Kids + Tech from Silicon Valley Insider Rachel Fuld Cohen EP 411

experiences involving AI. She's a mom of three and also just generally likes to talk about bringing best practices from the tech world into family life and kind of vice versa, bringing best practices from family life into the world of tech companies. So we'll talk a little bit about that and you know, unique ways that parents can make a good run of it in tech companies. So yeah, we talk about that, but we wanted to open this episode by talking a little bit about the tech that we

are currently using in our lives. Sarah actually created a lovely top ten list of the apps that apps that are on shoes top you know, home screen right now.

just be like devastated. And Laura's going to mention one of them, which I agree with, is probably my top app. But I'll let her talk about that one. But I don't know my top like ten apps. I need the weather app and some way of like monitoring for thunderstorms.

Fargo app for check depositing. What's App is a great kind of I really like it for I mean, it's not my choice, but for school it's definitely to go to app for classrooms and a bunch of activities. And what I mean by not my choice is like the teachers, the ones that make that choice. But I'm just so glad that, like regionally, what's Up seems to be what everyone uses and not like a social media app. Since

I don't really like going to social media. I have yet to be forced to join Facebook for some sort of activity. It's always WhatsApp, So that's great headspace for my meditation.

just like went to the site. But the other day I was like, I'm going to treat myself to a subscription, and then I got the app and it's been fun. And then finally maybe a controversial pick. I do like Life three sixty because then I can see where everybody is. It's actually my favorite use of it is not stalking my children, although that is helpful, but being able to not nag my husband because I'll be waiting for him and then I won't be able to know if he's

on his way. But this way I can tell if he's on his way, So actually, I guess it enables me to nag him if he hasn't left yet for something. That I know is going to make us late, but like, yeah, it's great Life three sixty, very helpful.

the one finding them, so but he'll report back. I would say, just like in general online ski I mean, whether that's through an app or just through their website, but something like restaurants, being able to look at multiple restaurants on open table and see availability is just so infinitely more efficient, like or your doctor has it, or even you know a app like ZocDoc if you're not you know, you're just trying to find somebody new and

you know, see who has availability. We use park Whiz when we drive into New York City, which again is also a game changer of finding a garage that the price differential is ridiculous. Like we parked in one where the base rate was twenty one dollars for the evening when we went in a couple weeks ago for Jasper's birthday, and literally one that was two blocks away was sixty

dollars for the same thing. And it's just like, you would have no transparency on this unless you like pulled in and asked, and by the time you're pulling in, you're probably not pulling out because it's kind of like a pain. And then to leave the garage once you're in it, you don't know if there's somewhere around this batter And now you do and you know you can get a spot. It's like just so much better than in the past. Map and traffic apps, oh my goodness,

not perfect either. But I was thinking about this the other night. I was coming home from a rehearsal. I was nine thirty at night. So normally I seventy six has horrible traffic during the day in Philadelphia, but rarely at nine thirty at night, Like you would be surprised to see traffic on I seventy six, So I would have normally just gone on it, but I happened to look at the traffic app and there was something ridiculous,

like something had happened. Who knows, like if they were repaving two out of three lanes or you know, there was an accident. I don't know, but it was completely stopped up, and so I went was rerooted around it, and I was like, wow, I would have just been sitting there like thirty forty five minutes on the highway when I'm just trying to get home at nine thirty at night. I'm really glad that this knowledge exists. I

have picture this. I will throw this out there. A blog reader suggested this when I was trying to identify a plant in my yard. It is paid, so if your botany desire does not rise to the level of being a budget item, then you probably don't want to avail yourself of this. But I love knowing exactly what the plant is. And I was using sk which was free, but it just like wasn't working that well. And this

picture this works really really well. So I've had like one where it didn't know and that may have been a lighting issue. So I'm going to throw that out there and I will say, Sarah, I love email.

have called you to reach you as well. So it allows people readers, listeners, viewers, whatever to find you and to send you feedback in a direct way. And I really enjoy that aspect. We love hearing from listeners, so please email me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. I would love to hear what you think are what your top apps are as well. So we'll go ahead and listen to what Rachel fold Cohen has to say. Well, Sarah and I are delighted to have Rachel fold Cohen

with us. So, Rachel, welcome to the show.

for the future of learning. And so it's been really cool to mix all those interests together. But what's been most interesting to me is seeing how I've learned from my whole tech experience and brought it into my parenting life. So I have three kids. They are how old are they today? They are six, nine, and ten, so nice and close together, and they teach me every day and hopefully I teach them and to dream to be sharing some of those learnings on this podcast.

advancing where they need to be. So that's definitely been a growing area.

