Former K–2 teacher with a Master's in Early Childhood Education and a specialty in literacy. Six years in the classroom is what started this. Her mission now: make sure this generation builds its human core before machines get there first.
I stood in front of my class one morning with a thought I couldn't shake: I was looking at a room slowly filling with little robots. Not because these kids weren't bright, or funny, or full of life. They were. But more and more of them arrived already depleted: shorter attention, less language, almost no tolerance for anything that didn't light up, move fast, or reward them instantly.
That's where the alarm started. Not in a research paper. In a classroom, at eye level with the children it's happening to.
My final year, I was completely depleted. So much of my time and energy went into mediating behavior that actual teaching got pushed aside. Screens felt like part of the problem. And the problem existed in schools, but it didn't begin or end there. It was childhood as a whole: technology, parenting, attention, a world growing more transactional by the year.
I didn't have a solution. It felt like one big tangle, too big to touch. When I left, I wanted to run as far away from it all as I could.
About a month after leaving, I started learning how to use AI. I figured I should understand where the world was heading. And as I learned what a large language model actually is, how it processes language, something clicked.
Children are still building their ability to understand language, reason, and make meaning of the world. Exactly the skills we cannot let technology replace before they're fully formed.
That was the turn. For the first time, I could see where to start.
It starts at home: present parenting, healthy boundaries, real consequences. Protect young children from the screen time that trains short attention and instant reward. Build language, thinking, empathy, and communication on purpose, before asking a child to lean on technology for any of it.
Once that human core is strong, a child's own use of AI can follow. Not before.
The Childhood Standard is not against technology. It exists to protect the human development children need before they can live alongside it without losing what makes us human.
The standard is simple: human core first, machines after.
These are two different things, kept separate on purpose: one is a product, one is free.
Real, age-by-age guidance for your own house: protecting attention and language early, and a readiness ladder for when AI should enter the picture. Concepts before tools.
Join the waitlistAge-appropriate design standards that protect children's attention, language, and development by default, not a setting a tired parent has to go find. Separate from the product line, no purchase required, ever.
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