When your kids talk to other kids their age, does it sometimes feel like they're speaking another language? Honestly, they are. The slang these kids use often isn't easy for parents to decode, but thank God for teachers, right? They are in the thick of this nonsense, and it may be our only saving grace to figure out what our kids are saying.
Philip Lindsay, a teacher from Arizona, kindly went to TikTok to help Gen Z and Millennial parents understand what their Gen Alpha kids are talking about. And even though he is with middle schoolers every day, a few things still have him stumped.
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Lindsay is the kind of teacher your kids would love to have.
He is a funny guy who runs a TikTok account with 119,000 followers. His content is upbeat, and he often tells stories about what is happening in his classroom at Rim Country Middle School in Arizona, Business Insider reported. He is surrounded by kids aged 11 to 14 all day, so he has picked up a few things, and he wants parents to know what he knows.
"One of the jobs as a teacher is to stay on top of the middle school slang because if you don't know what they're saying, how will you know if they're being inappropriate or not, right?" he asks in his viral TikTok video.
As soon as he started rattling off his list, we were concerned.
Right off the bat, he explains that some of this lingo is getting pretty "out of hand." Then he started rattling off phrases like "She ate that," "left no crumbs," and "fanum tax."
It wasn't until he said "bruh" that we even felt remotely connected. Because if your kid hasn't called you bruh, are you even making their life miserable enough?
Thankfully, Lindsay clued us clueless parents in a bit more.
He told Business Insider that parents need to try to keep up and that social media is a big contributor to making the slang popular.
If you hear your kid say that someone "ate it" and they aren't talking about lunch, that means they did something well. And have your kids said anything to you about "Rizz?" Nope, not the pink lady from Grease</em>; it means you've got charisma.
Lindsay also mentioned "GYAT," which he said does not mean getting your act together. We asked one of our teenage kids, who looked us dead in the eye, and said, "Mom! I am not explaining that to you."
It means "Girl, your a– thick." So there's that.
Knowing our kids’ lingo is important.
Lindsay gets that, and his goal is to help parents.
"If, as a parent, you can understand more of their language to be able to bridge that gap of connection, then that would be what I would hope they use the video for," he told Business Insider.
And by reading the comment section, adults are taking notes.
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Parents love the extra help.
His video has 6.7 million views since he posted it in October. Parents feel so much better being clued in.
One parent shared, "I hit em back with old slang and now we are both confused ."
"I thought 'SKEEE-EEE' was the equivalent to 'WHOODY-WHOOO' and shouted at my teenager in public, it's NOT the same. ," another parent laughed.
"I taught special education and my students kept saying "turnip". They were actually saying "turn up". I felt special when I figured it out ," someone else wrote.
Here's the $1 million question: "where do they get these words? "
The teacher explained that when parents know what their kids are saying, it helps open up better communication lines.
"I think a lack of understanding can sometimes inhibit that connection between adult and student, whether it's teacher to student or parent to student, and so that understanding of their language brings a level of ability to connect with them," he said.
Philip, thanks, bruh. You a real one for real, for real.
See what we did there?
