It probably happened quietly. You walked past the desk, glanced at the screen, and noticed the familiar ChatGPT interface. A question typed in. An answer flowing out. Maybe you said something. Maybe you let it go. Maybe you’re still not sure what the right response is.
You’re not alone. This is one of the most common conversations we’re having with parents right now, and one of the most genuinely complicated ones. Because the answer isn’t as simple as “stop doing that.”
First, let’s be honest about the landscape
Before we judge too quickly, let’s acknowledge something. Our children are navigating extraordinary academic pressure in a world that has handed them a tool that makes that pressure instantly disappear.
When a child is up at 11 pm, overwhelmed, with three assignments due tomorrow, ChatGPT is not a moral failure. It’s a very human response to feeling like there is no other option.
If you find your child regularly using AI to cope with workload rather than learning, that’s worth understanding as a capacity and wellbeing issue, not just an integrity one. The conversation might need to go deeper than “don’t cheat.”
Also…it’s everywhere!
AI is not going away. GPT-5, Gemini, Copilot, WhatsApp, Grammarly’s AI, and even school-issued tools now have AI built in. By the time your child leaves school, they will be expected to use AI competently in virtually every professional setting.
So the question isn’t whether our children should know how to use AI. They absolutely should.
The question is: what are they losing when AI thinks for them?
The real cost isn’t the grade. It’s the process.
Here’s what actually happens when a child genuinely wrestles with a piece of writing or a difficult maths problem:
• They encounter confusion and learn to sit with it
• They make an attempt, get it wrong, and revise
• They form an opinion, find words for it, and defend it
• They build the neural pathways that make learning stick
When AI does that work instead, the child gets the output but skips the process. And the process is the point.
A child who can prompt ChatGPT brilliantly but can’t organise their own argument, tolerate the discomfort of a blank page, or persist through difficulty is not a child who is ahead. They are a child who has practised avoidance at scale. “The brain learns by doing hard things. Outsourcing the difficulty doesn’t build capability. It just postpones it.”
But is it cheating?
This is where it gets genuinely complicated, and where we need to resist the urge for a simple answer.
Is using ChatGPT to generate an entire essay and submitting it as your own work cheating? Yes. Clearly.
Is using ChatGPT to check your grammar, understand a concept you’re stuck on, or explore counterarguments to your own position cheating? Almost certainly not.
The grey area in between is vast. And it’s where most of our children are operating.
Different schools have different policies. Some have banned AI entirely. Others have integrated it explicitly into assignments. Many are still figuring it out, which means your child is navigating an unclear landscape without much guidance.
That’s not a reason to stay silent. It’s a reason to have the conversation at home, before they have to figure it out alone.
What to actually say to your child
Resist the impulse to lead with “that’s cheating.” That shuts the conversation down. Instead, try getting curious:
• “What did you actually learn from that assignment?”
• “If I asked you to explain that essay to me right now, could you?”
• “What do you think your teacher is trying to help you get better at?”
• “Do you think there’s a version of using AI that helps you learn more, not less?”
These questions do more than challenge the behaviour. They build metacognition: the ability to think about your own thinking, which is one of the strongest predictors of long-term academic success.
Teach them the difference between using AI as a crutch and as a tool
This is the distinction worth making concrete for your child:
AI as a crutch:
• Typing the question in and submitting the answer
• Using it to avoid having to think
• Getting the output without understanding it
AI as a tool:
• Using it to explain a concept you’re confused about
• Asking it to challenge your argument so you can strengthen it
• Checking grammar or structure after you’ve written a first draft yourself
• Researching a topic and then forming your own view from the material
The question to ask: would you be able to do this without AI if you had to? If the answer is no, that’s worth paying attention to.
What schools are doing, and what you can do to support them
Schools are in a genuinely difficult position. They cannot ban a tool that is freely available and that the world outside school expects children to use. The most progressive ones are shifting their assessments: more oral work, in-class writing, project-based learning, process portfolios. They’re focusing on showing thinking, not just producing answers.
You can reinforce this at home by:
• Asking your child to walk you through their work and explain it
• Valuing effort and process in your praise, not just results
• Modelling intellectual honesty yourself: talking about things you find hard, showing them you also have to persist
• Asking their school what the AI policy is, and making sure your child knows it clearly
The bigger picture
We are raising a generation that will live and work with AI as a constant guide along side.
What we owe them is not a world without AI, but the capacity to use it with judgement, integrity, and genuine competence. To know when to reach for it and when to do the harder, more valuable thing of thinking for themselves.
That doesn’t come from banning ChatGPT. It comes from the conversations we have at the kitchen table, the values we name out loud, and the questions we ask that help them understand why the thinking matters, not just the answer.
Stay connected
Sarah & Pam
