I was writing the week’s menu on the Miele fridge in our Spanish apartment when I noticed the freezer temperature indicator flashing two dotted lines. I had no idea what it meant. So I pulled out my phone, opened Claude, described what I was seeing, and within seconds, I was troubleshooting it. My 7-year-old watched me go from clueless to unstuck in under a minute.
Nine months ago, I moved my family of four from Connecticut to Las Rozas de Madrid. We’re all learning Spanish one day at a time. I knew there would be a lot of figuring things out on the fly. But operating daily life in a new language and culture is humbling in ways you can’t fully anticipate until you’re in it.
So I’ve turned to AI when life throws something at me that I don’t yet have the language or knowledge to handle.
I use Claude all the time
In just the last few weeks, I’ve used Claude to chat with a doctor via our insurance app when my son came home from school with a hematoma. And then to translate bloodwork results and research the right supplements to order. And again, to understand an audit letter from Agencia Tributaria (Spain’s tax authority) about a package our neighbor had sent us months earlier.
What I didn’t anticipate was that my kids would be watching. Not passively, but quietly absorbing.
My 7-year-old experiences Claude as a sort of magic answer machine. On the bus to school, when he wants to learn everything there is to know about diamonds, I open it up, and we go deep together. He asks questions, I read him answers, and they spark more questions. He has no idea what the technology is. He just knows he can get answers to all the things he’s wondering about. I love that my not knowing doesn’t mean he hits a dead end. I learn alongside him.
My 10-year-old knows exactly what Claude is. He’s been watching me use it for months — and recently, we used it together for the first time on something important to him.
He wants to write a fantasy novel — he has the whole thing mapped out in his head. But he’s a perfectionist, and the gap between big idea and completed 30,000-word book felt impossible to him. He could visualize it, but he couldn’t see the steps — and was paralyzed by it. So I told him Claude could help.
We sat down together, and he watched me write a detailed prompt. From that, Claude built a road map — and I watched my son go from stuck to gleeful as he read it. Every phase and milestone was broken down into small steps he could take to turn his dream into reality. For the first time, this thing he wanted so badly to do actually felt doable. I asked Claude to build him a printable workbook to work through character development, plot, setting, and scenes. With a goal of 250 words a day, he can have the first draft done in four months.
While he nodded along to many of Claude’s suggestions, he pushed back on others. He disagreed with the editing process. He had a better way. It might take longer, he said, but it would make the final product better.
My kids also use Claude
In that moment, I was so proud. He didn’t blindly accept what came out of the tool. He thought critically, took what made sense to him, and discarded what didn’t. The road map didn’t write his novel. It just cleared the way so he could. Without it, a dream that might have been abandoned entirely became something he could start today.
As a mom, I’ve thought about whether any of this is good for them. Whether I’m modeling curiosity and resilience, or just handing them an easy button to outsource the hard parts.
Then I think about my older son on that bus. He didn’t hand his thinking over. He used a tool to get out of his own way so he could start the thing — and then trusted himself to take it from there.
And I think about my youngest, who’s so full of questions all the time. The answers Claude gives don’t dim his thinking; they just intensify it.
Here’s what I think they’re absorbing: that not knowing doesn’t have to be a dead end. Sometimes you just need to know the right question to ask.
We’re all still learning Spanish — figuring out this new life in Spain. Most of the time, I still don’t know what I’m doing. But I open Claude, ask a question, and keep moving forward. My kids are learning to do the same. And honestly, I think that’s one of the best things I can teach them. That everything really is figureoutable.
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