AI Fundamentals · for parents

Your kids are already using AI. You haven't learned it yet.

Learn to use AI as a thinking partner on your own real life, so you can guide your kids through it too. No setup, no experience needed.

Learn + Protect
9 in 10
kids ages 9 to 17 have used generative AI
Common Sense Media Census, 2026
84%
of high schoolers used AI for schoolwork (May 2025)
College Board, 2025
82%
of teachers get no formal guidance on using AI
Gallup & Walton Family Foundation, 2026

The same tool can make you smarter, or do your thinking for you.

Used well, AI leaves you more capable: you work through a problem and come out understanding more. Used the wrong way, it leaves you more dependent, reaching for it the moment thinking gets hard. That goes for you, and it goes double for your kids, who are using it with no one to show them the difference.

It sounds exactly as sure of itself when it's wrong as when it's right. The clearest way to see it: AI is a brilliant junior intern. It has read more than anyone you know and answers instantly, but it has no judgment and it's eager to please. A trained adult can push back and catch it when it's confidently wrong. A kid takes the first answer, because it sounds like it knows.

You can't fix this by banning it, and a monitoring app won't help, because those control what a kid can open, not whether they can judge what it tells them. The gap isn't access. It's judgment, and judgment has to be taught. Which means the person who has to teach them is you.

The free lesson

The first lesson is free. Here's what it's actually like.

Pick a decision you keep going back and forth on. Whether to switch your daughter's school, or let your son quit the team. Instead of handing you an answer, it works with you to find the real question.

You: I can't decide whether to let my son quit his team.
It: Is the worry that he'd regret quitting, or that quitting itself feels like giving up?
You: Giving up, I guess.
It: On the team, or on something he started? Those aren't the same thing.

A few questions in, you're not deciding about a team anymore. You're deciding what you want him to learn about finishing what he starts. That's the difference between a quick answer and real help.

Who's teaching you
Ben Gillenwater, Family IT Guy

Ben spent thirty years in computer security. He was Chief Technologist, the senior-most IT expert, inside a Northrop Grumman division that delivered $10 billion in IT services. He then built his own software companies, and has worked hands-on with AI for the past two years. That career taught him to spot risks early. When he became a parent, he saw his own son about to grow up with AI and no one around him who understood it well enough to guide him. That's why he built this masterclass.

What's inside

Eight lessons. The first seven make you capable. The eighth is where you guide your kids.

Your kids aren't going to stop using AI. The only way to guide them is to get good at it yourself first, because you can't teach what you've never done.

1

Experience having a thinking partner free

Bring a real decision of your own, and instead of an answer, it works the decision through with you.

2

Know why it worked, and do it on purpose

Name what just happened so you can repeat it anytime and put it in words your kids will get.

3

Make your own AI work this way

One setting, changed once, so the AI your whole family uses works like a thinking partner.

4

Check what it tells you before you act

Stay the judge and verify what matters. The one habit you most need to pass to your kids.

5

Decide what AI never gets to see

What's safe to share and what isn't, so your family's private life stays private.

6

Stay in charge of your own thinking

Come out of every session sharper instead of letting AI think for you.

7

Learn anything you've wanted to understand

Turn AI into a patient tutor, then do it next to your kids on something they care about.

8

Teach your kids to use it well

The reason you're here. Real rules, the right age for each kid, and a first session you guide.

Launching August 2026

Join the waitlist.

$149

When it opens in August, the full masterclass is $149, one time. No subscription, no upsells, yours to keep.

Go through it, and if it doesn't deliver, you get your money back.