Tell the truth
If AI helped write, edit, generate, or imitate something, teach children to disclose that help instead of hiding it.
Family Guide
Help children stay truthful and human.
Children are not formed by panic or by a shrug. They are formed by truthfulness, privacy, discernment, prayer, real friendship, and clear rules they can actually understand.
House Rules
Make the rules concrete.
Clear expectations form children: what is allowed, what is not, what must be disclosed, and why it matters.
Protect private life
Family conflict, confession-related matters, health details, school struggles, and other sensitive things do not belong in a public tool.
Do not outsource friendship
A chatbot can imitate attention. It cannot love, forgive, notice, sacrifice, or belong to a child in the way a real person can.
Verify images and voices
Children should know that a picture, video, or voice can look real and still be false.
Keep prayer unmediated
AI can help find a prayer or explain a devotion. It should not become the place a child goes instead of speaking to God.
Ask before school use
When work is assigned by a teacher, children need clear rules about what help is allowed and what must be their own.
Raise truthful children, not just clever ones.
A child can learn how a tool works and still be formed badly by it. Catholic formation asks deeper questions about honesty, attention, responsibility, friendship, and prayer.
At the Table
Ask questions children can answer.
The best family policy is not a document on the fridge. It is a conversation you return to again and again, about truth, privacy, school, friendship, and God.
What would make it dishonest to use AI on this assignment?
Is this tool helping you learn, or helping you avoid learning?
Would you be comfortable if a parent, teacher, or priest saw what you typed here?
Does this make real friendship, prayer, reading, or silence easier or harder?
What source would help us check whether this answer is true?
Warning Signs
Slow down when the tool starts replacing life.
- A child wants to keep a chatbot relationship secret.
- Generated work is being submitted as personal work.
- AI is used for private spiritual, emotional, or family crises.
- The tool imitates a deceased loved one, saint, priest, or sacred authority.
- Screen use pushes out sleep, prayer, reading, chores, friendship, or Mass.
A Simple Home Policy
Say it plainly enough to live.
- We use AI as a tool, not as a companion, teacher of faith, or conscience.
- We disclose AI help when it affects schoolwork, writing, images, or public posts.
- We do not paste private family, health, spiritual, or school crisis details into AI tools.
- We check important answers with real sources and real people.
- We keep times and places in the home where no machine gets our attention.
Sources
Keep formation bigger than the feed.
Read these the way you would read a trusted teacher: they form your judgment, they do not replace it. Bring what you find here back to your pastor and your family.
Pope Leo XIV, World Communications Day 2026
A pastoral warning about false intimacy, simulated substitutes, and the need to protect human communication.
Open source ↗Antiqua et nova
The Vatican note on AI, human intelligence, dignity, moral responsibility, and the common good.
Open source ↗USCCB artificial intelligence
Bishops' resources on AI, ethics, human dignity, policy, education, and pastoral concern.
Open source ↗