Generative AI is ready to transform early childhood skill development by giving parents and caregivers new ways to engage their young children with personalized, interactive content. The following article outlines the most promising design principles that are helping parents turn everyday moments into learning opportunities, strengthen bonds with their kids, and support language development, curiosity, and social-emotional growth.
Research shows that when parents are involved in children’s early learning at home, children improve in school readiness, social skills, and academic achievement. Helping parents to get involved in their child’s skill development is more important than ever at a time when American schoolchildren are performing alarmingly poorly on basic skills tests. Currently, only 39 percent of fourth-graders are considered proficient in national math tests, and only 31 percent are considered proficient in reading. Skill development begins well before kindergarten, and children with low skills early in life face long-term setbacks in education, earnings, health, and other areas.
Indeed, the market for AI-powered early childhood education tools is expanding rapidly as demand grows for at-home learning support. A recent analysis valued the global “AI in childcare and parenting” sector (which includes smart toys, educational apps, and virtual parenting assistants) at about $4.7 billion in 2024, with projections soaring to $35.2 billion by 2034. More broadly, the early childhood ed tech market (digital learning tools for young children, not limited to AI) is expected to grow from roughly $13.4 billion in 2024 to $55.6 billion by 2034. North America accounts for nearly half of this market, with an estimated $6.2 billion in early childhood ed tech spending in 2024. These figures reflect strong investor and consumer interest in technology solutions that enhance early learning at home.
The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this trend: as schools and daycares shut down, parents turned to AI-powered learning apps and smart toys to help educate and care for children during lockdowns. This surge in adoption highlighted both the promise of AI tools (e.g., adaptive learning apps saw increased use) and the importance of making them accessible and trustworthy for families. Overall, the U.S. market for AI-driven early childhood tools is on a robust growth trajectory, fueled by a recognition that engaging parents and young learners with innovative, personalized technology can significantly enrich early development.
Generative AI to Augment Human Connection
Busy parents and caregivers often face cognitive barriers, including present bias, fatigue, inattention, uncertainty about what to do, and competing priorities, which make it difficult for them to stick to early childhood learning and skill-developing routines like reading stories or engaging in back-and-forth conversations. Generative AI is especially suited to help parents overcome these behavioral hurdles.
At the same time, the science of early learning emphasizes the pivotal role of human gestures, voice, and responsive conversation in fostering a child’s development. AI can enhance parents’ capacity to engage with their children in skill-building ways. Unlike traditional approaches to parent intervention, which rely heavily on delivering static information and instructions, generative AI can be deployed as a personalized coach to manage parents’ behavioral bottlenecks.
What makes AI particularly well-suited to this coaching role? First, AI can provide just-in-time support for everyday decisions and behaviors. Much of parenting involves making decisions on the fly, like choosing to have a conversation while waiting for an appointment rather than letting the child watch YouTube. AI-powered behavioral supports available via mobile phone can offer timely prompts or suggestions in those moments, helping parents keep positive and effective interactions with their child “top of mind.”
AI can enhance parents’ capacity to engage with their children in skill-building ways. Unlike traditional approaches to parent intervention, which rely heavily on delivering static information and instructions, generative AI can be deployed as a personalized coach to manage parents’ behavioral bottlenecks.
Second, a large language model (LLM) can deliver personalized, context-specific guidance on a large scale. For example, it could tailor a bedtime story question to the child’s age and interests or adapt an activity to the available time. This reduces the planning burden on parents, making it easier for them to initiate and maintain engagement.
Third, AI can consistently reinforce messages, provide encouragement, and even correct common parental misconceptions and misbeliefs, such as reminding a parent that a two-way open-ended conversation with a toddler, rather than rote drilling on the beginning sounds of the letters in the alphabet, is key to building language skills. A well-designed AI agent serves as a behavior change aid, addressing the specific parental cognitive biases that contribute to intention-action gaps.
