My ChatGPT parenting history – the legit last 7 prompts I’ve used, and why I have zero shame in sharing

Trigger warning for number 7

Unpopular opinion – ChatGPT has strengthened my parenting across the last year. I probably started using it in autumn 2024 for specifically child-related queries – making me sort-of in the early cohort – but these, I remember, were for quite big questions. One was about bullying, the other a niche health condition query. Nowadays, my prompts are reallllly mundane. But – in a kind of nosey what’s in my babybag update way – kind of fascinating, when you see them in list form.

And yes, the responses are really, really helpful. I do not find ChatGPT helpful for authentic-me stuff. Writing a thoughtful WhatsApp to my mom? Forget it. I would never, but I’ve tried it for fun and it read like a scam message. She thought it was, too. 

I don’t use it for creative tasks either, really. I do use AI for work, but for picky bits and meta descriptions, mainly – and I’m not loyal to ChatGPT. But don’t tell them. 

I’m funny with how I use it for health, too. I’ll absolutely lean on it (as you’ll see) for a guide to surviving norovirus. The immediate plan, or what to ask my doctor about a specific health concern, etc – for this, it’s super-helpful. But for long-term, personalized nutrition, for example, I find the responses way too generic. I can sense the collating and scraping, and I know things will be missed off or over-simplified – often due to my own query history.

You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t)

But take last week. 11:42 PM on Wednesday and I’m staring at a gingham school dress wondering if I trust myself to start cutting it into my earlier vision of a rustic Wizard of Oz costume for World Book Day. 

The Dorothy’s basket I’d ordered had turned up as a doll’s house size. The ruby slippers looked beautiful but were half a size too big. The dress itself, now I looked at it, looked like, well, a school dress. Why had I not just given in and ordered an off-the-shelf Dorothy situation from Amazon? Because with two kids to sort, the total was knocking on $130. And I’m a bit millennial. 

Worst of all, no Toto. In a bedroom full of plushies, how did we not have a dog to lean on? 

I tried various prompts following the one you’ll see below, to find a way out of this night-before-mom mess. But in the end, I landed on this (no word of a lie – this is exactly what I hammered in):

“It’s midnight and I’m tired and the basket I ordered is a miniature (the size of my hand) the dress looks frumpy but I’m too scared and tired to cut it wha should o do”

Cue, my ride-or-die woozy face emoji. 

And you know what? They helped me. My husband was asleep – he’s allowed, he’s ill – and my mom would DEFINITELY have tried to start giving me some cod hemming guidance, which I simply had no bandwidth for at midnight on a Wednesday. The child was in bed. I needed to go to bed. And that’s exactly what ChatGPT came back with: 

The Midnight Rule

If you feel:

• Tired
• Emotional
• Scissors-curious

You are not allowed to alter garments.

Go to bed.

Tomorrow it will look 40% better purely because you are less tired.

—

The next day, I woke up to my 7 year old’s cries of delight seeing the cloth-bound book, the shoes, the dress hanging shyly downstairs. And I heard her busying herself finding her raccoon plushie, to replace Toto. All of her own accord. 

There is a heart to ChatGPT, I swear. Okay maybe not, but they helped mine, that night. And I fired this off after school drop-off too, so delighted and, well GRATEFUL was I. Again, zero shame.

“Next day – I am so grateful, thank you – she was perfect”

AI prompts for parents are a thing now – here are my most recent gems

Not because I want to automate motherhood or outsource the emotional labour of raising children, but because artificial intelligence is good at answering the hundreds of tiny logistical questions that pop up every day when you have young kids.

Think of it less as “automated parenting” and more as a very patient assistant who doesn’t think you’re being extra for asking how long a play date should be, or the specific age appropriateness for approximately 87 different books and movies across 2025, or exactly how many Haribo is too many Haribo, in a week. 

These are BIG questions, when you have little lives to steer. 

Below are the last seven AI prompts I’ve used recently as a mum of two. They’re not high stakes, they’re just real life.

I’ll be back with more, because there’s no stopping this shameless AI mom.

1. “Ideal overnight house temperature for kids (March)”

One of the universal parenting anxieties: are my children too hot or too cold while they sleep?

