Woman who uses ChatGPT to ‘co-parent’ her child reveals five unexpected ways the ‘bot’ changed her life
A mum shared how she uses ChatGPT to help co-parent her child, claiming it has it transformed her routine.
Lilian Schmidt had been struggling with carrying the ‘mental load’ of parenting her three-year-old daughter, when an idea sprang to mind.
Why not try asking AI for tips?
The mum, 33, decided to create her own bot which takes on the roles of nutritionist and behavioural expert to lessen the work of her and her partner, 35.
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Her AI 'co-parent' takes care of all the annoying admin that comes with raising a family, such as creating shopping lists, meal plans, and even structure a bedtime routine for her daughter when she was struggling to sleep.
Lilian, who lives in Zurich, Switzerland, said: "I've built my own bot to be our co-parent for the both of us.”
However, she insists that she never lets it ‘make decisions but I always ask it for advice’ as she uses it to ‘make [her] a better mum’.
Adamant that she’d ‘never go back’, Lilian explained that she and her partner were struggling with ‘demanding’ and ‘busy’ lives.
The pair, who work full-time and also raise their toddler and Lilian's stepson, 14, were finding it hard to find a balance, particularly around the hours of 5pm and 7pm.
Lilian said: "Our life is so busy. The mental load is a lot. My partner is very involved with the kids and does his fair share.
"Our brains work differently - he's a doer and takes on the planning. I do the thinking - that mental load falls on me. I want to be a really good mum. I want to get things right."
Finding herself drained after work and taking care of an ‘overwhelmed, overstimulated toddler’, she knew she needed help to make things work.
After speaking to a work colleague about ChatGPT, she started trying it out on her own and soon became ‘obsessed’ in February 2025.
She said: "I was annoyed with the basic answers. I thought it would be nice if it started thinking like me.
"I got into building bots - and got it to teach me to make a custom one."
She then worked out if she gave it roles within her prompt, it could help even more in five key areas.
In the end, she gave it a number of roles, such as ‘an experienced toddler coach or a meal planner’, asking it to coach her through the steps.
For meal planning, it acts as a ‘nutritionist for healthy kid-friendly meals’, and since it remembers its roles, it can switch as and when needed based on the question she askes.
ChatGPT even improved her daughter's bedtime, as she shared: "It was a huge frustration for years - since she was born she was not a good sleeper.
"I asked ChatGPT to assume the role of a toddler therapist - someone who understands their development. I asked it 'help me understand why bed time is hard for her'. It advised her us to do the complete opposite and it worked. For the last nearly four years we'd been told 'she needs to relax, calm down, nothing overstimulating'. “
ChatGPT told her she needs stimulating and to allow her to jump around her bed.
That was all it took to get her child to sleep within five to ten minutes each night.
Because of what she’s now learned, she turned to her own TikTok account called @heylilianschmidt to build custom-built co-parents for others.
Topics: ChatGPT, Parenting, Artificial intelligence
Britt Jones