What AI Actually Does for Parents (And What It Doesn’t)

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I wrote a while back about how parents did everything before AI. We weren’t helpless. We figured things out with paper calendars, cookbooks, and a lot of improvisation.

But now that AI exists, the question isn’t whether we need it. It’s whether it actually helps, or if it’s just another thing cluttering up our lives.

The honest answer? It helps in small ways. Not big, transformative ways. Just small, friction-reducing ways that might save you a bit of mental energy when you’re already fried.

TL;DR: AI doesn’t make parenting easier in any meaningful way, but it reduces friction on repetitive tasks like meal planning, finding weekend activities, and solving minor household problems. It’s a faster Google, not a revolution. Use it where it saves time, ignore it where it doesn’t.

What Canada Should Learn From Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban

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Australia is about to run a bold social experiment: a national social media ban for anyone under 16. It’s the kind of policy that sounds clean and decisive in a government announcement and instantly chaotic the moment it meets real families, real teenagers, and real technology.

For the record, I’m not opposed to a world with far less social media. If someone pulled the plug tomorrow, I don’t think civilization would crumble. In fact, it might improve. But this specific approach raises a pile of questions that no one seems ready for.

Parents Did Stuff Before AI: A Reminder That We Weren’t Always Helpless

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There’s a strange narrative floating around these days that modern parents would crumble without AI, apps, or a device telling them what to do next. It’s as if daily life used to be impossible before we could fire off a prompt like “make me a meal plan that doesn’t involve cilantro.”

The truth is both simpler and funnier: parents used to do absolutely everything without any of this technology. Life wasn’t smoother, but it still worked. Kids got raised, jobs got found, dinners got made, and somehow everyone survived using tools like paper, memory, and pure improvisation.

Can you tell I am getting close to being an old man on the porch?? (Please don’t look at the photo on my homepage)

Tech helps. AI is handy. But parents were never helpless. Here’s a look back at how things actually got done before ChatGPT, before smartphones, and even before the internet.

When Will 6-7 Actually End?

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If you’ve spent more than five minutes around a pre-teen or teenager lately, or dared to open TikTok without body armour, you’ve probably encountered the unstoppable force known as 6-7. At this point, it feels less like a meme and more like a gas leak slowly filling the house. You don’t see it at first. Then suddenly your kid is muttering “six-seven” while pouring cereal, entire classrooms are chanting it like it’s the national anthem, and some poor teacher is Googling “how to manage children possessed by numbers.”

The real question for those of us in the trenches is simple: when does this actually stop? As a dad who has survived the dab era, the flossing era, the Skibidi Toilet era, and whatever the hell was going on with “griddy” for three years too long, I’ve earned the right to ask.

How Are We All Doing?

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Yep, that’s the question. How are we all doing? For me, November is one of the tougher months to get through, so I figured I’d do a check-in. Drop something in the comments if you’re feeling it too. Honestly, I think November might be a harder month than the usual poster child for feeling down: February.

February gets all the blame for being grey, miserable, and never-ending, but November quietly sneaks in with its own brand of heaviness. The days get shorter in a way you can actually feel. One day you’re having dinner in daylight, and the next you’d swear midnight starts at 5:07 p.m. You step outside, and the air has that sharp edge that reminds you winter is auditioning. The first snow shows up uninvited, wet and clingy, just to remind you what’s coming.

Teens In Winter: The Annual Negotiation That Makes Zero Sense

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Parenting teenagers in Canada during winter is like arguing with a person who fundamentally believes they are immune to the laws of thermodynamics. You can show them sideways snow, minus 20 wind chill, ice pellets hitting the window like BB gun fire…and they’ll still walk out the door in a hoodie like they’re genetically engineered for a climate-controlled mall. Every generation thinks they invented rebellion. Today’s teens seem convinced they’ve also invented not needing a core body temperature.

There is this cultural myth that you get better at parenting the older your kids get. I’m here to report that is absolute nonsense. Parenting teenagers is mostly bargaining, strategic surrender, and muttering to yourself in the backyard while pretending to take out recycling that isn’t even full.

This is the winter version.

When Teens Get Nostalgic for a Life That’s Only Just Begun

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It caught me off guard. My oldest son, now sixteen and firmly in the “don’t make a big deal out of anything” phase, casually asked if we were going to do a family walk on Thanksgiving. It was something we used to do when the kids were little, mostly due to needing something to do when all the usual options were closed. You know the walk. A post-breakfast shuffle through a local neighbourhood, everyone bundled up, and ideally enjoying themselves.