Are You Down with the Kids?

Does this seem at all familiar to you? If you are a parent of a certain age then it just might make you nod and smile, as it did me! A LOT!

I think that as parents, as we get older we do try and maintain our ‘coolness’ and speak certain words that we hope our children and their peers will understand, appreciate and even find funny. However, of course more often than not when your child/children reach a certain age we parents are just an embarrassment, and using language that they once approved and laughed at, is now sooooo not cool and they probably wish the ground would open up and swallow them. Or they might laugh and tell us off for being ridiculous because we are too old to say such things! I mean how very dare their parents try and speak like they do?!

I think language can be confusing anyway. I mean there are so many different ways of addressing people, saying hello or goodbye can be said in a multitude of phrases. Usually, I would just say goodbye/bye when I am leaving someone, but occasionally I have said laters or catch you later in a bid to get down with the kids!!!  Marianne told me that she often says TTFN said as in letters, T T F N. Means ta ta for now 😂 my mum is to blame for that one. Carolin admits that she always say ‘Ciao Ciao’, which makes it sound like I’m talking about the dog and Amy’s dad always said ‘cereal’ when he finished a phone call instead of ‘See you’, which used to drive me insane… . Finally Maggy really loves to say Tootle Pip when she is bidding farewell to someone.

Of course sometimes when we are trying to be all cool with our kids, we can slip up and end up using language which does not mean what we thought it did. Tanya for example told me that I once used the word bae whilst trying to be down with the kids (before anyone else), only for Bruce’s school friend who lives in Denmark tell me it means poo in Danish. And the look I got from my teens means I have never used it again. It is now replaced with sweetcheeks.  

The media and especially social media can influence a lot of what our kids say, and then for us so called ‘oldies’  trying to fit in with the younger generations. I recall several years ago there was a Budweiser advert featuring people basically phoning one another and  just saying whatsup? but saying it for as long as you could so whatsssssssuuuuuuuuuupppppppp? Well of course, everyone started using that as a greeting when you met them or called them up! It was probably very annoying really, but we all thought it was hilar! (see what I did there – yep, still got it!).

Sometimes we are unable to ‘hang’ with our kids and their friends, because we honestly have no idea what they are referring to. Nowadays so many youngsters use text speak in their every day lives, and I see it all over my face book timeline, and I am often left wondering what on earth people are actually trying to say! I recall that when LOL was first used on text messages and on my social media, I thought it meant lots of love, as when I was at school that is what my friends and I would use on birthday cards etc. Of course it had a completely different meaning of laugh out loud, and I hold my hands up in a admitting I use that (or a similar emoji) all the time now!!

Cass made me LOL when she admitted to me that when I mentioned being down with the kids it reminded her of a text exchange she had with her daughter Bethan. This is the conversation I have shown in the image at the start of this post, and I have to admit that for a long time I did not have a clue what IDK meant either, or l8te – i still think just put the a back in lol!! 

Sunlife have put together a little Language Age Quiz to see if it can determine how cool you really are, compared to how you think you are. I actually came out as aged 20 – yeah I will take that *does high five* to myself!  See I can still get down with the kids…..for now anyway! Come back in a few more years, and I will be an embarrassment to my boys and quietly sobbing at how not down with my kids (or any kids) I am anymore!

Please check  out the link, it only takes a few minutes and it is just for fun. Don’t forget ago tell me how you get on  in the comments below. 

This post was written in collaboration with Sunlife, but all words used are my own to include quotes by other bloggers.