Don't skip the scales: What my kid quitting piano taught me about AI

My son stopped taking piano lessons this week because he didn't want to do the work. I couldn't let him move through life that way.

Jackson has natural talent with the piano, but he does not practice. If you ask him (and we did) he wants to go once a week, do some work in the lesson book, and leave until the following week. He just wants to learn to play certain songs that are all currently above his skill level. And he doesn't understand yet that to get to those songs, you have to practice the ones that feel “boring” first. So the deal was practice, or we stop. We stopped. And I hate that. But he has to learn to put in the work.

Scales and chords are essential to learning piano. They are the basis and the only way for Jackson to get to those songs he wants to play. But it also gets you beyond those songs. He then opens up the possibility that he could play any song he wants just by sitting down at any piano, anywhere. He could compose his own music. Twenty years from now, he could still have this skill, even if some time had passed and he was a little rusty. I actually did that a couple years ago (hadn’t quite been 20 years…) But this can only happen if the work is done.

Kids (and adults) are skipping the work, at a cost

Almost everything has a shortcut, or one of those Staples’ easy buttons, right now. And that’s not just because of AI. But, AI is the thing viewed as the biggest easy button right now. I say this as someone who works in AI professionally and uses it every single day. I can’t deny that there are some useful shortcuts. It is crazy how fast it can be to get an output.But there is a difference between using a tool to do work better and using a tool to avoid doing work at all. I use AI to handle things I already know how to do, including  drafting a quick email, consolidating feedback across a dozen threads, summarizing a long document, the list goes on. I can do all of those things myself. I've done them thousands of times and if I had to do them myself, I could. And I could do it well, but it’s not the best use of my time.  It's the same reason I don't feel guilty using a calculator for simple math. I learned long division and carried the one (I’m dating myself now!). I’ve now made a deliberate decision that 10 minus 6 is not where my brain cells are going because I have somewhere better to put them. Earning the right to offload something is different from never learning it in the first place.

And that difference is getting harder to see, because the outputs increasingly look the same on the surface. The easy version and the hard version can look identical at first glance, but that’s not how they feel. The person who made them knows. And over time, other people start to know too.

When you skip the skill development (which is the work), you might have an okay output. But, you haven’t built the capability. And now there’s a gap that  compounds, over months and years, until one day you find yourself in a room or a role or a moment where the output isn't enough, and you lack the actual skill needed in the moment.

Confession: I use AI to help me write.

LIke I said, I use AI daily, in many ways. And I do use it to write, but it is not the writer. Let me explain…

When I sit down to write a blog post, I use AI. I use it specifically for what I call stopping the stall. I love to write, but I overthink or have so many ideas all at once that it’s hard for me to get past the blank page. AI helps push through the paralysis. I have years of ideas for stories that never came to be because I couldn't get past the blinking cursor, and that's a real loss.

But what happens before and after I start is all me. First, I come with an idea or ideas and put all of that in. I do a total brain dump and make connections in a sort of chaotic way. That’s when I ask AI to help me structure. But it doesn’t stop there! I continue to  iterate in AI by pushing back or expanding on what it gives me. I ask it to ask me questions. Once I have a draft that feels sort of okay, I begin editing. I cut sentences that sound like they could have come from anywhere. I read it out loud and change the things that don't sound like me. I add the specific detail that prompted the story. By the end, I’ve rewritten the entire thing and I haven’t saved any time.These posts take me a long time to write because they need to be me. They take me as long as if I had started on my own. But I may not have ever started (back to that again).

How to teach kids to use AI without using it to replace thinking

Our kids are growing up in a world where AI is not optional. It is already embedded in the tools they use at school. When they grow up, they will need to be skilled at it to get a job and be successful in it.

The parents who tell their kids to avoid AI entirely are preparing them for a world that doesn't exist. But the parents who let their kids hand off the thinking entirely are preparing them for a world where they don't actually know how to do anything. Neither of those is what we want.

What we want is kids who know how to bring something real to the tool. Who start with their own idea, their own thinking, their own effort — and then use AI to help them take it further. That is the whole premise of what we do at AI for Curious Kids. The Idea → AI → Play™ framework exists because the order matters. The idea has to come first. The kid has to be the creative director. AI is the tool in the middle, never the beginning and never the end.

Kids who learn to work that way are building something. Every project, every activity, every time they push through the part that feels like work and arrive at something that is genuinely theirs — they are developing a capability that compounds over time. They are building the thing that will make them powerful users of AI, not passive recipients of it. The skill becomes theirs to use. 

A good place to start is our activities library, which is built on exactly this principle.

Doing the work matters more in an AI world (believe it or not)

I am not nostalgic for difficulty. I don't believe struggle is inherently good or that the hard way is always better. I believe in using every tool available to do better work and get further than you could alone. That is exactly why I use AI, and exactly why I'm raising my kids to use it.

But the tool works best when the person using it has something real to bring. When they have done enough of the work to know what they're looking for, to recognize when the output is right and when it isn't, to push back and redirect and make it their own. The depth you build by doing the work — that is what you bring to the tool. Without it, you are just moving fast toward something that doesn't quite belong to you.

Jackson will go back to piano when he's ready to do the work. I really believe that. The songs he loves will still be there. So will the scales and the chords.

And when he finally plays those songs — really plays them, the way you can only play something you earned — they will be his in a way that nothing skipped can ever be.