Keeping up with teens lingo, buzzwords, trends all of it

[Mumof3beans]

Just wondering if anyone else is struggling to keep up with the way teenagers talk these days? And what they are seeing online.

How is everyone keeping up? What parenting sites are we using?

DD is 13 and half the time I haven’t got a clue what she’s saying. Everything is “so cringe” or “a bit of an ick” I feel like I need subtitles just to follow a conversation lol.

I’m not trying to be a cool mum or start using the words myself (she’d die of embarrassment), but I’d quite like to understand what’s going on especially when she’s telling me about school or something that’s upset her. I also want to be more aware of what’s going on online to be able to protect her too.

Is there a way to gently keep up without sounding completely out of touch? Or is this just the stage where we nod and smile and Google it later? Any resources, books, website whatever welcomed!

What age are you that “so cringe” and “bit of an ick” are indecipherable to you?

If she’s waffling teen bullshit when you’re trying to talk to her about her day just say “can you drop the sigma Ohio nonsense for a moment please, your mum’s an old fart and I need you to speak in words I understand.”

Otherwise, let her get on with it. It’s her world and her time to be incomprehensible to you. That’s what it is to be a teenager.

The way to keep up is to ask them.

You don't need resources, books or websites.

You just need to ask your children to explain what they're talking about and remind them that when they're not speaking to their friends, they need to speak clearly and consisely.

Honestly, you shouldn't be encouraging them to talk to adults as if they were 13 too.

After Adolescence on Netflix I decided I wanted to try and make more of an effort to understand, not necessarily use, slang, emojis, trends, technology etc. That’s all. Of course I wouldn’t hesitate to tell her or to have a conversation with her! Just simply looking for suggestion as I am sure I’m not the only mum googling stuff out there. And wanted to know if there were any other influencers or sites people were using!

What do you want to know from her though? Just tell her to speak normally! Skibbidi bruh.

'So cringe' and 'ick' are so common and have been around ages. You must know what they mean.

Also struggling to keep up with what they're saying! I don't think it's a bad thing to want to understand a little bit about how they're communicating (it's not like I'm going to start using the same words/phrases and try to get involved).

I actually found this website after googling the adolescence emojis which was really helpful: https://weareluna.app/parents/guides/navigating-difficult-scenarios/

It's got articles about emojis, teen slang, text acronoyms...sounds like exactly what you're looking for here!!

I always have to apologise to my daughter and say sorry for being cringe 🤣

Definitely understand where you're coming from. There's nothing wrong at all with wanting to understand, personally I think learning about the lingo (not using it haha) can help develop empathy for our teens and completely dismissing it and giving teens a side-eye is pretty unproductive. Read this not a while back that could help https://weareluna.app/parents/guides/navigating-difficult-scenarios/teen-slang-dictionary/ x

Many years ago when I was a teen and I was using the popular lingo of the day my parents would infer the meaning from the context of the sentence. Then would use it back to me.

It "gave me the ick" so I stopped talking to them like they were 13 and started using normal non teen speak with them again so as to never hear my father refer to anything as "amaze-balls" ever again.

Just google it! (Surprisingly, after 40 years of teaching and also having two teenagers of my own), I still find teen slang entertaining and often hilarious! Fortunately my two dc were never very embarrassable and were happy to translate and laugh with me about the latest lingo! They've grown out of using it now (age 17 and 19).

Have read through this and I don’t know what all the drama is about.

The vast majority of these slang words and abbreviations have been kicking around since I was a teenager on MSN messenger ffs and I’m 38.

The da Vinci code it isn’t.

Who doesn't know what ick or cringe mean? As a 50 year old I've used both on here I'm sure!
You need to monitor what's going on online, focus on that.

Sounds like you're very down with the kids, which is great!

Thank you for this, glad I’m not the only one struggling to keep up! 😂 I also came across Parents too which was good too. Appreciate it

I think learning about the lingo (not using it haha) can help develop empathy for our teens
As if teenagers want empathy from the rents. <eyeroll>
The whole point of lingo is that it 'others' people; it's a secret language that parents, police, etc don't understand!

Amazon have quite a few Slang books for adults now, I find they help in understanding the lingo of nowadays.