I’m in a weird, very specific season of motherhood: I’m raising two distinct generations of kids under one roof. My older ones are Gen Z. My younger ones are Gen Alpha. And let me tell you — even though they share parents, a kitchen, and the same zip code, they may as well have grown up on different planets. The fact that we are having conversations about “classroom AI” really does show the difference between the generations of children that I am raising.
When my older kids were little, we still had storytime, recess, finger paints, library books with the little stamped due-date cards, and worksheets that came home crumpled in backpacks alongside half-eaten granola bars. Yes, they had screens — we’re not naive. But school was still school. The classroom was still where you went to work with your hands, your imagination, your messy-pencil-grip handwriting.
By the time my younger ones started elementary school? Different game entirely. Tablets in kindergarten. Logins for everything. “Educational” apps. Smart boards. Adaptive learning platforms. And now, the latest “innovation” being pitched to schools: artificial intelligence in the classroom.
I’m going to save us all some time here and just say it plainly: This is a NO for me.
A New Survey Just Confirmed What My Gut Has Been Screaming
A new national study commissioned by Crayola and conducted by Talker Research polled 2,000 parents of kids ages 8–12 (along with the kids themselves). The headline finding? 73% of parents say creativity will be MORE essential for their children than for previous generations — specifically because of the rise of AI.
Read that again. Almost three out of four parents are looking at the AI tidal wave and going, yeah, my kid needs to be creative — like, actually creative — to survive this.
Other gems from the study:
- 85% of parents agree: “Creativity equals success for my child in the future.”
- 35% of parents worry that AI will reduce their child’s ability to think creatively.
- 30% of parents fear AI will eventually compete with their children for jobs.
- 8 out of 10 parents wish the adults in their own lives had done more to nurture their creativity when they were kids.
So here’s my big mom question: if we know — we know — that creativity is the irreplaceable, can’t-be-AI’d skill our kids will need most, then why on EARTH are we handing them devices that do the creative work for them before they’ve even had a chance to develop the muscle?
What I’ve Watched Happen Between My Two Sets of Kids
I’m not coming at this as a Luddite. I went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I run a website. I use technology every day. I’m not anti-progress.
I’m anti-outsourcing childhood and anti-classroom AI.
Watching the difference between my Gen Z kids and my Gen Alpha kids has been like watching a real-time experiment I never agreed to enroll my children in. The younger ones reach for a screen the way the older ones used to reach for a crayon. Their attention spans are different. Their tolerance for boredom is different. Their willingness to sit with a hard problem for more than 90 seconds before asking a device to solve it for them is radically different.
And now we’re going to add classroom AI to that?
The same survey found something I want every parent reading this to hold onto: kids themselves still crave hands-on creativity. When kids in the survey made something by hand instead of digitally, they were more likely to:
- Preserve it (46%)
- Display it at home (68%)
- Give it as a gift (48%)
When you make a paper card for grandma, it ends up on the fridge. When you generate a digital one, it ends up nowhere. Kids know this. They feel this. They are telling us this. The data shows that even the digital-native generation craves the tangible, the messy, the made-with-their-own-hands.
So why are the adults in the room so determined to take that away from them?
What Kids ACTUALLY Said They Want From Us
This is the part that broke me a little. The Crayola study asked kids — actual kids, ages 8–12 — what helps them stay creative. Their requests were so simple it stings:
- Ask for our ideas and actually listen (52%)
- Give us supplies to create with (51%)
- Encourage us to problem-solve (47%)
- Give us more time to create (46%)
That’s it. That’s the list. They aren’t asking for an iPad. They aren’t asking for ChatGPT homework helper. They aren’t asking for an “adaptive learning platform” with gamified XP points. They’re asking for paper, time, and an adult who will actually listen to them.
When asked the least motivating thing a parent can do? Tell them their art “looks good” (22%). Even praise feels like a judgment. They want effort recognized, not output evaluated. They want to be seen — not graded.
A machine cannot do that. Only a present, paying-attention adult can do that.
But, AI Is the Future, Aren’t You Holding Them Back?
I hear this argument. I hear it constantly. And I have a question back: is the future we’re racing toward actually the one we want for our kids?
Cheri Sterman, senior director of education at Crayola, said in the study: “As AI continues to insert itself into our lives, this study suggests that creativity won’t disappear, but warns that nurturing it must be intentional. For parents and educators, the challenge isn’t resisting technology, but ensuring imagination, experimentation and original thinking remain central to how children grow up alongside it.”
I respect that take. I just disagree with the premise that we can’t also push back. The challenge ABSOLUTELY can include resisting technology in spaces where developing brains are learning how to think. There is no rule that says every classroom has to bow to every new tool the second Silicon Valley invents it.
We didn’t put cigarettes in schools because adults were doing it. We didn’t put credit cards in 11-year-olds’ hands just because the future is cashless. Sometimes the answer to “the world is moving this way” is: cool, my 9-year-old can wait.
What This Looks Like in My House
Since people always ask: no, I don’t have a perfect tech-free home. I’m a real mom. There are screens. There are streaming shows. There is a tablet that has saved my sanity on more than one road trip. But we are BIG on online safety, and for this very reason.
But the things I am holding the line on, especially with my younger kids:
- No classroom AI or AI assistance for homework. If you don’t know the answer, you sit with it. You ask a teacher. You look it up in a real source. You struggle. That’s the point.
- Creative work happens with hands. Crayons, markers, scissors, glue, glitter that I will be vacuuming up until my youngest leaves for college. That’s the deal.
- Boredom is allowed. Required, even. Boredom is the soil creativity grows in. If a child has never been bored, a child has never had to invent anything. We will fully be embracing a 90s summer.
- Reading is still on paper, mostly. Library trips are sacred. Bookstores are field trips.
- I push back at school. Politely. Repeatedly. About screen time, about app-based homework, about the slow normalization of AI tools for kids who haven’t learned to think yet.
The Crayola study quoted one parent who summed it up beautifully: “We try to build creativity into ordinary moments — making up stories at bedtime, cooking together and experimenting, or turning errands into small games. Keeping it low-pressure helps creativity feel natural.”
That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. Make up the bedtime story yourself. Let them help cook dinner. Play “what if” in the car. The “ordinary moments” ARE the curriculum.
A Final Word for the Moms Quietly Nodding Along
If you’re a mom reading this and you’ve been low-key worried about how fast tech (and now AI) is sliding into every corner of your kid’s life — you are not crazy, and you are not behind. You are paying attention.
You are allowed to push back. You are allowed to say “not for my kid, not yet.” You are allowed to opt out of the apps, question the tools, email the teacher, ask the principal what their AI policy is. You are allowed to be the mom who insists on a paper book report.
I’m raising two generations of kids who are going to inherit a world I cannot fully picture yet. The one thing I CAN do is make sure both sets of them grow up knowing how to think, how to make, how to wonder, how to fail at something with their hands, and how to sit with a blank page until something real comes out of them.
A computer can do a lot of things. It cannot do that for them.
So yeah — when it comes to tech in the classroom and AI access for elementary schoolers? It’s a NO from this mom. Loud, clear, and unapologetic.
The crayons stay. The robots wait.
Research methodology: Talker Research surveyed parents of kids aged 8–12 (and their kids) with internet access; the survey was commissioned by Crayola and conducted online between Dec. 19 and Dec. 23, 2025. The complete methodology, as part of AAPOR’s Transparency Initiative, is available on the Talker Research Process and Methodology page.
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