By Abby Brody 

I’m about to break the news to my 11-year-old — that his big idea has already been done. 

He believes, with all his heart, that he can end political intolerance in this country. He named his organization Kids4Tolerance, inspired after a painful bullying experience at summer camp, it’s become more than a dream — it’s a mission. 

The night before, he told me he needed a website to recruit other kids. I sighed. Time for the classic parenting moment: “Sweetheart, I’m so proud of you, but someone already thought of this. Why don’t you join them?” 

So I showed him the website for kids4tolerance. “Oh, that’s mine,” he said casually. Wait, what? “Yeah. I bought the URL this morning with my allowance. Built it on GoDaddy. I made an email address too.” 

For the record, it’s only 11 a.m. While I was making coffee, my son built a nonprofit. And here’s the thing: he’s not a genius. He’s a cyborg. 

Gen Alpha is a misnomer; these kids are augmented humans — armed with the latest AI tools and the unflinching confidence to tell computers what to do. They wake up with an idea and, before lunch, spin it into a working reality. Jacob has the latest tools and the entire internet at his fingertips, and the ability to use it without hesitation. And as inspiring as that is — it’s also terrifying. Nothing in my generation’s handbook prepared us for raising cyborgs! Our kids are growing up with capabilities no generation before has ever had. And if you are like me, you’re lagging behind.  

These are children whose intuitions are fused to AI, whose imaginations are super-charged by tools many of us still find mysterious, even menacing. Give my son an idea and after he thinks through his ideas and writes about his vision, ChatGPT drafts the mission statement, Canva helps design the logo, and Shopify will be selling the T-shirts before bedtime. My kid is part human, part algorithmic exoskeleton. 

Let’s be honest: artificial intelligence can feel like Pandora’s box — deepfakes, privacy breaches, job displacement, algorithms no one can fully explain. When the news cycle screams apocalypse, scrolling away feels safer than engaging. But closing the laptop is not a parenting strategy. The box is open. Our children are already inside it, rearranging the contents while we debate if it’s real oak or laminate. 

Every month in my work as an educator and digital parenting expert, I meet families who fit the same pattern: 

• Children chat effortlessly with AI, spinning up homework help or game mods.   

• Schools lurch between outright bans and hasty pilot programs.   

• Parents shrug and say, “I’m not a techy.” 

That shrug hands over the steering wheel to a 12 -year-old child whose brain is still wiring itself for impulse control. We would never let our kids drive a car alone at night on the freeway! Yet we allow them to navigate the most powerful technology on earth with no adult in the passenger seat — and we call it inevitability. 

We cannot sit this revolution out. AI is already shaping the three things parents care about most: 

Safety. A child who can recognize how a deepfake video is generated is a child less likely to be duped by one.

Opportunity. Used wisely, AI can help draft scholarship essays, plan healthier meals, automate chores, and return the one resource parents never have enough of — time.   

Citizenship. Tomorrow’s voters will face policy questions — privacy, labor, national Security — rooted in artificial intelligence. “Sorry, I don’t get tech” won’t cut it when they ask for guidance. 

But here’s the secret: the moment adults move from fear to fluency, AI morphs from threat into superpower. I have watched a single prompt turn a frantic grocery list into a week of balanced dinners. I have seen a shy sixth-grader use Midjourney to design a science-fair poster that makes her stand a little taller. Technology, when understood, becomes the floor under their dreams, not the ceiling above them. 

I built a free, 20-minute course called “AI Is for Parents Too” because parents deserve a quick on-ramp that doesn’t speak code. No jargon. No judgment. Just the essentials: what AI actually is, how to set simple guardrails, how to test-drive tools that make family life saner — and, 

yes, more fun. 

Think of it as an oxygen mask for grown-ups. Secure yours first; then help your cyborg. In the time it takes your child to finish an episode of Bluey, you’ll know enough to ask better questions, set smarter boundaries, and maybe even impress the resident whiz-kid. 

Because the future isn’t coming. It’s sitting at your kitchen island, registering domain names before breakfast. Let’s stop pretending we can keep it outside the door. Let’s pull up a chair, log in, and learn to steer together. 

Our kids are already cyborgs. They don’t need us to match their processing speed; they need us to match their courage and add our wisdom. The first step is admitting the gap. The next is closing it — quickly. 

Coffee’s ready. Class is open. I’ll meet you inside. 

Abby Levin Brody is a nationally acclaimed digital parenting expert, writer, and speaker. A former educator and principal, she's a cancer mom, an ed-tech futurist and a philanthropist, giving away all of her rich, parent-friendly, child-first resources and playbooks free on her website, www.abbybrody.com.