When AI Helped Me See My Daughter Through Different Eyes

How a fictional teenager named Maya changed the way I think about parenting, disability, and empathy.

TL;DR (Because Life’s Busy)

I created an AI empathy generator that uses a fictional character to help you understand what life might feel like from someone else’s perspective. It helped me see my daughter’s struggles in a completely different light, question some of my own assumptions, and reconnect with her in ways I hadn’t expected.

In a rush? Got shit to do?

Skip my rather lengthy emotional info dump and go straight to the good stuff.

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For everyone else, grab a coffee. I’ve got a story to tell.

How do you know when your child needs a push, and when pushing is the very thing that’s hurting them?

I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately. The last few weeks have been particularly difficult for my daughter and me as we’ve navigated emotionally based school avoidance, chronic illness, anxiety, and the seemingly endless challenges that come with being neurodivergent in a world that wasn’t designed with you in mind. And through it all, there’s this constant, nagging doubt about whether I’m doing the right thing.

Because here’s the thing. Most of us were raised with a pretty traditional understanding of parenting. We set boundaries, establish expectations, teach responsibility, encourage independence, and sometimes push our kids to do things they don’t necessarily want to do.

But what happens when your child isn’t like other kids. What happens when they have disabilities, or a mental health condition, or a chronic condition…or…as many can relate, all three at once?

Suddenly, the parenting playbook you’ve spent your entire life learning doesn’t seem to apply anymore. And you’re left trying to figure it out as you go, often feeling like you’re working blind.

• Do I encourage her to push through and attend school, or does she genuinely need time to recover?
• Is this anxiety, autistic burnout, chronic illness, or just regular teenage resistance?
• If I back off, am I accommodating her disabilities or inadvertently reinforcing avoidance?
• If I push, am I helping her develop coping skills and independence, or am I making things worse?

The problem is, there isn’t always a good answer. And the consequences of getting it wrong can feel enormous.

Meanwhile, you’re watching your child struggle. You watch them disengage from school, withdraw from activities, and sometimes seem to shrink away from the world around them. You worry about their happiness, their friendships, their mental health, and whether they’ll have the independence, connection, and opportunities you’ve always dreamed of for them.

And because you’re a parent, you want to fix it. So sometimes you push, even when you’re not entirely sure you should. And then comes the guilt.

For me, those weeks had become overwhelming. Between advocating at school, communicating with teachers, coordinating healthcare, navigating appointments, helping my daughter regulate her emotions, filling out forms, and trying to earn a living, I was exhausted.I could feel those dark tendrils of depression seeping into my brain, numbing me to everything and everyone. Worse, I’d begun to dread the mornings because I never knew what challenges the day might bring.

What made it harder was the feeling that I was navigating much of it alone. Not because there weren’t people who cared, but because even well-meaning friends, family members, and professionals don’t always understand the complexities of raising a child with multiple, overlapping conditions.

And when you’re already questioning every decision you make, outside judgments about boundaries, discipline, or school attendance can really eat away at your confidence.

I knew a great deal about my daughter’s individual diagnoses. I’d spent years researching, advocating, asking questions, and trying to understand her experiences. But I was so deeply immersed in managing the day-to-day challenges that I’d lost something important: the ability to step outside the situation and see the whole picture.

And then, one evening, something unexpected happened.

I took something I’d learned through studying marketing — the concept of creating a fictional user persona — and combined it with everything I’d learned about neurodivergence, disability, and my daughter’s experiences. I used ChatGPT to create a fictional 15-year-old girl named Maya, whose diagnoses, strengths, challenges, and family circumstances closely resembled my daughter’s.

And I wasn’t prepared for what happened when I read her story.

Meet Maya: A Fictional Persona Built with ChatGPT

For those unfamiliar with the term, a user persona is a fictional character created to represent a particular group of people. It’s something commonly used in marketing and user experience design to help businesses better understand their customers’ needs, motivations, behaviours, and challenges. The idea is that by understanding the people you’re trying to reach, you can create products, services, and experiences that actually meet their needs.

