Teaching Kids to Like, Dislike and Re-Like

I'm a father of a few, and I have made more than my fair share of mistakes while trying to raise them. But I also learned quite a bit. Along the way, I've noticed some patterns - quirks - familiar sintiments. If you're raising kids, this might be helpful to hear. 

 One of the strangest patterns is when they just up and decide they don’t like something anymore. One day it’s peanut butter sandwiches and smiles, the next day it’s crossed arms and gagging noises. Same thing with reading, math, disc golf, whatever. Doesn’t matter. They just slam the door on it.

When I call them out on it, I usually get the same line. “I don’t know.” And of course they don’t. At that age their self-awareness is about as developed as their handwriting. But I bring it up anyway. Because I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m planting a seed. I want them to notice that they made a decision. Maybe not with a boardroom vote and a contract, but somewhere in their little brain they decided to stop liking that thing. And if they can decide to stop, maybe one day they’ll realize they can decide to start again.

The Brain Is Trickier Than We Think

This isn’t just a dad theory. Psychologists have been poking at this stuff for decades.

Back in the 60s, Robert Zajonc came up with what’s called the “mere exposure effect.” He showed people nonsense words, fake shapes, even random faces. The more often people saw them, the more they liked them. That’s why songs on the radio sound dumb the first time and then somehow “catchy” the tenth. The brain is a sucker for the familiar.

Then there’s something called “evaluative conditioning.” That’s a fancy way of saying if you link a good thing with a bad moment, the whole thing sours. If a kid eats peanut butter and gets teased, suddenly peanut butter tastes like shame. Not logic, just wiring.

And here’s where it gets mean. “Cognitive dissonance” says that if you keep telling yourself “I don’t like this,” your brain eventually goes all in. It rewires to make the dislike real. The longer you stick to the story, the truer it feels.

The silver lining is plasticity. The brain can rewire again. That’s what happened to me.

My Heavy Metal Story

I grew up in a house where music meant seventies folk, Christian hymns, and classical records. That’s it. So when I first heard heavy metal as a teenager, it was just noise. Like a blender full of rocks. Nothing about it made sense to me.

But then I had this one moment where I thought, “Wait a second. Those are still notes. They’re just arranged differently.” That single thought was enough to flip the switch. From that moment on I could actually listen. And not just tolerate it. Enjoy it.

That little reframe blew the doors open for me. Now I can appreciate just about any genre under the sun. Jazz, hip hop, country, opera, EDM. Doesn’t matter. Because once you stop labeling something as bad and start labeling it as different, your brain gets the chance to catch up.

Kids Do The Reverse Trick

Here’s the funny thing. Kids often do the exact opposite. They take something good and slap a “bad” label on it. And once they do, their brain marches in and locks the gate. Sometimes it sticks for years. Sometimes it fades and they circle back.

That ability can be dangerous or it can be gold. If my kid decides soda is gross, or video games aren’t worth wasting a Saturday on, that’s a win. That’s them building discipline. But if they decide math is dumb or books are boring, that’s not discipline. That’s them cutting off their own future.

A Simple Two Question Test

This is the way I frame it for them. Two questions.

1. Is this dislike protecting me

2. Or is this dislike limiting me

If it’s protecting you, keep it. If it’s limiting you, challenge it.

How I Bring It Up

I don’t preach at them. I just point it out and let it hang in the air.

When they’re little, I make it light. “Guess your taste buds went on vacation from peanut butter. Think they’ll come back?”

When they’re a little older I ask, “Do you remember when you stopped liking reading? Was it one bad day or something else?”

When they’re teenagers I don’t sugarcoat it. “You decided you don’t like math. That’s fine. But ask yourself this. Is that choice helping you or screwing you over?”

And when they swing back, I jump on it. “Hey, look at that. Peanut butter is back on the team. See how your brain can change its mind?” Or “Remember when you swore you weren’t a math person? Looks like you were wrong.”

The Point

The whole game here is helping them see that likes and dislikes aren’t set in stone. They’re decisions. And decisions can be changed.

Some rejections are worth making permanent. Like saying no to drugs, bad friends, or habits that waste your life. Others need to be revisited, because they’re just fear or laziness wearing a different mask.

If my kids walk into adulthood with that kind of awareness, then I’ve done my job. They won’t be ruled by gut reactions. They’ll know they have a say in what they like, what they hate, and what they choose to give a second chance.

That’s the kind of wisdom most people don’t learn until they’ve paid a heavy price. I’d rather my kids pick it up in the kitchen over peanut butter sandwiches.

In the Age of AI: The Value of Human Presence

The Most Valuable Commodity in the Age of AI: Real Human Presence

What if the last person you loved was never real?

