They cannot use the fossil record to prove anything. It is a static snapshot of an animal or organism that once was alive and then died. It cannot tell you how old it was, in its age (as an animal, infant, youth, adult etc.) whether it had any brothers or sisters, if it ever mated, it is just bones. It existed. They may find bones of similar animals and line them up to say that animal A slowly changed into animal B over time. But they cannot prove it. It is all assumptions, extrapolation and surmising. Sure you can change dogs into many kinds of dogs, bacteria into other strains of bacteria, virus's into other mutated virus's but they are still dogs, bacteria and virus's.
The only reason that the fossil record pulls as much weight as it does is due the the sheer numbers of "accredited" "educated" people who support it. That is all. Go get an education, doctorate in this field of study and then try to go against the mob and you will be harassed, discredited, shunned have your character assassinated.
For something to be accepted in any other field of science, it has to be observable, testable and repeatable. The farce of evolution is none of these.
They want this to be true so badly that they have stretched and bent and pressed the fossils into the cookie cutter shape they need them to be in order to fit their theory. They then get every graduate to back it as if it was the gospel itself and ridicule anyone that argues against it.
They, then, ignore the one solid piece that pulls the bottom card of their house of cards....... how did it all start?
They can tell you an astonishing line of how this organism became this and this and then this as they draw an elaborate tree of branches and twigs. However they cannot tell you where the first organism came from, where it got life, how it knew how to eat, replicate etc. Don't ask them that. They are not going there...... BUT after that they will tell you it's solid gold truth what happened to the next organism..and the next and the next.
My kids are now young adults. They were inundated with the TOE and all the spin off "science" that "supports" it as it is woven throughout the education process. NONE of them, even now, believe the "ape minded" white coat idea that we came from apes......
Don't lose heart. Raise them up knowing that God formed Adam with His OWN hands and breathed the breath of life into this first human body....... then, used a rib to create the first woman. There was no other female human, until their was a God formed human man. SO...... Biblicaly..... evolution dies right there. You cannot ignore the blatant fact written in scripture that God formed the first human male, then the female.
So, anyone that is a God fearing, bible believing person cannot say that that was not a distinct, obvious, in your face description of where humans originated from.
