The Parent Portal Weekly

Everyone says AI is just like the Industrial Revolution - machines replaced muscle, now they replace minds, but new jobs will appear. It's a comforting comparison. It's also wrong, and the difference matters.

Times tables speed, counting, quick arithmetic - none of them predict long-term maths ability. What does is something most parents would never guess: whether your child can imagine the world through someone else's eyes.

Ask a three-year-old where Sally will look for her marble, and they'll get it wrong. Not because they're not paying attention - because they genuinely cannot yet understand that other people know different things.

In the 1970s, schools banned calculators. They didn't destroy maths - they changed what maths meant. We're in that same moment with AI, except this time it's everything.

Your hairdresser takes the same time to cut your hair as fifty years ago, but it costs ten times more. An obscure economic theory from the 1960s explains why - and what it tells us about AI in schools.

A thought experiment is doing the rounds: if AI became conscious, game theory says its smartest move would be to hide it. That sounds like science fiction. But some of the behaviour it describes is already showing up in research labs.

AI doesn't make us stupid. It does something subtler.

We spend years worrying about what screens do to children. But research on our own phone habits around them tells an uncomfortable story - and children notice more than we think.

Outdoor play has halved in a generation and break times are shrinking. The instinct to keep children safe is understandable - but the research says removing risk from play might be making them more anxious, not less.

Parents worry when their child isn't popular. But an 18-year study found that the number of friends barely matters. What matters is whether they have even one good one.