So my first two kids are seventeen months apart. For those first seventeen months of my son's life, oh man, I gave him all the attention, like he wanted to bake with me, We bake, and I would teach him exactly how many teaspoons in a tablespoon, and he'd be pouring everything in and he'd spill and I would say, no problem, we'll clean it up, not a big deal.

And then, as life has it, my next came pretty close behind, and I was so quickly felt like I was just kind of moving her over to the side and being like, just don't get in the way of our baking. We have a special little thing we do every week, and you're gonna play with a toy on the floor. And eventually, of course she wouldn't have any of that. She wanted to be part of the fun baking activity, and so I was kind of meeting at

her level, and my oldest was getting bored. He knew that he used to get all of my attention and he was ready to learn more stuff. And I was going back to the tea spoon to tablespoon measurements. And then my third came along a few years later, and we were really lucky to have I'll just spell it out so it doesn't mess up everyone's home, but an al Exa in our home by that point in time, and so I could actually tell him what to be asking our AI assistant in our home, and they could

be explaining some of those answers. And this was my first real, like aha moment of differentiated learning in the household. How we can actually use these speakers that we all hate that they're listening to us all the time, but really in a way to meet our kids' needs at their own developmental stages. So baking to me was a great example of one. But we actually use AI in

the home for a lot of different things. So we'll use it for things like getting the weather or hearing sports scores, like really basic things that my kids want to know different pieces of and I don't know the answer, and honestly, I don't want to staring at screens. I don't want them looking at my phone. It's a quick way to get a piece of information and then talk about it as a family. So that's some like differentiated

learning examples. I can also share some kind of tactical like how I use AI, but that could be a separate one.

Some tech assistant might be better for that, at least in terms of patients. But what else are you guys using it for?

what I started doing a couple of years ago. Was just copying, pasting the lists into whatever AI or whatever LLLM it is that you use, and just asking you, like doing some prompt engineering to ask it to put it in different categories, you know, combine, like if each list has a pair of scissors, just put five scissors on one list, or really just creating one list. You can even tell it what type of story you're going to.

If you're going to like an art supply store and a supermarket, it'll put different lists for those different stories you're going to. If you're going to a place like Walmart, it could probably be all on one list, but you can kind of get it just to do some really specific tasks for you. I also love using it for travel planning specifically because as my kids age, even for day trips, there's such different needs. So we're actually going to a Kadia this summer, which I'm so looking forward to.

We did go four years ago, but my kids were really different ages. So I actually put in our itinerary from a few years ago, updated with my kids current ages, and said how would you adjust this and what would you add? And I was able to get a whole new itinerary to research. So it really like doing that really specific prompt engineering. And if you're not good at putting in an initial prompt, just really spending a few minutes chatting with the AI will get you some really

great outputs and honestly efficiencies. My trip planning now takes me an hour where it used to take me weeks, and I just really appreciate that time back.

question to get the output that you want. There are some amazing resources online, like prompt engineering guides. There's definitely one out there for travel, I'm sure we can find, but also for different scenarios, and a lot of the best practices are things like tell AI what you want it to be, so like the Great of the Star of a great prompt will usually include something like you are my travel planner for today. Here is what I

need you to do, and then something very specific. So you're giving the AI a job and then prompting it with what output you want, and that's usually the most effective way. So that's some basic guidelines. If you're just getting started thinking about something like prompt engineering, do.

but I'm going to say game AI search. Whereas like in order to game Google search, there's like SEO right search engine optimization, and websites were super focused on their search visibility. People haven't figured out how to quote unquote game AI search. What that means is that when you today, like as of mid twenty twenty five, AI search kind

of pull some random stuff in there. So what I wouldn't necessarily recommend to say, like what summer camp should I send my kid to in this area, because it might actually pull a super niche camp that maybe isn't even so close. But if you ask a bit more broad question, it'll give you a starting off point. But follow this space, AI search is going to be really well defined in companies are going to learn how to be found on it.

