Please Ask From the Mobile

The sentence from my four-year-old that changed how I use AI around him

My son is in a riddle phase.

What goes up but never comes down?
What has hands but cannot clap?
What gets wetter while it dries?

He remembers almost every riddle we tell him, so our riddles finishes much faster than his interest.

For some time, I was solving this in the easiest way. I would ask AI for more riddles. He would sit beside me while I typed, waiting for the next one.

One evening, he asked for riddles again.

I said, “Okay, I have one.”

He stopped me.

“No. Please ask from the mobile.”

He was not being rude. He was simply telling me how he understood it.In his experience, riddles came from the phone. Mama was the person who asked for them.

And honestly, he had learned exactly what I had shown him.

What he had noticed

Children notice patterns much more carefully than we think.

I had shown him the same sequence many times:

He wanted a riddle.
I picked up the phone.
I typed something.
A new riddle appeared.

So he made a very logical connection. When we need a question, we ask the device.

That sentence stayed with me because I realised I was teaching him something I had never meant to teach.

Not that phones are bad.

Not that AI is bad.

But that ideas come from somewhere outside us.

I could have ignored it. The riddles from AI were better than the ones I could invent after a long day. They were quick, endless and required almost no effort from me.

But that was also the problem.The tool was doing the small piece of thinking that I wanted him to see people doing.

Why this felt personal to me

I have worked in software engineering for thirteen years and I now use AI tools regularly in my work.

I use them to understand unfamiliar code, explore possible solutions, summarise information and sometimes get past the blank page faster.I am not afraid of AI. I also do not believe children can grow up untouched by it. These tools will be part of my son’s education, work and daily life.

But using AI as an adult and introducing it to a four-year-old are not the same thing.

In my work, reducing effort is often useful. I already have years of experience, judgement and technical knowledge behind the question I am asking.

My son is still building those things.

For him, effort is not always a problem to remove.

Very often, the effort is the learning.

The part I do not want AI to take

Everything I have written recently keeps returning to the same idea.

The ten seconds before we help.

The same book read again and again.

The puzzle piece a child keeps turning.

The moment when they do not know the answer yet.

Thinking grows inside these small gaps.

It grows while a child wonders, guesses, gets something wrong, tries again and makes a connection.

AI can close that gap very quickly. Sometimes that is helpful. But when it closes every gap, the child loses the chance to do the work that was meant for them.

That evening helped me see three things more clearly.

I do not want AI to be the first place every question goes

A child needs to experience not knowing.He needs time to guess before the answer arrives. He needs to say something completely wrong, laugh and try another idea.We don’t want every question to be answered immediately. Sometimes it best we hold that question so we create a richer experience.

I do not want it to replace the imperfect attempt

My own riddles were not good. I have to spend a lot of time thinking and making something completely absurd. But he saw me thinking hard, trying and creating something new.

Some riddles he even answered before I could finish it.But he was fully involved.A perfect answer from a tool can be absolutely enticing. But a silly one made together taught him so much more.

I do not want the tool to create while he only receives

When every riddles he got ready made, his internal system internalises that he always get it. But when we made it together, he understood that this is something we can create together.

That difference may look small but I do not think it is.I want him to see his own mind as a place ideas can come from.

What we changed

We did not ban the phone. We only changed the order.Now, when he asks for riddles, we first try with our own heads.

Mine, his and Daddy’s.

We remember old ones. We change them. We make bad ones. Sometimes he gives an answer that is much better than the riddle itself.

Only after we have tried for some time do I say:

“Okay, now let us get some more riddles from our phone.”

The phone is still there.AI is still useful.But it is no longer the place where riddles live. It is the place where we get extra riddles after we have already used our own minds.

That small change has become a simple rule for me:

The tool works for the parent. The child keeps the practice.

I can use AI to help me choose a picture book.The child still gets the book, the lap, the repetition and the long conversation around one page.

I can use AI to find an activity idea.The child still gets the mixing, spilling, testing and starting again.

I can use AI to help myself prepare.But I do not want preparation to quietly replace his participation.

Not against technology. Careful about what it replaces.

My son will use AI throughout his life.I am not trying to raise him away from it. I am trying to help him grow into someone who can use it without handing over every unfinished thought.

Someone who can still observe , wait , try and still make something before asking a tool to make it for him.

The question is not whether he will use AI.

He will.

The question is whether he will also know that questions, ideas and answers can begin inside him.

A new monthly letter: The Crayon Signal

This moment with the riddles made me realise that I want to write more clearly about technology and early childhood.

AI is already changing the videos children watch, the stories they hear, the apps they use and the way adults answer their questions. Most of these changes arrive quietly. By the time parents notice them, they may already feel normal.

So I am starting The Crayon Signal, one post every month about AI and technology reaching children aged two to six.

This will not be a general technology newsletter.I will not cover every new AI tool, every company update or every headline. There are already many newsletters doing that well.

The Crayon Signal will stay much closer to home.

Each issue will focus on one specific change that may affect young children or family life. I will look at what is actually happening, what the technology is doing, why parents may be drawn to it and what it could quietly replace.

In the end, I’ll tell you where I personally land:

Use it. Avoid it. Or watch carefully for now.

I will write from two places at once: as a software engineer who understands how these tools work and as a mother deciding what belongs in my own home.

This will not be a technology panic column. I do not want parents to fear every new tool or feel they must understand every technical detail.

I want The Crayon Signal to be a calm pause before convenience becomes a habit.

The first issue will look at AI bedtime-story apps that can read to a child using a cloned version of a parent’s voice.

Parents do not need to follow every new technology.But we do need enough clarity to decide what gets invited into childhood.