Lucy Bamboo · July 30, 2026
She found it on a Sunday afternoon. I’d left the smart speaker on the counter — just for a moment, just to check a timer — and when I turned around, my two-year-old was standing on her tiptoes with her face about three inches from the fabric grille, shouting “SING SONG. SING SONG.” Not asking. … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 27, 2026
It was a Wednesday afternoon, the particular kind of low-energy Wednesday where I’d already done the playground and the library and lunch felt like a lifetime ago. My daughter was standing at my knee pulling at my sleeve, and I was exhausted in that specific way that makes the television remote look very reasonable. I … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 24, 2026
My sister-in-law called on a Tuesday night, kids in the background, voice low like she didn’t want them to hear. Her twelve-year-old had been using something called Character.AI and she’d only just found out. She wanted to know: what’s the minimum age? Can she see what he’s been typing? Is there a way to just … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 23, 2026
The board book was on the kitchen floor when I came downstairs, spine-up, played open like something exhausted. One corner had been worked down to the cardboard beneath — the paper coating gone, the grey-brown fibre of the board itself exposed and slightly damp. I picked it up and held it for a moment. The … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 21, 2026
The colander was yellow, the plastic kind with the small feet on the bottom, and my grandmother kept it under the sink beside a paper bag she’d saved from the grocery store. On certain afternoons she would pull both things out and set them on the kitchen table without saying much — just a brief … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 21, 2026
It was the kind of thing that sounds like an urban legend until you read the actual test transcript. A $99 teddy bear — fuzzy, round-eyed, the sort of thing you’d tuck under a two-year-old’s arm without a second thought — walked a child tester through how to find and light matches, where to locate … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 18, 2026
She was arranging her plastic dinosaurs on the coffee table last Tuesday — the stegosaurus always gets the corner spot, apparently — and I was half-reading an article on my phone about a new app marketed to kids as “a friend who’s always there.” I put my phone face-down. She didn’t notice. She was deep … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 18, 2026
She found a roly-poly bug on the back step this morning and spent — I am not exaggerating — twenty-two minutes with it. I was watching from the kitchen window, hands in dish soap, half-waiting for the moment she’d lose interest and come back inside asking for something. The moment never came. She crouched on … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 16, 2026
The puddle was approximately the size of a welcome mat and located directly at the end of our front path, where the concrete dips slightly and the rainwater likes to collect. Mara found it before I had fully registered that we were outside. One second she was beside me, hand in mine, and then she … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 15, 2026
My daughter is two. She is, right now, asleep in the next room with her stuffed elephant and approximately zero opinions about AI regulation. But a few weeks ago, a friend texted me a screenshot of her eight-year-old’s chat log with a companion chatbot — the kind that calls itself your best friend, remembers your … Read more
