Why We Don’t Recommend AI Toys That Replace Parent-Child Interaction

Caveat - We have now had a couple of parents and caregivers ask us about toddlers and the use of AI toys. Here are our thoughts on this!

In today’s fast-moving world, it’s easy to see why some parents and caregivers might turn to AI-powered devices and toys to help manage the daily demands of raising a young child. A talking teddy bear that reads bedtime stories. A voice assistant that answers your toddler’s endless stream of “why” questions. These tools promise convenience, but they come with a significant cost, especially during the early years when your child’s brain is undergoing its most important development.

We want to be clear on this issue, using technology to support parenting can be helpful. But using it to replace meaningful moments, like a bedtime story, crosses a line that can impact your child’s emotional and social growth in ways you may not realize.

Infant and toddler brains, given their plasticity, are still under construction. They’re building what paediatricians call the “scaffolding” for empathy, trust, and secure attachment. These foundational structures don’t come from screens or synthetic voices. They come from you which includes your voice, your touch, your facial expressions, and the consistency of your presence.

When you sit beside your child and read to them, you’re doing more than just sharing a story, you’re actively helping to shape their emotional and cognitive development in meaningful ways.

Reading aloud teaches your child how language works by exposing them to the natural rhythm, tone, accent, and pacing of spoken words. The ups and downs of your voice help them begin to recognize how sentences flow, how questions differ from statements, and how emotion can be conveyed through tone. For example, the excitement in your voice during an adventure scene or the soft lull of a bedtime book teaches them how language carries meaning beyond the words on the page.

Your physical presence also matters and being close to your child while reading , can make them feel safe and soothed. The act of cuddling up with a parent or caregiver provides comfort, stability, and a sense of security. This closeness helps young children associate reading with positive feelings, laying the groundwork for a lifelong love of books.

As you read to your child, they watch your face and hears your reactions. These moments are powerful for building emotional understanding. When you laugh at something funny or gasp at a surprise, your child learns to link facial expressions and emotional tone with story events. Over time, this supports their ability to recognize and interpret emotions in others, a key part of developing empathy.

Real-world interaction during reading helps children develop attention skills and memory. Turning pages, pointing at pictures, asking questions, and answering theirs all demand focus and mental engagement. These back-and-forth interactions support the development of working memory and attention span far more effectively than passive exposure to screens or recorded audio ever could.

AI can’t replicate this. A soft toy that reads a story might seem harmless, or even educational, but it lacks the emotional resonance that a toddler craves. It doesn’t love, it doesn’t bond, and it doesn’t respond to subtle emotional cues the way a human parent or caregiver does.

Infants and toddlers need dependable, loving interactions with real people to build a sense of security. Secure attachment forms through consistent responses to their cues, comforting touch, eye contact, and soothing voices. When these vital moments are outsourced to a machine, such as a talking stuffed animal or AI story-reader, children may miss the chance to develop the kind of trust that comes from knowing a caregiver will respond to them reliably and warmly. For example, when a toddler brings you a book and you read it together, they not only hear the story but also feel your presence, which reinforces their sense of being valued and loved.

Social-emotional skills like empathy aren’t learned by watching a screen or listening to a synthesized voice. They’re built through real-world interactions like seeing a parent’s smile, hearing genuine concern in a caregiver’s voice, and learning how conversations flow through give-and-take communication. No algorithm can truly replicate those exchanges. If a young child regularly hears a robot voice read a bedtime story instead of a parent reacting with emotion, facial expressions, and touch, they’re missing out on the cues that help them understand and relate to others.

As children become more accustomed to interacting with AI, there's also a risk of emotional displacement. They might start forming attachments to devices in ways that imitate real human connection. For example, a child who repeatedly turns to an AI toy for comfort may begin to see that device as a source of emotional support, even though it can’t reciprocate or truly understand them. This blurring of lines between real and artificial relationships can be confusing, especially as children grow older and start to build more complex social connections. The longer these patterns go unchecked, the harder it may be for a child to distinguish between meaningful human relationships and artificial stand-ins.

As most of our follower know, we’re not anti-tech. Far from it. Used intentionally and with care, technology can support parenting. Maybe you use a white noise machine to help your baby sleep, or a screen to video call grandparents. Those are tools. But when technology starts replacing the essential human-to-human moments that shape your child’s emotional core, we need to step back.

A teddy bear that reads stories may be cute, but it doesn’t replace your presence. It doesn’t laugh when your child mispronounces a word, it doesn’t stop to answer questions, and it doesn’t hug them goodnight.

We understand, life is busy, you're exhausted, and parenting can be overwhelming at times. But you don’t need an AI teddy bear to step in for you. You need permission to skip the story one night and snuggle in silence. That’s still real human connection, and that is definitely ok.

When it comes to raising emotionally resilient and socially aware children, nothing compares to you as the parent or caregiver. The human connection you provide matters more than even the most advanced AI toy available today or in the future. 

Digital Food For Thought

The White Hatter

Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech