I Don’t Know. Let’s Find Out.
How Parents Can Use AI to Understand What a Child Needs Before Creating More Work
Use AI to investigate a learning difficulty, check explanations and choose one useful change before making more work.
Begin with one incident: notice what happened, consider where the difficulty lies, test a small change and check what the child can do later. The book explores how parents can learn alongside their children, evaluate AI-generated material and recognise when human expertise is needed.
For parents who want practical help using AI thoughtfully in their child’s learning.
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Before creating more work
From the introduction to I Don’t Know. Let’s Find Out.
During a geometry lesson, a nine-year-old constructed an equilateral triangle from two intersecting circles.
She remembered where to place the compass point. She understood that every radius of a circle has the same length. With some thought, she could explain why the three sides of the triangle must therefore be equal.
A little later, a calculation required her to add 4 + 4 + 7.
She stopped.
The numbers were small. The geometry had been much harder. Yet the addition caused real confusion and distress.
What should the adult do with that?
An ordinary worksheet would probably place the child at one level. A geometry curriculum might place her at another. It would be easy to decide that the earlier success had been misleading, or that the arithmetic did not matter because the child was obviously capable of higher thought.
Neither conclusion would be honest.
She had understood the geometry. She was also struggling with the calculation. The adult had to hold on to both facts and find out what was happening.
AI may help the adult separate the different parts of one incident. Could the child not remember a number fact? Did she lose an answer while doing the next step? Or did she not know which numbers to add first?
A few carefully chosen questions might tell us more. A twenty-page remedial pack would mostly tell us that a printer was working.
Copyright © 2026 Alex J. Housse.
Continue reading on Amazon ↗What you’ll explore
- Observe a specific difficulty before asking AI for help
- Learn enough to check an explanation before using it
- Test one possible bottleneck at a time
- Protect your child’s privacy and recognise AI’s limits
- Check later whether learning lasted