And then I had an epiphany (happens often, I’m an ideas girl). What if we used this process to better understand the people around us?

So I created a fairly elaborate ChatGPT prompt. Okay, understatement, it’s pretty long, but, in my defense, it needed to be detailed. I included my daughter’s diagnoses, strengths, challenges, interests, and family circumstances, and asked it to create a fictional teenager living with a similar combination of conditions. I also instructed it to draw on credible, current medical research and explain not just the individual conditions, but how they might interact and affect someone’s everyday life.

But frankly, I’d rather crawl through a pile of broken glass on my hands and knees than wade through another dry, emotionless, clinical report. (IYKYK)

I already knew a great deal about the signs and symptoms of the many conditions my kiddo struggled with. What I wanted was to understand what it might feel like to live with them, all at once, every single day. I wanted to explore how seemingly simple things like getting dressed, eating breakfast, attending school, or spending time with friends could become so physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting.

I wanted to understand the smaller, less visible struggles, too. The shame of knowing you’re capable of something but not being able to make yourself do it. The frustration of feeling physically unwell but not having the words to explain what’s wrong. The exhaustion of holding yourself together at school, only to fall apart when you’re finally somewhere safe enough to let your guard down.

And I wanted to understand the guilt.

The guilt of missing school, disappointing your parents, cancelling plans, or struggling to accomplish things that seem so easy for everyone else. The guilt after a meltdown, when you’re exhausted and ashamed and desperately wish you could have handled things differently.

I asked ChatGPT to create two detailed accounts of Maya’s life: a particularly difficult day and a better day. I wanted to see the difference, understand how her capacity might fluctuate, and explore what kind of support would help her through each experience.

The result was a story about a bright, funny, gifted kid who desperately wanted to do all the things other teenagers do. She wanted to attend school, see her friends, do well academically, and enjoy her life. But her brain and body didn’t always cooperate, and sometimes the effort required just to get through an ordinary day was extraordinary.

I read about Maya waking up already exhausted, feeling dizzy and nauseated before she’d even gotten out of bed. I followed her as she struggled to get dressed, eat breakfast, and organize herself for school. I watched seemingly reasonable expectations become overwhelming demands, and I saw how her anxiety, physical symptoms, sensory sensitivities, and executive dysfunction compounded one another until she simply couldn’t cope anymore.

And then there was the better day, when Maya managed to attend school, participate in class, laugh with her friends, and demonstrate just how intelligent and capable she was. But by the time she climbed into her mother’s car, she had nothing left. She immediately put on her headphones and went quiet because she’d spent every ounce of energy keeping herself together.

It was all so familiar.

And I cried. Because, of course I did.

Seeing My Daughter’s Neurodivergent Experience Differently

I think what made reading Maya’s story so profound was that she wasn’t my daughter.

I know that sounds strange, given that I’d deliberately created a character with the same diagnoses and challenges. But there was something about reading a fictional person’s experiences that removed me from my own situation. For a little while, I could step outside the day-to-day reality of parenting and look at the bigger picture more objectively.

I wasn’t worried about getting Maya to school tomorrow. I wasn’t thinking about overdue assignments, medical appointments, or whether she was developing the independence she’d eventually need. I wasn’t questioning my parenting decisions or wondering what her teachers thought of me.

I was simply reading about a child who was struggling. And suddenly, so much of it made sense.

I could see how hard life might be for someone living with all those conditions at once. Not just the individual symptoms, but how one condition could make another worse, how physical exhaustion could affect emotional regulation, and how the pressure of ordinary expectations could become unbearable when someone was already operating beyond their capacity.

I could see how a child might genuinely want to do something and still be unable to do it.

Sometimes what looks like “won’t” really is “can’t.”

Now, intellectually, I already knew that. I’ve spent years learning about my daughter’s conditions, advocating for her, and trying to understand what she experiences. But there’s a difference between knowing something and being able to step back far enough to appreciate the cumulative weight of it.

