noticed when someone was struggling, and helped put language around an idea that was difficult to express. The thinking became relational. Technology can give us the right word almost instantly, but sometimes searching for the word together is part of how people learn to understand one another. We lose something if communication becomes only the efficient delivery of polished language.
That connects to a larger concern I have from years of traveling and participating in mission work. I remember taking young people long distances to churches and communities where the week was inefficient by almost every modern measurement, yet by the end we knew people, shared meals, worshiped together, laughed together, and could honestly say we loved one another. A video call could have transferred information more cheaply, but it could not fully reproduce the relationship formed by showing up. Technology often asks whether something can be accomplished remotely; formation requires us to ask what is lost when presence disappears. Those are not the same question.
People Smart Is Built With People
Dr. Kathy connected that concern directly to People Smart, which she describes as the ability to read body language, respond appropriately, communicate, listen, persuade, and understand relational dynamics. Those are not skills children can fully develop with their heads down and faces in screens. A person learns when somebody looks confused even though they say they understand. They notice when a joke landed badly, when someone needs space, when another person wants to speak, or when a conversation requires listening instead of another argument. Much of that information never appears in the words themselves.
Our kids will need those capacities no matter how powerful AI becomes. They will lead discouraged people, repair strained relationships, persuade people who disagree, and enter rooms where nobody provides a prompt explaining what everybody is feeling. Technology may help prepare an agenda or suggest language, but the child still has to become a person capable of being with people. That happens through face to face life, including awkward conversations, shared work, church, family meals, travel, service, and the moments when another human being refuses to behave like an algorithm. People Smart develops through people.
Self Efficacy Is the Quiet Confidence That Says, “I Can Do This”
The conversation then moved to a word Dr. Kathy uses often: self efficacy. She defines it simply as being self effective, the belief that “I can do what I am supposed to do.” Imagine telling a child to load the dishwasher when nobody has ever shown them where things go, why bowls should face a certain direction, or what belongs on the top rack. Resistance may look like laziness or defiance when the problem is that the child doesn’t know how to succeed. Teach the skill clearly, let them practice it, and confidence begins to change the response.
This is one of the hidden dangers of allowing technology to solve too many ordinary problems. If an app always explains how to do the task, AI always writes the first draft, and a device always compensates for missing knowledge, the child may become highly proficient with the tool while remaining unsure of themselves without it. Self efficacy grows when kids repeatedly experience, “Someone taught me, I practiced, and now I can do this.” That sequence builds a kind of confidence technology cannot simply install. Kids need competence that belongs to them.
Let Them Learn the Ordinary Things Without a Rescue Button
Dr. Kathy gave everyday examples that sound almost too ordinary to matter: filling a dishwasher, or learning to drive a car without every automated feature correcting the driver. But ordinary competence is exactly where self efficacy develops. A teenager who can cook a meal, navigate somewhere, care for younger siblings, solve a household problem, speak to an adult, clean properly, and complete work without constant prompting carries evidence of personal effectiveness into harder situations. They have memories that say, “I did not know how to do that once, and now I do.” Those memories become resources when a new challenge appears.
Parents sometimes unintentionally interrupt this process because helping is faster. We know how to complete the task, and watching a child struggle can be painful, inefficient, and sometimes harder than doing it ourselves. Yet rescuing too early may remove the child's opportunity to own the skill. Good help does not always make the task disappear. Sometimes good help provides just enough instruction for the child to keep doing the work themselves.
A Child Who Can Function Without the Tool Has More Freedom With the Tool
There is an irony here: teaching kids how to function without technology may actually help them use technology better. A student who knows how to think critically can evaluate an AI response rather than automatically trusting it. A child who can write can recognize when generated language does not sound true or accurate. A teenager who understands relationships can detect when a digital interaction is missing something important. Competence creates discernment because the tool assists someone who already has a framework for judging what it produces.
Dependence reverses that relationship. When the child needs the technology in order to begin, they are less able to evaluate the answer because they lack a baseline independent of the tool. That is why I want my students thinking on paper before I show them how AI might extend their work. The goal is not to prove they are better than the technology. It is to make sure the technology remains a tool in the hands of a thinker rather than becoming the thing doing the thinking while the child merely approves.
We Should Be Willing to Spend More for Relationship
This principle also applies beyond cognition. Dr. Kathy and I talked about a meeting we have planned where we will fly across the country simply to take someone to lunch, even though the person repeatedly suggested that we could just meet over Zoom. From an efficiency standpoint, he is absolutely right. Flying is expensive, and a video call could probably accomplish the agenda. But relationships have dimensions that cannot be measured only by the agenda.