In March, that question becomes particularly confusing because the weather can really flip around. I asked ChatGPT for a simple answer based on whole-family sleep guidance, and it confirmed what sleep experts generally recommend: around 60-68°F (16-20°C) is considered a safe and comfortable room temperature for children.

Not groundbreaking information, but it scratched an itch for info. 

2. “How to turn an M&S summer gingham school dress into Dorothy’s pinafore”

Covered above. The story nobody asked for, this World Book Day. 

3. “How long until I should pick a 7-year-old up from a playdate”

Parenting etiquette questions are a category of their own. And yes, I’m extra. I like to know what I’m doing and what’s reasonable, even if it’s according to an AI bot. 

Drop-off playdates come with an unspoken social contract: don’t be the loser Mom arriving too early, don’t accidentally overstay your welcome.

When I asked ChatGPT, the advice was reassuringly normal: two to three hours is typical for this age, unless the host parent suggests otherwise.

Basically, AI confirmed what most parents suspect but still second-guess. We did 2.5 hours, and that was perfect.

4. “Optimum bedtime for a 5- and 7-year-old”

Bedtime is one of those topics where everyone has an opinion.

The answer ChatGPT returned, based on general paediatric sleep guidance, was that most children aged 5-7 need 9-11 hours of sleep per night, which usually translates to a bedtime somewhere between 7 and 8PM, depending on wake-up times.

Did this stop my children from requesting water, snacks, and emotional life updates after lights-out?

Sadly, no.

But it did reassure me that we’re broadly on track. I’ve prompted this many times since, all in the same chat of course, depending on what we’ve got on the next day, that day’s wake-up time, etc. 

And it really helps me map out bedtime for two, and gives me that mandate to get the kids upstairs by 7PM, even if they moan about it. 

5. “How much spaghetti per child for dinner”

Like I said, high stakes. Or not. 

Too little, and someone is hungry an hour later. Too much and you’re scraping uneaten spaghetti into the bin.

The rule ChatGPT gave me was simple: around 50-75 grams of dried pasta per child depending on appetite.

I now measure pasta by eye, having weighed it out like that a few times. And enjoy significantly fewer leftovers.

6. “Get my two kids (5 and 7) through norovirus—they both have it, so do I and my husband is away this week. It’s a school week and I only want you to ask essential questions to get us back on our feet again.”

This was the moment I realized – viscerally – how useful AI can be during parenting emergencies.

Everyone in the house had norovirus. Me included. My husband was away. It was not okay. 

Through my vomitous haze (apparent in the questionable phrasing above) I asked ChatGPT to create a simple recovery plan with timings: hydration, rest, when to try food again and when children could realistically return to school.

It felt like having a calm voice of reason when my brain wasn’t functioning properly. Because I’d genuinely considered calling the police at one point. 

7. Trigger warning: “How to clean dried sick from carpet”

If you know, you know.

Parenting includes many beautiful moments. This is not one of them.

At some point, every parent ends up Googling exactly this question. My AI version involved instructions for softening dried residue, using bicarbonate of soda, and avoiding harsh scrubbing that damages carpet fibres.

Was it glamorous?

No.

Was it effective?

Absolutely. And bear in mind, I was sick too whilst doing this. I am humble, and I love ChatGPT for helping me scrape up sick, while sick. 

Know thy enemy (and make them work for you)

Artificial intelligence can’t compete with our raw, parenting nature. It is not love, and it can’t replace anything about the parent you are. 

But when it comes to the thousands of tiny, mundane decisions that fill a parent’s day – and help a child’s life run that little bit more tooled-up, and smoothly – tools like ChatGPT are definitely part of modern parenting.

If that makes me an “AI mom”, I’m perfectly happy with the label.

Because sometimes the smartest parenting tool isn’t a parenting book or a perfectly organised routine. Both are fundamentally flawed, for me, in that they are (or can be) inflexible – tekkers need to bend with what we’ve got going on, in the household’s here and now.

Sometimes it’s simply asking the question that’s already in your head, and getting a sensible, data-scrapey answer back.

Up next: Mother’s Day in all forms – our team’s handpicked gift ideas for 2026