It’s like looking at a painting from two inches away. You can see every individual brushstroke, but you can’t see what the artist has created until you step back. And that’s what reading Maya’s story did for me. It gave me some distance.

Of course, Maya’s story wasn’t a window directly into my daughter’s mind. AI can’t tell me exactly what my kiddo is thinking or feeling (I only wish!), and a fictional case study can’t determine whether a particular behaviour is caused by anxiety, illness, burnout, or something else. But it helped me consider possibilities I might have overlooked and recognize how much she could be carrying beneath the surface.

And it was heartbreaking.

The Unexpected Guilt and Validation

There was something else happening as I read Maya’s story. In some ways, it felt like holding up a mirror. I wasn’t just seeing my daughter differently. I was also seeing myself, my expectations, my fears, and some of the parenting decisions I’d made along the way. And that was uncomfortable.

I thought about the mornings when I’d become frustrated because she wasn’t getting ready for school. The times I’d questioned whether she was genuinely unable to do something or simply avoiding it. The occasions when I’d fallen back on traditional parenting approaches because I didn’t know what else to do. And I felt guilty.

Because what if I’d been expecting too much?

What if those times when I’d encouraged her to push through were actually times when she desperately needed rest? What if what I’d interpreted as resistance was really overwhelm, exhaustion, or an inability to meet the demands I was placing on her?

Now, I don’t think it’s realistic or particularly helpful to expect ourselves to get everything right. We’re parents, not mind readers, and we’re dealing with incredibly complicated situations that even healthcare professionals don’t always fully understand. But that doesn’t make it any easier when you realize that some of the things you’ve done with the best intentions might have made things harder.

At the same time, I felt something else.

Validation.

Because reading Maya’s story also helped me recognize that many of the accommodations and supports I’d been providing weren’t unreasonable or overly permissive. Giving my daughter time to recover after sensory overload, reducing demands when she’s overwhelmed, and recognizing that her capacity changes from day to day aren’t necessarily signs that I’m failing to set boundaries. Sometimes they’re exactly what she needs.

And I hadn’t realized how much I needed to be reminded of that.

How Much of My Parenting Is Driven by Fear?

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot since that experience. As parents, we make countless decisions every day, and when your child has complex needs, there often isn’t a clearly good option.

• If I let kiddo stay home from school because she’s exhausted, will she fall further behind?
• If I reduce expectations, am I helping her recover or inadvertently reinforcing avoidance?
• If I encourage her to push through something difficult, am I helping her develop resilience, or am I pushing her beyond what she’s capable of managing?
• And how do you know the difference?

Then there’s the bigger picture.

• Will she finish school?
• Will she develop the coping skills she needs?
• Will she be able to work, live independently, maintain relationships, and build a life that makes her happy?

And there’s one question that probably frightens me more than any other. What happens if something happens to me? As a single mother, that fear is always somewhere in the background.

I won’t always be here to help her navigate everything, and I desperately want her to have the skills and independence she’ll need. But I started realizing that sometimes my fear about what might happen in the future was influencing how I responded to what was happening in the present.

And that’s when something really clicked.

How much of my parenting was being driven by what my daughter needed right now, and how much was being driven by everything I was afraid might happen ten years from now?

Because when you’re constantly worrying about the future, it’s easy to feel as though every missed assignment, every difficult morning, or every day spent resting is somehow putting that future further out of reach. And then you push. Not necessarily because your child is ready, but because you’re afraid not to.

I can’t solve all of my daughter’s challenges today. I can’t guarantee what her future will look like, and I certainly can’t eliminate every obstacle she’ll face. But I can try to stop making every decision as though the entire course of her life depends on what happens this morning.

Instead, I’m trying to ask myself something much simpler. What does she need today? Not next month. Not when she’s 25.

Today.

And sometimes, what she needs is rest, quiet, familiar food, or time without someone asking her to explain herself. Sometimes she needs help beginning a task or figuring out how to approach something that’s overwhelming her. And sometimes she needs a little encouragement to try something difficult.

I’m still learning how to tell the difference. But I’m trying to make those decisions from a place of understanding rather than fear.