Sometimes showing up tells a person something the Zoom link cannot. It says you were worth the inconvenience of time and travel. Our kids need to see adults make those choices because a technological culture will constantly invite them to value the most efficient version of everything. Christianity keeps interrupting that calculation with people. The Great Commandment and Great Commission require relationships, and sometimes love is terribly inefficient.
What Happens When the Technology Isn’t There?
Dr. Kathy asked a question that may sound extreme until you think about it: what happens if the technology goes away, changes, fails, or simply is not available where God calls our kids? What if the child grows into an adult called to serve somewhere with unreliable internet? What if the car does not correct their lane position? What if the AI platform is unavailable when a difficult decision needs to be made? What if the person sitting across from them needs presence rather than information? We should want our kids sufficiently competent and secure that the absence of technology does not make them feel incapable of answering God's call.
That does not require preparing children for some imaginary apocalypse where every device suddenly disappears. It simply requires building enough human capacity that technology remains optional in more situations. They should know how to think, relate, work, create, serve, navigate difficulty, and solve ordinary problems. Then technology can extend those abilities rather than substitute for them. Freedom comes from being able to use the tool without being helpless when it is gone.
Jacob Was Changed by the Wrestle
The passage that came to mind was Genesis 32, where Jacob spends the night wrestling and emerges injured and renamed. It is a strange and powerful story because God does not simply give Jacob a quick answer and send him efficiently on his way. Jacob struggles through the night. He leaves limping, but he also leaves with a new name and a changed understanding of himself. The struggle becomes part of his identity.
I think there is something important there for parenting in an AI age. We increasingly possess tools capable of eliminating many small struggles from our children's lives, but Scripture regularly shows that struggle itself can be formative. God can use difficulty to expose weakness, deepen dependence, build perseverance, and change the way a person understands who they are. We should not manufacture hardship or glorify suffering. But neither should we assume love always means removing the wrestle.
Some Answers Should Take Longer
There are moments when the best gift we can give a child is enough time to struggle before helping. Let them stare at the paper. Let them try a sentence that does not quite work. Let them load the dishwasher badly once and then adjust it. Let them work through disagreement with another person without immediately texting a parent to solve it. Let them experience the small frustration of not knowing and discover that they can stay with the problem.
That slow work can build critical thought, perseverance, humility, creativity, and ownership because the child eventually recognizes, “I worked through this.” AI may give them an excellent answer in seconds, but it cannot give them the memory of becoming capable through effort. That memory becomes part of identity. Kids who have wrestled with enough small problems are less likely to believe a large problem automatically means they are incapable.
Raise Kids Who Can Use AI Without Needing It to Be Themselves
I want our kids to know how to use powerful technology because they will live and work in a world shaped by it. I also want them to know that their creativity, judgment, relationships, and calling are not downstream from whatever answer a machine produces. They should be able to close the laptop, walk into a room, look another person in the eye, and think. They should be able to do difficult work without assuming difficulty means the tool is missing. They should know how to serve when convenience disappears.
That kind of person can use AI with much greater freedom because they are not asking it to supply an identity or a basic sense of competence. The technology can accelerate work, broaden research, test ideas, and support creativity while the human being remains responsible for discernment. Our job is not to raise children who reject new tools. It is to raise thinkers, servants, creators, and relational people who know that God's design for them is deeper than efficiency.
Building Independent Thinkers Through the 8 Great Smarts
Word Smart: Have kids write, speak, summarize, or explain something in their own words before asking AI to rewrite or improve it.
Logic Smart: Give them problems with no immediate digital answer and ask them to generate several possible solutions before checking a tool.
Picture Smart: Let them sketch, map, design, or visualize an idea by hand before searching for an image or generated example.
Music Smart: Encourage them to create melodies, rhythms, lyrics, or interpretations before using technology to produce or refine the sound.
Body Smart: Teach practical skills such as cooking, fixing, building, cleaning, driving, and caring for a home so competence exists in their hands as well as their screens.
Nature Smart: Put kids in environments where they must observe patterns, navigate real spaces, solve problems, and engage creation without constant technological mediation.
People Smart: Protect face-to-face conversation, service, travel, mentoring, shared meals, and situations where children have to read and respond to real people.
Self Smart: Ask kids to notice when they reach for technology because it is genuinely useful and when they reach for it because they are uncomfortable not knowing.
Remember: However your child is smart, give them regular opportunities to discover that they can begin without the machine. Let them use AI after they have thought, not always instead of thinking. Teach the task before offering the shortcut, and preserve enough friction for confidence to grow. Our children will almost certainly inherit extraordinary tools. What matters is whether they also inherit the conviction that God has given them minds, bodies, relationships, and abilities worth developing before the tool ever turns on.