A Kitchen Table Guide · No. 1

What do I say?

Your child asked something about AI and you were not ready. Pick the moment, pick their age, and get words you can actually use.

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The moment

It is usually in the car, or at bedtime, or somewhere between the cereal and the school bag. "Is it alive?" "Everyone uses it for homework." "It's easier to talk to than people." And you have about four seconds.

You do not need to understand all of it

You only need to handle the bit in front of you.

Most parenting advice about AI starts by explaining the technology. That is the wrong end. You have already handled television, group chats, and the internet arriving in your house, and you did not need a diploma for any of them. What you needed was a way in to the conversation.

So this guide skips the theory. Tell it what happened and roughly how old they are, and it will give you something to say. Not a script to read out, just a starting point in words that sound like a person.

Three things worth knowing before you scroll down. AI does not know anything, it predicts what words usually come next, which is why it sounds certain even when it is wrong. It does not remember your child or care about them, however warm it sounds. And it is built by companies who benefit from your child using it for longer, which is not sinister, but it is worth naming out loud.

The interactive bit

Find your moment

Two questions, about twenty seconds

Nothing you tap is sent anywhere. This all happens on your own device.

What has happened?

Pick the one closest to your week. There is no wrong door.

What to ignore

Three things not worth your worry

That you need to understand the technology first. You do not. You need to understand your child, and you already do. The technical detail is genuinely optional, and anyone telling you otherwise is usually selling a course.
That banning it is the safe option. A ban you cannot enforce does not stop the use, it stops the telling. The households that end up in trouble are almost never the relaxed ones, they are the ones where nobody could mention it.
That you have to have the right answer in the moment. "I do not know, let us find out together" is a better answer than a confident wrong one, and it teaches something more useful than certainty ever will.

If it goes further

When it is bigger than a conversation

Some of this stops being a chat at the kitchen table. If an image has been made of your child, if they are being bullied with it, or if they are struggling in a way that worries you, these are the people to go to in Australia.

eSafety Commissioner · esafety.gov.auReporting cyberbullying and image-based abuse, including AI-generated images of a child. They can require platforms to take material down.
Kids Helpline · 1800 55 1800Free and confidential, for anyone aged 5 to 25, any time of day. Worth putting in their phone before it is needed.
Your school's wellbeing coordinatorThe right first call for anything involving classmates, marks, or an accusation of cheating. Ask for the school's AI policy in writing.
Parentline in your state or territoryPhone counselling for parents and carers. Numbers differ by state, so search for the one where you live.
Scamwatch · scamwatch.gov.auIf money or personal details have been involved. Contact your bank first, on the number from your own card, not from the message.

Plain English

Words you might hear

A broad label for software that does things we used to think needed a person. Most of what your child is using is one particular kind, described next.

Chatbot, or large language model

Software that has been fed enormous amounts of writing and works out which word is likely to come next. That is genuinely all it does. It is very good at it, which is why it feels like more.

Prompt

Whatever you type in. The quality of what comes back depends heavily on it, which is why "ask it better" is a real skill rather than a slogan.

Hallucination

The industry's word for when it makes something up and states it confidently. Not lying, because it has no idea it is wrong. Assume anything factual needs checking.

Deepfake

A video, image or voice recording generated to look or sound like a real person. Good enough now that "I could tell" is no longer a reliable defence for anyone, at any age.

Training data

The material a system learned from. Most tools have a setting controlling whether your conversations get added to it. Worth turning off, and worth showing a teenager where it lives.

Guardrails

The limits a company builds in to stop a tool doing certain things. They work most of the time and fail some of the time, so they are a floor, not a ceiling.

If this is useful beyond your household

I talk to schools and parent groups about this

Plain terms, no doom, and time for the questions people are actually sitting on. Staff development days, parent evenings, community sessions and conferences.

Have a look at speaking →

There is a book, if you want the long version

Now with Added Algorithms is everything here thought through properly, for parents who would rather understand it than keep up with it.

Read about the book →

Published 1 August 2026. The thinking will outlast the tools, so check anything time sensitive. This page sets no cookies and asks for no account.

See the rest of the Kitchen Table Guides →