Behaviorally informed AI tools can utilize strategies such as reminder messaging, social affirmation, goal-setting, and “temptation bundling” (pairing an activity with a reward) to help parents initiate and maintain positive habits. The value of generative AI lies in its ability to integrate these strategies into natural dialogue. For example, a well-crafted AI coach might send a parent a text in the evening: “It has been a long day, but remember, reading even one short story with Sam tonight can make a big difference. You got this!” Such a message combines a reminder, information, and encouragement in the form of a just-in-time nudge that can help close the intention-action gap. AI can augment parent-child connections, assisting parents to support their children’s development more effectively and consistently.
A large language model can deliver personalized, context-specific guidance on a large scale. For example, it could tailor a bedtime story question to the child’s age and interests or adapt an activity to the available time. This reduces the planning burden on parents, making it easier for them to initiate and maintain engagement.
Key Principles for Designing AI Tools that Empower Parents and Caregivers
What would an ideal “AI parenting coach” or educational tool look like? Researchers have identified several principles for effective design to scaffold adult–child interaction and learning.
The following are some of the most essential features:
Personalization for the Child
The AI should customize activities and content based on the child’s developmental level, interests, and progress. Customization helps keep the child engaged and offers an appropriately challenging experience. For example, an AI-powered app used by a parent with a child could dynamically change the difficulty of questions or select stories that match the child’s vocabulary level. Personalization allows the tool to intelligently guide parents on the next steps to take with their child. Especially for neurodivergent children, AI can be a powerful resource. From speech and language development to social skills practice, AI-driven technologies are helping to create adaptive learning environments and assistive tools tailored to the unique challenges faced by children with autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent conditions.
Reducing Cognitive Load for Adults
Good tools make it easy and convenient for parents to engage in teaching moments, even amidst the distractions of daily life. Research prototypes, such as the SET-PAiRED educational robot and the StoryBuddy chatbot, follow this principle: they can temporarily take the lead in a shared reading or play session, which parents report helps them maintain high-quality engagement when they are busy or tired. Parents can flexibly adjust their involvement in the activity by determining what they want the robot to help with. By handling some tasks, the AI support reduces cognitive load for parents, making it more likely that they will initiate and sustain the interaction.
Encouraging Interactive Conversations
Since rich language exposure is crucial during the early years, AI tools should promote dialogic interactions between adults and children. This means the AI might serve as a co-narrator or prompt-giver, encouraging the child to speak and the parent to respond. This insight comes from landmark findings in the well-known “ThirtyMillion Words” study. The study revealed that many parents struggle to maintain skill-building conversations through “conversational turns,” which contributes to the widely recognized “Word Gap.” Conversational agents can suggest open-ended follow-up questions for parents to ask (“Why do you think the bunny felt sad?”) or even directly ask the child and then pause for the parent to discuss the answer. Research indicates that this approach can improve children’s language development. The goal is to foster more words and higher-quality conversations between parents and children, using AI as a catalyst.
Since rich language exposure is crucial during the early years, AI tools should promote dialogic interactions between adults and children. This means the AI might serve as a co-narrator or prompt-giver, encouraging the child to speak and the parent to respond.
Supporting Social-Emotional Learning
Beyond academic skills, an AI tool can also help parents nurture essential skills such as empathy, emotion regulation, and curiosity. For instance, an app might introduce a friendly character who practices “calm breathing” with the child and suggests the parent join in to help children boost focus and self-regulation skills. One prototype, called “Superhero Zip,” has utilized an AI character to teach children about emotions and positive self-talk. In another research trial, the digital game Zoo U improved children’s impulse control and emotion understanding. Conversations about emotions are not always easy. Tools like these can be adapted for parent-child joint use and enhanced with AI. The principle is that AI can scaffold conversations that parents might otherwise find difficult to start or sustain, thereby engaging their children in discussions about managing feelings, cooperation, and problem-solving.