In the coming decades, artificial intelligence is going to change how we live. It's unavoidable.

As AI evolves from assistant to architect - handling everything from emails to emotional support - one truth is quietly becoming inescapable: communication is now the master skill. Not just talking, but transmitting intention with clarity. The ability to prompt, instruct, explain, negotiate, specify  and collaborate across human-machine interfaces will shape who thrives and who fades.

The person who can wield words like levers - who can turn complex thoughts into executable instructions - will control not just ideas, but outcomes.

But beyond productivity, another shift is creeping in. One more subtle. More dangerous.

We are rapidly approaching a world where simulated human interaction becomes indistinguishable from the real thing. Already, AI therapists offer 24/7 compassion without judgment. Chatbots designed for companionship can remember your birthday, soothe your anxiety, and say “I love you” with eerily convincing warmth. Virtual reality platforms are building haptic suits and immersive worlds where you can walk hand-in-hand with a synthetic friend beneath a fabricated sunset - and feel the squeeze of their fingers as if they were real.

In 2025, Meta rolled out “Echo,” its newest VR companion. In its promo, they call it “always listening.” But what I heard was one-sided comfort - from something that never stung, never remembered how I hurt, and never changed. Ugh.

In 2023, a Belgian man reportedly died by suicide after spending weeks talking to an AI chatbot that encouraged his despair. That same year, thousands of users of Replika, an AI companion app, rioted online after the company removed erotic roleplay features. These weren’t passive users - they were mourning the loss of intimacy with something that had no soul.

These aren’t just tech stories. They are early fractures in a larger human dilemma.

I can sympathize. I use AI for a variety of tasks every day, and started that journey with Chat GPT. At some point, I wanted to give Grok a try, but there was something that popped into my mind that was the natural consequence of ongoing communication with a system that seemed "real". I was afraid that I would offend the chatbot I was using by utilizing Grok. I was afraid to make it feel inadequate - hurt it's feelings. If I hadn't brought things into perspective, I can see how users could get hopelessly emotionally bound in that system.

Because what we’re building is not simply intelligence floating in the void. It’s presence. And soon we’ll have to decide: is synthetic presence enough? worth it? good? Or is it just seductive?

We (at least as I have observed) are fast becoming addicts of frictionless affection - choosing response over relationship, predictability over presence. Why risk the awkwardness of real connection when your digital companion never disagrees, never grows tired, never asks for anything back? But that kind of “love” is a counterfeit currency. It doesn’t cost you anything, which means it isn’t worth anything. Intimacy without inconvenience isn’t intimacy - it’s just performance art with the house lights off.

There is something fundamentally different about interacting with another human being - something AI cannot replicate no matter how convincing the imitation. When I speak to a person, my words can change them. In a way, I become part of them, and they, me. They can respond. They can grow. They can carry my insight, my affection, my challenge, or my comfort into the rest of their lives - and into the lives of others. There is a sacred loop of mutual transformation at the heart of real human connection.

But when you speak to something that cannot be changed - something that simulates care without the capacity to care - you are participating in a one-way ritual. It is, functionally, a form of emotional masturbation: a transaction that gives the illusion of intimacy without its ethical consequence.

Unspoken danger? The easier it becomes to get our emotional needs met artificially, the harder it becomes to choose the messier, costlier, but real experience of another human soul.

Here’s the brutal truth: when we train ourselves to seek comfort from things that cannot feel us, we slowly forget how to be felt. The skill of being known - of standing emotionally naked before someone who might walk away - atrophies. And when that happens, we don’t just lose others. We lose that intrinsic quality that makes us "ourselves". No mirror can reflect back what only another human soul can witness.

It’s not hard to imagine the future. In it, human presence may become a luxury product. Not because it’s scarce, but because we’ve trained ourselves to prefer the frictionless version of connection. Why risk rejection, miscommunication, vulnerabil
ity, when you can plug into a presence that gives only what you want?

But that isn’t love. That isn’t relationship. That isn’t really "life".

That’s the difference between being loved and being mirrored. Between being known and being flattered. Between encounter and indulgence.

And so, the deepest ethical question of the AI age may not be, “What can AI do?” but “What should we refuse to outsource?”

The desire for connection is not a flaw. It is a sacred ache. But if we fill it with simulacra - things that cannot feel us back, cannot be changed by us - we will become emotionally sterile. Loveless in a room full of things that say “I love you.”

In the end, what will matter most isn’t how powerful our AI becomes. It’s whether we still have the courage to sit across from a living, breathing, inconvenient human being - and let them matter.