I feel like you have a slightly different take on this. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

And I think actually the narrative maybe serves to do a disservice to parents because it just this reminds everyone of all the juggling that we're doing all the time, which real talk, we absolutely are. But what I think is that the best parent caregiver employees that I've worked with that I see on a daily basis are folks who are naturally good at doing more with less. They are naturally good at finding tools, at finding people, at finding solutions that help them maximize their time at home

and maximize their time at work. And when you see it done well, it's really skillful. Not to say that I don't feel guilty on the weeks that my kids are all from school and I'm juggling everything and things feel like they're falling. It doesn't mean it feels perfect or good all the time, but I actually think a lot of parents are just very naturally good at doing more with less and delegating. My kids call my delegating chores. I call it making them responsible humans who can take

on household responsibilities. And honestly, same with my staff. I mean my staff, many of them are parents are incredible at cross supporting each other doing more with less. Like I mean, I think AI is such an obvious way that everyone can do more with less. But even before that, there are so many tools that I think the best

workers just use because it makes their life easier. And so I do think, yes, we are all good at juggling a lot, but we're juggling fewer balls because we can use the tools and we can delegate, and I just like love seeing parents and caregivers in the workforce route at it.

weekly dinner, sweeping a couple times a week. And then we actually got a dog about a year ago now, which is a new edition. We have a whole other conversation about that, but that came with walking the dog responsibilities as well, which is great because usually the dog needs a walk when they get home from school, and my partner and I are both still working and so they can kind of take on that responsibility and allows me to continue to be doing what I need to do at work.

daily basis because they are close by. And then I think one of the biggest transitions for me over the past year, so they'll my kids will come home from school, they do screen there and aftercare and then they do screens for an hour so that's their like TV time,

so we can wrap up work. I know lots of opinions on different screen time, but that works so well for my family, and then one of us we split down, coming right when they're done with screens to make sure dinner is ready, and then we're both pretty much around for the bedtime routine most nights. The biggest transition for me, Lauren, I think this is what you were alluding to, is

my kids used to go to sleep earlier. So any other parents of like kind of going into the preteen years, all of a sudden they care about like watching sports games, they're bedtimes or eight fifteen and eight thirty. But somehow

we've been like very flexible these days with that. And for me, what that has meant is for years I had two hours between work and when I would like go back to work, which I didn't always have to do, but certainly being a founder right now, I am going back to work most nights, and that two hour block was pretty well defined, so I'd hyper focus on my family and then go back to work and hyper focus there, and that delineation has just gotten a little bit fuzzy.

I felt so uncomfortable going back to work with my kids awake, and so one thing I've started doing is that first hour I'm usually back to work like eight to nine pm. I actually do it on the couch, and my ten year old loves looking over my shoulder. And at first I felt guilty about that. Why am I working and he's watching me. Now he's going to

think that work is more of a priority. But I actually realized it was like pair programming, like I see our engineers doing all the time, like working together or kind of job shadowing. And now I really love answering his questions. I was actually on Canva the other night designing some social media posts and he had some really good input because, like spoiler alert, ten year old is better at create designing stuff than I am. And so it's actually been this really great experience that we've been

able to add into our routine. But then at eight thirty, I'm like, all right, kid, go to bed.

There's a couple of mornings a week what we'll do cooking, and so a lot of times they'll help, like this morning, actually did some baking with our AI assistant because they were all up in there with the flower at seven o'clock in the morning, and so we'll do that and then we are out the door by seven fifty five, and so pretty much like the morning's run pretty smoothly at this point that they're a little bit older, they're

getting themselves dressed and things like that. But we will have like a couple of activities sometimes we even do in the morning, and I very much rely on them to like figure those things out themselves or I'll guide them towards learning on their own. And that's been really cool, awesome.

your kids use it a lot at school. I'm curious how you think about tech guidelines for your children, what they are allowed to do, what they are allowed to see, what they have access to, and how you envision that changing over the next few years.

clear boundaries and works for our family life. But things I'll never compromise on is safety, and so things that are out there like YouTube kids and parental controls have been a huge part of the past few years of setting those up as our kids get bigger and realize that they know how to search on YouTube if we let them, so really setting up strict parental controls and device access so like no devices ever go to the room.