Preserving Parental Authority and Choice
A well-designed tool should avoid compromising parental agency, which means designing tools that allow for flexible parental control. This could mean the ability to skip or modify AI suggestions, to choose between modes (parent-led vs. AI-led), and to understand what the AI is doing. For example, StoryBuddy allows parents to decide when to take over the storytelling or to have the robot continue, as noted above. Likewise, any AI-driven content should be accompanied by clear, user-friendly explanations of the learning goal and the parent’s role.
When AI tools include these design elements, they are more likely to enhance rather than disrupt the human interactions that support child learning and development. One promising exemplar is “Chat2Learn,” a new, evidence-based AI tool developed by the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at the University of Chicago to offer AI-assisted parenting support. It is a chatbot-based coach that sends parents of preschoolers interactive conversation prompts via SMS, accompanied by colorful illustrations. These prompts aim to inspire lively, open-ended conversations between caregivers and children aged 3 to 6 about fun topics, while also helping to build children’s language and thinking skills. For instance, one day’s message might display a picture of a zoo and ask the parent to “Imagine a new animal” with their child, encouraging them through AI-assisted follow-up prompts, at the parent’s request, to describe the animal and talk about what it eats, where it lives, and more. This playful, dynamic approach fosters engagement between children and parents, helps expand vocabulary, and enables parents to practice techniques like listening, pausing, asking follow-up questions, and encouraging imaginative play.
The behavioral science rationale behind Chat2Learn is that parents often want to have meaningful conversations but may struggle to generate ideas spontaneously or keep the child engaged. Chat2Learn supports the interaction by offering a creative starting point and guidance on what to ask next. It encourages parents to establish a daily habit of having conversations. The aim is that, over time, parents become skilled at communicating with their children to the extent that they no longer need the program for support. Initially, however, the chatbot helps overcome hurdles such as a lack of ideas, forgetfulness, or uncertainty. The AI chatbot does not interact directly with the child; instead, it plays a coaching role by providing prompts and feedback to the parent. This approach keeps the parent and child talking to each other, strengthening their interactions and bond.
The evidence so far shows that when designed to support human interaction, AI tools can help parents, caregivers, and teachers enhance children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional growth during the critical first years of life. From customizing learning activities to prompting parents at the right moments and reducing behavioral barriers to engagement, AI can expand the capabilities of the key actors who invest in children’s skill development.
Preliminary evidence on Chat2Learn’s effectiveness is highly promising. In a laboratory experiment with 65 parents, those who used Chat2Learn with their child spoke 36 percent more words during the session compared to a business-as-usual control group, and they used more unique words and complex vocabulary than parents in the control group. Children’s language skills in the treatment group also improved in these same areas. Video observations showed that parents in the experimental group spent more time engaging with their child together and less time disengaging. Additionally, a six-month randomized field trial with 600 low-income families found measurable progress in children’s language development: children in the Chat2Learn group showed an 8-month advantage in vocabulary growth compared to the control group. Parents in the treatment group also showed a reduction in “fixed mindset” beliefs (parents became more convinced that their child’s abilities can grow with effort) without added stress or cognitive burden.
The Guiding Principle: “AI for Good” in Early Childhood Skill Development
The evidence so far shows that when designed to support human interaction, AI tools can help parents, caregivers, and teachers enhance children’s cognitive, language, and social-emotional growth during the critical first years of life. From customizing learning activities to prompting parents at the right moments and reducing behavioral barriers to engagement, AI can expand the capabilities of the key actors who invest in children’s skill development.
Strategic R&D investments will enable us to leverage this rapidly advancing technology to improve efficient and cost-effective efforts in nurturing curious, resilient, and capable children who are prepared for their future labor market. Through thoughtful collaboration among technologists, researchers, educators, policymakers, and parents, we can develop and implement new accessible AI tools that help all children reach their full potential.
Chat2Learn was developed as a research project in the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at the University of Chicago. The author has no financial stake in the platform.
Articles by guest or contributing authors do not necessarily reflect the views of The Learning Agency, our clients, or our funders.