Josh was at the end of his rope when he turned to ChatGPT for help with a parenting quandary. The 40-year-old father of two had been listening to his “super loquacious” four-year-old talk about Thomas the Tank Engine for 45 minutes, and he was feeling overwhelmed.
“He was not done telling the story that he wanted to tell, and I needed to do my chores, so I let him have the phone,” recalled Josh, who lives in north-west Ohio. “I thought he would finish the story and the phone would turn off.”
But when Josh returned to the living room two hours later, he found his child still happily chatting away with ChatGPT in voice mode. “The transcript is over 10k words long,” he confessed in a sheepish Reddit post. “My son thinks ChatGPT is the coolest train loving person in the world. The bar is set so high now I am never going to be able to compete with that.”
Set aside the inherent problems with ai and just observe the parental actions here.
You kid is telling a story to you its parent. You can tell it your to tired/overwhelmed to listen or ask to Finnish it another time.
At what point is it ok to just abruptly replace your presence with someone else.
Imagine if someone did that to you, in the middle of conversation they just leave and tell you to finnish the end of it to someone else who was previously not involved. Its rude for adults but psychologically harmfull to a child still learning what conversation is.
Also, 2 hours alone at 4yo?
Also, the kid is just rambling on about Thomas the Tank Engine, how complex can the convo even be? It’s like the same shit that ever happens in that show. You really can’t just half listen to the kid talk about the train show while you fold laundry or whatever? Like come on man.
The second episode of TtTE famously shows The Fat Controller bricking up a tunnel with one of the engines inside because he didn’t want to come out in the rain.
No way a ChatGPt conversation about that could go into dark places.
Agree that’s rude to the child and teaches a bad lesson. Dishonesty in general is just bad parenting.
But, I do want you say, totally normal up leave (some) kids alone for two hours. Their behavior is pretty predictable and you may have to clean up a mess but it’s generally fine (ideally in earshot). Just don’t leave any major hazards lying around, like Daddy’s bleach IV.
It’s one thing to leave them in their room playing with the toys in there. He left him to play with an intellectual set of knives.
God knows what direction that ChatGPT conversation could have gone.
Probably better for them to Swedish it
What, nobody’s kids Norwegian anymore?
Statistically, only a small amount of children these days are Norwegian.
My 4 year old son can easilly play with sticks in the back yard for 2 hours. He can use the toilet and get snacks and water without help.
But some days he wants my attention all day long
Maybe i am just paranoid then but i always instinctively check in periodically, just in case.
Well yea I dont think I would go that long without checking on him.
Maybe, idk