The Judgment That Comes with Parenting a Neurodivergent Child

There’s another piece of this that I think many parents will recognize, whether we want to admit it or not. We worry about what other people think. I know I do. I hate admitting that with every fiber of my being. I mean, I thought I got rid of this need for approval when I left high school. Apparently not.

When your child isn’t attending school regularly, isn’t meeting conventional expectations, or needs accommodations that other children don’t, people sometimes assume the problem is parenting. Maybe you’re too lenient. Maybe you need to set firmer boundaries. Maybe your child has learned that if they resist long enough, you’ll eventually give in.

And when you’re already questioning every decision you make, those comments can really get under your skin.

Sometimes I wonder whether part of my frustration comes from my own ego, although I’m not sure that’s entirely the right word. Maybe it’s more about the enormous pressure placed on parents, particularly mothers, to demonstrate that we’re doing a good job through our children’s behaviour and accomplishments.

We see our children as reflections of ourselves, whether we intend to or not. When they’re successful, people congratulate us on raising them well. When they’re struggling, suddenly everyone has an opinion about what we should be doing differently. And when your child has invisible disabilities, those judgments can be particularly difficult to escape.

People see a teenager who isn’t attending school, but they don’t see the physical exhaustion, the sensory overload, the anxiety, or the enormous effort required to manage everyday demands. They don’t see the hours spent advocating, researching, coordinating care, helping a child regulate, or trying to make decisions with incomplete information.

They see the outcome, not everything that led to it. And if I’m being perfectly candid, I think sometimes I’ve allowed my fear of being judged to influence my parenting.

I want people to know I’m trying. I want the teachers to understand that I’m doing everything I can. I don’t want anyone thinking I’ve simply given up or that I’m allowing my daughter to do whatever she wants. But reading Maya’s story helped me realize something.

My daughter doesn’t exist to prove that I’m a good mother.

Her health, her happiness, her emotional well-being, and her sense of safety matter far more than somebody else’s opinion of my parenting. And somewhere in the middle of that realization, I found myself thinking:

You know what? Fuck ’em.

Not because I don’t care about other people’s perspectives or because I believe I have all the answers. But because people looking in from the outside don’t necessarily understand what my daughter experiences, and I can’t make parenting decisions based on their assumptions.

I need to make those decisions based on what I know about my child, what she tells me, what her healthcare team recommends, and what she’s actually capable of managing. And sometimes, that means taking my foot off the gas.

What Happened When I Stopped Pushing So Hard

This is where things became especially meaningful for me. Since creating Maya’s persona, I’ve been trying to approach things differently with my daughter. I’m not saying I’ve suddenly figured everything out, because believe me, I haven’t. I still worry, I still get frustrated, and there are still moments when I question whether I’m making the right decisions.

But I’m trying to be more present.

Instead of constantly thinking about what kiddo hasn’t accomplished or what she needs to do tomorrow, I’m trying to focus on what she’s capable of today. If she’s overwhelmed, perhaps she needs quiet, rest, or time to recover. If she’s had a difficult day, maybe we don’t need to have another conversation about school right that minute.

And I’ve noticed something. When I take my foot off the gas, when I stop questioning and pushing and simply accept what she’s capable of in that moment, something changes between us. It’s difficult to describe, but I can see it in the way she looks at me.

There’s more trust.

I get the sense that she feels more accepted, that she feels safer with me, and that she doesn’t have to spend so much energy defending herself or explaining why she’s struggling. And she’s opening up more.

She’s letting me see some of her fears and vulnerabilities, sharing things about her inner world, and inviting me into conversations that I don’t think we would have had in quite the same way before. And the hugs! My daughter isn’t particularly fond of hugging, so when she starts initiating hugs, believe me, I notice.

We’re having these wonderful, in-depth conversations about all sorts of things. The other day, she launched into this incredibly sophisticated discussion about communism, explaining concepts and historical ideas that I genuinely had to Google just to keep up with her.

Seriously. I’m sitting there getting an education in political and economic philosophy from my 15-year-old daughter. And I loved every minute of it.

