How ‘Not’ To Talk To Teenagers.
How often do you feel ancient while talking to the next generation?
Well, with a teenager 'bopping' around, it's an everyday occurrence for me. (What can you expect, with 4 generations under one roof - My Husband - Gen X, Me - Millennial, Daughter - Gen Z & Son - Gen Alpha?)
The language they use, sometimes it's so alien to me!
With whatever God gifted small amount of intelligence I have (it sailed me through medical school!), I'm at least now able to understand that 'ROFL' means 'Rolling On the Floor Laughing' (though the person using this is never rolling on the floor, & thank God for that ☺) and 'Stan' is not the name of a person, but it means 'a big fan'. That reminds me, do you know of 'Fandoms' - Legitimate big fan groups. If we had them back in our younger days, would Ramayan have a bigger Fandom or Mahabharat? (Don't start guessing my age because I mention Ramayan and Mahabharat)
Talking of slang, I cannot, for the life of me, understand, what these young people do with all the time saved by using 'TBH' instead of 'to be honest' and 'Imma' instead of 'I'm going to' , and sometimes this irritates the hell out of me.
And don't even get me started on their use of emojis. 💀 means 'dying from extreme laughter' and 😭 means 'we love it so much'. Can never say 'it is what it is'!
But when I see this 'Woke' (politically aware) generation hanging around with their 'Squad' (group of friends) talking about everything under the sun, I think I can grow immune to this Slang virus. It's better to put up with these language shenanigans than risk getting 'ghosted' by the Gen next!
So pardon me if I've used some slang myself (need to look cool too 😉)(hope I don't get exasperated stares from my daughter)
Happy parenting!