Screen time is always done in public, there's a parent sitting around whenever there's a kid on a screen, they'll never be alone. Those are things that are like pretty firm rules. And our kids' school does have an option to be part of a wait until eight packed in terms of cell phones, and so that's been really helpful.

I actually have said to a number of friends recently, like I feel like I'm in this like sweet spot of my kids are like old enough to be self sufficient, but young enough to that they don't have devices, and so it's like this, I'm not yet fighting the phone battle, and they know that they're not getting one until eighth grade, but they're old enough to get themselves dressed. So it's like a wonderful in between moment. But those are some like the guidelines that said things are changing so fast.

So for example, like one of my kids loves gaming, so we don't let him play any games where there's like outside chat or anything like that, and he's pushing back on it a little bit, and so it is honestly something that I need to research. I was not a gamer, so I'm not as familiar with like the limitations and safety there, but it's something that I find

myself just researching more and more. And by the way, that's Another great use case for AI is like researching things like this, I'll always then click on the source the sources. So right now, basically any LM you use will have a source that you can click on, which it didn't used to have, So you want to make sure that there's like actual sources there. But it's a great use case for like understanding a safety landscape.

but it could also go the other ways. So time will tell, time.

right where you are. Do I prefer reading books that are on paper, of course I do, but you could give up a lot of that nicer experience in order to have the immediacy. It's been really helpful lately. I've had a few people I've needed to talk to that I was like, I didn't you know, I wanted to at least glance through their book before I talked to them, and I could because it was right there, you know, in the hour before you chat. So I'm thinking, so Kindle app is a big one for me. How about you?

But lately I've just been instant coffee in the morning and it gets me like right into my morning mix, the morning routine we talked about, and honestly, I think makes me like a better parent and a better like extra coffee between zoom meetings, and so I'm just really appreciating instant coffee these days. And for like basic innovations.

playing with friends is great. Actually, yes, I guess we do mostly just to encourage reading, because it's harder to fit in reading during the school year. Different kids have various enjoyment levels out of reading. But I find it's an activity where if the more they do it, the more they seem to like to do it. And so this year we've actually kind of discussed having some monetary rewards for reading. We have not entirely fleshed out our structure,

but the kids are into the idea. I just need to figure out how to implement it in a way that isn't totally unfair or silly. For example, some of the books that Genevieve reads might take fifteen minutes, and I don't need her getting some massive reward versus a kid that a book that a big kid might read could take a couple of weeks.

different parts of knowledge. Like, for instance, Ruth will be in a theater camp for two weeks, and so she'll have to memorize lines and songs and work on choreography, and that's just a different skill than what you'd normally be doing during the year. Unless you're doing the school play or something I guess, or going to sleep away camp.

That's going to be different skills, but you're still going to be learning things with sailing or horseback riding or pitching a tent to various different things that kids are learning learning as part of that. Josh ber will be at a vocal camp for a while, so he'll be learning music as part of that. Sam is actually taking two online courses this summer to get credit for that for not having to have it in his schedule next year, So he will be entirely taken care of on the

academic front. And I believe Alex will likely have a required math component this summer because the way they do it, they then have kids skip fifth grade math and start in sixth grade math in fifth grade and so then you have to do it over the summer to get into it in the fall. Anyway, so he will have that. Beyond that, I don't know, I would like them to read. I think we're going to try to have some sort

of still enforced non screen time at night. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but that is with the time when the younger kids at least will be looking at books. I mean, this is really like Alex and Ruth. I'm going to be thinking about this with I'd like Henry to learn to read. Maybe that'll be the summer project. I don't know, you never know.

a little incident where somebody gave him mountain dew. I don't know what happened, and I was spelling out that he was not to be given mountain dew ever again, and I was saying, we're not going to purchase moun Tai and he's like, but I like Mountain Dew, and I'm like, yes, that's so funny.

is familiar. I knew which manicure color that Karen was gonna pick. I was like, oh, yeah, the light purple nail polish. Then she picks like it is so fun to revisit that, and she loves it, so it's still the.

and World War Two. And the Viking is another various like Little Boy exciting things Alexander the Great, but in these little nuggets of anecdotes, so they keep you reading, and so throw those out there too. I wish I had the name in front of me right now, but I don't.