Recently, my teenagers have been malfunctioning. Instead of talking, they often lapse into mumbling with occasional exclamations containing non-words. I discovered the fix today: I wished them a lit morning when they came down to breakfast, and said I hoped they’d have a very peng day when I went to work. I asked them not to be salty when getting them to do their chores. After some minor convulsions, they seem to be cured of the non-words! I’m using ‘how very peng’ as much as possible around them and it seems to be working as a maintenance dose to keep them using normal English.
Clearly IWBU to do this in front of their friends... unless they’ve been really bad. Please supply your hacks for dealing with teenagers, as I’m sure this one will be relatively short lived, and I’d like to keep them on their toes.