I should do this for my kids, yes, but it is still annoying just for my own devices. I don’t want to use my AirPods on all my devices, just one… why can’t I do that?
On the device you do not want them to connect to automatically go to Bluetooth settings, find your AirPods, click on (i) and change "Connect to this iPhone" from "Automatically" to "When Last Connected to This iPhone".