Because in those moments, I’m not thinking about overdue assignments, missed classes, or the things she’s struggling to accomplish. I’m seeing this incredibly intelligent, funny, thoughtful, wise young woman who has so much to offer the world.

I’m seeing her.

And it makes me wonder how many moments like that we miss when we’re so consumed with trying to help our children become the people we know they’re capable of being.

Sometimes, in our desperation to prepare our children for the future, we forget to appreciate who they are in the present.

That’s not an easy thing to acknowledge. And I don’t want to suggest that all our difficulties have magically disappeared, because they haven’t. My daughter still has significant challenges, there are still responsibilities she needs to learn to manage, and I still have to make difficult decisions about when to encourage her and when to back off.

But something has shifted.

We’re finding moments of genuine connection, and I think those moments matter enormously, especially for a teenager who is navigating so many changes and struggling to find her balance. Because trust and connection aren’t distractions from helping our children develop independence. They’re part of the foundation that allows them to grow.

What If AI Could Help Us Understand One Another?

After reading Maya’s story and experiencing this shift in perspective, I started thinking about the bigger possibilities.

• What if this wasn’t just something that could help parents understand their neurodivergent or disabled children?
• What if it could help people understand anyone whose experiences are different from their own?

Think about how often we interpret other people’s behaviour through the lens of our own lives. We assume that because something is easy for us, it should be easy for someone else. Or we judge someone’s choices without fully understanding the circumstances that influenced them.

We see behaviour, but we don’t always see what’s behind it. And I started wondering whether the same idea could be used to help people develop empathy in all sorts of situations.

• Imagine a teacher reading a fictional case study of a student experiencing poverty, chronic illness, anxiety, or trauma, and beginning to understand why that child might struggle at school.
• Or a healthcare professional reading about the daily experience of someone managing multiple chronic illnesses, medical appointments, financial pressures, and caregiving responsibilities.
• Imagine using it to better understand an aging parent who’s losing some of their independence, a partner who’s struggling with depression, or a colleague who’s experiencing burnout.
• Even someone whose beliefs, background, or life experiences are completely different from our own.

Not to excuse every behaviour, agree with every decision, or pretend we know exactly what someone else is thinking. But to consider perspectives we might otherwise overlook. And perhaps, in doing so, become a little less judgmental and a little more curious.

There’s a psychological concept called perspective-taking, which involves trying to understand a situation from someone else’s point of view. It’s an important part of cognitive empathy, and it’s something we can practise and develop. What interested me about this experiment was that it combined perspective-taking with storytelling.

Instead of reading a list of symptoms or circumstances, I was reading about a person. A person with a personality, strengths, hopes, fears, relationships, and challenges. Someone whose experiences I could imagine and whose struggles I could connect with emotionally.

That made all the difference. I hadn’t discovered a magical new technology that could tell me exactly what another person experiences. What I’d found was a different way of organizing information I already had, exploring possible experiences, and challenging some of my own assumptions.

Of course, there’s a delicious irony there. We spend so much time worrying that artificial intelligence is going to make us less human, less creative, and less connected to one another. What if one of the most human things we could use AI for is learning how to better understand each other?

A Tool for Empathy, Not a Substitute for Understanding

Now, I want to be clear about something. (I mean it, put down your pitchforks) AI doesn’t actually know what it’s like to be my daughter. It can’t read her mind, and it can’t tell me whether she’s experiencing autistic burnout, anxiety, physical illness, or something else on a particular day. A fictional story, no matter how convincing, is still a fictional story.

And let’s be frank. AI requires human oversight, guidance, and — for the love of god — constant vigilance and fact-checking when you use it. It’s not a magic wand.

It can misunderstand research, oversimplify complicated conditions, or create explanations that sound convincing but aren’t supported by evidence. That’s why I built instructions into the generator to prioritize credible medical and scientific sources, distinguish confirmed diagnoses from suspected conditions, and acknowledge uncertainty.

Even then, the information needs to be checked. I know, I’m repeating myself, but this is worth repeating.

