{"id":93251,"date":"2025-12-13T12:15:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T12:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93251\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T12:15:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T12:15:45","slug":"column-go-ahead-make-parenting-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93251\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: Go ahead. Make parenting mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had dinner with my son recently, and as tends to happen with us, we started talking about Quentin Tarantino\u2019s two-part masterpiece, \u201cKill Bill.\u201d We fell in love with the movies when they were released more than 20 years ago, when my son was in elementary school, and we have seen them countless times. My son had bought tickets to see the recently released \u201cThe Whole Bloody Affair<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which presents a version of the two parts in one screening \u2014 and wondered if I had mine yet. All I could do was smile. Maybe I had taken him to see those movies when he was \u201ctoo young.\u201d But he remembers and loves the story to this day. And apparently early exposure to Tarantino didn\u2019t screw him up.<\/p>\n

Mistakes, am I right? Sometimes they end up being the best part of being a parent.<\/p>\n

Of course, you don\u2019t know that when your kids are young. So in that way, I don\u2019t blame OpenAI CEO Sam Altman one bit for turning to AI for answers on child rearing. He and his partner welcomed a new baby in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do, I mean, I kind of feel bad about it,\u201d Altman said on \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.\u201d \u201cI cannot imagine having gone through, like, figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n

Days after his late-night appearance, Disney announced a $1-billion, three-year partnership with OpenAI that allows the company\u2019s Sora system to use Disney characters \u2014 so perhaps Altman\u2019s parenting bit was just a soft launch. Or maybe the executive running one of the most powerful tech companies in the world is really concerned about \u201cmistakes,\u201d such as, I don\u2019t know \u2026 letting a 9-year-old watch Uma Thurman kill everything in front of her for five hours. Parenting\u2019s a winding road. There are no guardrails, but there are plenty of potholes.<\/p>\n

If ChatGPT can make the road smoother for Altman and others, I say great. Consider it another tool in the arsenal for the battle ahead \u2014 like how-to books, YouTube videos and unsolicited advice from strangers. Like me.<\/p>\n

Wanting to avoid mistakes is natural, but it\u2019s been my experience that true growth is born out of the things you did \u201cwrong.\u201d No one bats a thousand, and often \u201cmistakes\u201d become fodder for bonding decades later. In time you\u2019ll gain new appreciation for the depth of humility and grace required to raise a human being.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in seeing yourself and your child work through a difficult moment \u2014 especially when you disappoint them, especially when they get some early practice in how to forgive \u2014 that you become aware of a universal truth about parenting: There are no mistakes. There are only choices.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not nearly as cryptic as it sounds. In fact, it\u2019s quite freeing. Fear of making a mistake makes perfection the goal, when in fact there\u2019s no perfect way to parent.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT and similar tools can give you crowdsourced answers to questions \u2014 and you\u2019ll have plenty of them, whether it\u2019s \u201cHow much tummy time should my 3-month-old get every day?\u201d or \u201cHow can I get my tween to fall asleep before 11 p.m.?\u201d But even the best answers cannot offer perfection. Nothing can.<\/p>\n

Once I accepted that frailty, that vulnerability, is inherent to the process of raising a child, parenting became a meditation in forgiveness \u2014 mostly forgiving myself. This is true whether you use AI or not. Even on the OpenAI site there\u2019s a header that reads: \u201cChatGPT can be helpful\u2014but it\u2019s not always right.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure Altman has seen it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have relied on it so much,\u201d he told Fallon. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s obviously the most important thing to happen in my life, so it\u2019s top of mind, and I use it all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must admit, it\u2019s kind of awesome to see someone of Altman\u2019s wealth and intellect be humbled by something parents have been doing since the beginning of time: making \u201cmistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I had dinner with my son recently, and as tends to happen with us, we started talking about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[24012,10320,14080,2269,51299,51298,217,3588,9614,48,52,51,47,50,49,7087,51297,51300,14310,7756,40107],"class_list":["post-93251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-altman","tag-answer","tag-bit","tag-chatgpt","tag-child-rearing","tag-countless-time","tag-day","tag-disney","tag-fact","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-parent","tag-parenting-mistake","tag-perfection","tag-road","tag-son","tag-tool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}