The AI Safety Checklist Every Family Needs

AI can be a remarkable learning companion for children — with a parent firmly in the loop. Week one of our curriculum is safety before anything else. This is the condensed version of that module.

One: parent accounts only. Children never hold the keys to a general-purpose AI assistant; they use apps you built, with boundaries you set.

Two: review outputs first. Anything generated for your child — a story, a quiz, an image — passes your eyes before theirs, until you trust the specific, constrained setup you've built.

Three: no personal data in prompts. Teach the family rule early: first names only, no school names, no addresses, no photos of faces in tools you haven't vetted.

Four: age-appropriate guardrails. Configure content filters at the tool level, then add your own instructions on top: reading level, themes to avoid, tone.

Five: time-boxed sessions. AI experiences are engaging by design. The apps you build should end — a story finishes, a quest completes, the app says goodnight.

Six: co-use over solo use. The best sessions are shoulder-to-shoulder, especially under age eight. You're modeling how to question and direct the tool.

Seven: talk about how it works. Even a five-year-old can grasp 'it's a computer that guesses good answers; it isn't a person and it's sometimes wrong.' Demystifying AI is a literacy gift.

Once these checks are in place, they run themselves. Parents in our community consistently report the same arc: initial anxiety, then a settled confidence that comes from understanding the tools well enough to control them. That confidence is exactly what we teach.