I also think privacy matters, particularly when we’re talking about children. The finished profile can use a fictional name and circumstances, but that doesn’t automatically protect any personal information entered into an AI system. Parents should avoid sharing names, exact locations, identifying details, or sensitive information they aren’t comfortable providing.

And perhaps most importantly, the generator shouldn’t replace conversations with the people we’re trying to understand. If anything, I hope it encourages more of them.

Because the goal isn’t to create a fictional character and decide that we now understand everything about someone else’s life. It’s to recognize how much we might not know, become more open to different possibilities, and approach the real person with greater empathy.

That’s what happened for me. I didn’t finish reading Maya’s story with all the answers. I finished with better questions.

Try the Free AI Empathy Persona Generator

After my experience with Maya, I decided I wanted to make the prompt available to other people.

I started with a version designed for parents and caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental differences, disabilities, chronic illnesses, and mental health challenges. But the underlying idea can be adapted to other circumstances and relationships, too.

The prompt guides ChatGPT (or any other AI you normally use, Gemini did a great job with this prompt as well), through creating a detailed fictional persona based on information you choose to provide. It explores strengths, challenges, physical and emotional experiences, relationships, family circumstances, and the ways different conditions or stressors might interact.

It also creates a day-in-the-life story that illustrates what a particularly difficult day and a better day might look like.

The idea is to help readers step outside their own experiences and consider what life could feel like for someone facing challenges they don’t necessarily understand.

And while the prompt is fairly long and detailed, using it is relatively straightforward. You fill in the information you’re comfortable sharing, paste it into ChatGPT, and use the resulting story as a starting point for reflection, discussion, and understanding.

You can even create a fictional persona inspired by your own experiences. I tried that, too.

And let me tell you, having AI create a fictional middle-aged woman juggling chronic illness, depression, ADHD, caregiving, financial pressures, and career reinvention was another interesting experience. Apparently, it’s not just our children whose struggles we sometimes underestimate.

Who knew?

[Get Your Free BellaZinga Empathy Persona Generator Here]

So, Did AI Make Me a Better Parent?

I don’t know. And I think that’s probably the most honest answer I can give. It certainly hasn’t made me perfect, and it hasn’t eliminated the challenges my daughter and I face every day. I still worry about her future, I still question my decisions, and I’m still trying to find that delicate balance between supporting her limitations and encouraging her independence.

But it did something important. It helped me recognize how much of my parenting was sometimes being influenced by fear, guilt, and the expectations of other people. It helped me step outside the day-to-day chaos long enough to see the bigger picture and appreciate just how much my daughter might be carrying.

It reminded me that accommodating a disability isn’t automatically enabling a behaviour, and that a child’s capacity to do something can change dramatically from one day to the next. And it gave me permission to ask a different question.

Not “What should she be accomplishing today?”

But “What does she need today?”

I don’t think that’s a small thing.

Because since I started asking that question, I’ve noticed more trust, more openness, more laughter, and more of those wonderful little moments when my child lets me into her world. More hugs. More conversations. And occasionally, an unexpected crash course in communism.

I’ll take that type of connection any day of the week.

Because at the end of the day, I don’t want my daughter to remember her childhood as an endless series of expectations she struggled to meet. I want her to know that I saw her, believed her, loved her, and did my best to help her build a life that works for her. And I want her to know that she never had to earn my love by being more capable, more productive, or more like everyone else.

I created an AI prompt because I wanted to understand my daughter better. What I didn’t expect was that it would help me understand myself, too. And maybe, just maybe, it could help some of us understand one another a little better.

Because sometimes empathy begins when we stop asking why someone isn’t doing what we think they should be doing, and start wondering what life might look like from where they’re standing.

And sometimes, that simple change in perspective can change everything.

A note about AI: I used ChatGPT as a creative collaborator throughout this project, including brainstorming, organizing ideas, editing, making connections, and creating illustrations. The ideas, personal experiences, perspectives, and words are my own. AI helped me bring them together, but the story is mine.