This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Sprong, 40, a lead research advisor and mom of three living in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I've always had lots of ideas for family traditions, learning activities, and memorable experiences. The challenge is finding the time and mental bandwidth to bring those ideas to life.
As a mom of three kids — ages 9, 8, and 4 — I'm juggling a full-time career in customer success at a UX research technology company and all the extracurriculars and logistics that come with family life.
While I use ChatGPT the same way some parents do, for meal-planning and organizing schedules, I primarily use it to amplify the creativity of my parenting.
Rather than using ChatGPT for one-time answers, I treat it like a collaborative brainstorming partner. We go back and forth refining ideas until they feel personal to my family and fit each of my kids' personalities.
It's helped me create custom vacation activity books, scavenger hunts, chore challenges that actually motivate my kids, and personalized resources that make everyday parenting more engaging and intentional.
What I value most about AI isn't just the time it saves me; it's that it helps me spend more of my time creating memories instead of hours planning them. It enhances my parenting, but it doesn't replace my role in my child's life.
Recreating a '90s childhood
I've played around with Canva, but the amount of time that I spend on just formatting is mind-boggling.
One thing I made with ChatGPT that I'm really proud of is a vacation activity book for my kids and their cousins when we went up north to Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It helped me create Mad Libs that were related to the activities that we were doing, and a scavenger hunt around the resort. I gave ChatGPT prompts and information about where we were staying and had it format everything in 8" by 11" paper so that I could print it out.
ChatGPT has also come a long way in terms of the quality of its output. I started experimenting with it for image generation around late 2025. At that point, I could see the potential, but there was still a lot of back-and-forth to get something I would actually print and use. There might still be a random word or strange element somewhere that I couldn't get rid of.
I noticed a pretty dramatic shift around mid-June of this year. The initial output had become much more reliable. The random text or "AI slop" that used to sneak into the edges of a visual have, in my experience, pretty much disappeared.
Now that ChatGPT has stepped up its game, it's helped us reduce screen time at home and bring back a more '90s summer for our kids.
Gamifying chores
AI also helped me gamify the kids' chores into a printable chore chart. I'll print it out and put it in a dry-erase folder where they can tick off each task they complete.
The "Bedroom Boss Battle" is probably my favorite example. Instead of saying "go clean your room," which usually leads to me repeating myself and ends in frustration for all involved, we turned it into levels like "Trash Tornado," "Laundry Lightning," and "Bedroom Magic." Each one gives them a specific thing to tackle and a short amount of time to do it to level up to the next task, ending with a sweet treat.
It changes the tone of the interaction. I'm not standing there nagging them through one huge task. They know exactly what the next small thing is, they can check it off, and there's some fun and momentum built into it. They take turns setting the timer.
AI hasn't magically made my kids love cleaning their rooms, but breaking it into smaller, gamified challenges makes it much easier to get started and has cut down on some of the resistance.
It helps me plan out quality time with each kid
I wanted a way to make sure my husband and I were each getting intentional, one-on-one time with each of our kids throughout the year. ChatGPT helped me create a printable tracker organized by child, parent, and season, so the goal is for each of us to have an individual date with each child every season.
For example, I'll send in different things that my child likes, their age, local events, and the season. I might say: "In Douglas County, Colorado, what could I do with my child around horses this weekend?"
We've brainstormed things like getting ice cream or hot chocolate, going to a bookstore, mini golf, breakfast together, a hike, pottery, or letting the child choose an adventure.
For me, the value isn't that I need AI to tell me to take my kid for ice cream. It's helping me take this idea of wanting to be more intentional and turn it into something tangible that keeps us accountable to actually doing it — especially across three kids and busy schedules.
Instead of trying to spend all the time trying to think through logistics or searching the gazillion Google reviews, ChatGPT helps me narrow down all the endless choices and just makes things easier for my brain to grasp.
I'm able to create those memories for my family and be present for them the whole time.
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Julia is a senior health reporter at Business Insider. Julia covers a wide range of topics, including the rise of colon cancer cases among young people, the unique challenges modern parents face, and the growing trend of Gen Zers abstaining from social media. She also writes about fitness, nutrition, longevity, and the routines of highly successful people for Business Insider’s Power Hours series. She’s published interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Serena Williams, Esther Perel, Bill Nye, Naomi Watts, and James Van Der Beek.Julia's work has appeared on the BBC, CBS, Bloomberg Radio, Morning Brew, Fast Company, and the Daily Flash. She has also moderated panel discussions at Nasdaq and Duke University, and appeared on the podcasts Open to Debate, Airtalk, The Evan Bray Show, and The Last Show with David Cooper. Prior to this role, Julia was an education and personal development editor on the Business Insider Reviews team and a sex and relationships editor at Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed, respectively. You can say hi to Julia at [email protected] and check out more of her work on her website.
