Accompany Sleep: Using GenAI to Create Bedtime Stories for Mediating Parent-Child Relationships in LBC Families

Left-Behind Children (LBC) refers to children who lack daily companionship due to their parents working away from home, accounting for approximately one-fifth of all children in China. Due to the lack of communication and emotional support from their parents, LBCs often experience physical and mental health issues. Effective communication is usually limited by time and topics, and the format of mobile devices and video calls is not always suitable. To address this issue, we developed the Accompany Sleep system. Parents upload daily life content through the app, and the system uses ChatGPT4o to create bedtime stories projected to the LBC. To explore the role of Accompany Sleep in family mediation, we conducted a one-month user study involving four families. The results of the study indicated that both parents and children exhibited positive behaviors, the parent-child relationship was effectively strengthened, and GenAI played a crucial role in this process. Based on these findings, this paper discusses how Accompany Sleep facilitated behavioral changes and improved parent-child relationships while expanding the application of GenAI in the family domain.