Parenting mistakes often become life’s greatest lessons

LZ Granderson, Tribune News Service

I had dinner with my son recently, and as tends to happen with us, we started talking about Quentin Tarantino's two-part masterpiece, "Kill Bill." 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 "The Whole Bloody Affair" — which presents a version of the two parts in one screening — 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 "too young." But he remembers and loves the story to this day. And apparently early exposure to Tarantino didn't screw him up.

Mistakes, am I right? Sometimes they end up being the best part of being a parent. Of course, you don't know that when your kids are young. So in that way, I don't 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. "I do, I mean, I kind of feel bad about it," Altman said on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." "I cannot imagine having gone through, like, figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT." Days after his late-night appearance, Disney announced a $1 billion, three-year partnership with OpenAI that allows the company's Sora system to use Disney characters — so perhaps Altman's 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 "mistakes," such as, I don't know ... letting a 9-year-old watch Uma Thurman kill everything in front of her for five hours. Parenting's a winding road. There are no guardrails, but there are plenty of potholes.

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 — like how-to books, YouTube videos and unsolicited advice from strangers. Like me. Wanting to avoid mistakes is natural, but it's been my experience that true growth is born out of the things you did "wrong." No one bats a thousand, and often "mistakes" become fodder for bonding decades later. In time you'll gain new appreciation for the depth of humility and grace required to raise a human being.

It's in seeing yourself and your child work through a difficult moment — especially when you disappoint them, especially when they get some early practice in how to forgive — that you become aware of a universal truth about parenting: There are no mistakes. There are only choices.

It's not nearly as cryptic as it sounds. In fact, it's quite freeing. Fear of making a mistake makes perfection the goal, when in fact there's no perfect way to parent. ChatGPT and similar tools can give you crowdsourced answers to questions — and you'll have plenty of them, whether it's "How much tummy time should my 3-month-old get every day?" or "How can I get my tween to fall asleep before 11pm?" But even the best answers cannot offer perfection. Nothing can.

Once I accepted that frailty, that vulnerability, is inherent to the process of raising a child, parenting became a meditation in forgiveness — mostly forgiving myself. This is true whether you use AI or not. Even on the OpenAI site there's a header that reads: "ChatGPT can be helpful — but it's not always right."

I'm sure Altman has seen it. "I have relied on it so much," he told Fallon. "I mean, it's obviously the most important thing to happen in my life, so it's top of mind, and I use it all the time." I must admit, it's kind of awesome to see someone of Altman's wealth and intellect be humbled by something parents have been doing since the beginning of time: making “mistakes.”