Are your kids obsessed with ‘6-7’? Here’s my plan to break the spell | Dave Schilling

6 hours ago 7

Don’t tell your kids, but “6-7” is Dictionary.com’s “word of the year” for 2025. Of course, “6-7” is not a word in the strictest sense. It’s two random numbers strung together for the purposes of annoying parents around the world. What does it mean? Nothing. When can it be used? Pretty much whenever you want to piss off an old person. Such is the state of global linguistics. Having a purpose or meaning to what you’re articulating is cringe. The point is to troll, to frustrate, and to alienate. Isn’t that the whole reason the internet exists? To organize us into factions – the smartened up and the hapless?

For the childless among us, “6-7” is just online gibberish that is easily ignored – the password into a nightclub you don’t want to actually enter. For people like me with a Gen Alpha boy obsessed with belonging, “6-7” is something like the Rosetta Stone for having even a passing verbal interaction with your spawn. About a month ago, my son started saying “6-7” at any lull in conversation. He’d start asking for the thermostat in our car to be turned down to 67 degrees even if it was 62 degrees outside. For his eighth birthday, I bought him a personalized Dodgers jersey with his name on the back. The number he chose was 67. I purchased a size big enough for him to grow into, but the rest of the jersey will probably age like an apple on the side of the freeway. “Why did I pick this number again?” he’ll ask in three years. “Because your brain wasn’t developed enough,” I’ll respond.

I know there are parents out there who aren’t just perplexed by this phenomenon, but actively furious about it. Another sign of the end of the world. The gradual decay of the discourse. If a phrase (“6-7” is not a word, by the way. Someone tell Dictionary.com) means nothing, what’s the point of saying it? Steve Johnson, director of lexicography for the Dictionary Media Group at IXL Learning, who helped select the word of the year, told CBS News: “It’s something that’s used to show, ‘I’m part of this generation. This is who I am.’ It’s kind of like an in-group joke.” In short, its only purpose is to disassociate from polite society. A middle finger or a crotch chop used to suffice, but it’s 2025. Am I so old now that I can’t tell an authority figure to “suck it” and get my point across? What a tragedy.

“6-7” is so ubiquitous in Gen Alpha circles that my son’s teacher has banned the term from her class. Seems a bit harsh, I think. How does math class go when my child has to add 35 and 32? Should he run out of the room screaming? Should he voluntarily send himself to the principal’s office instead of solving the problem? I remember being 12 and laughing about the number 69 any time it came up in passing. At least that meant something rude. And if you don’t know what 69 means, don’t Google it right now. I’m not trying to get you fired in this economy.

All we’re doing is giving these little goobers too much power. By banning a random coupling of numbers, we’re telling the prepubescent that they can make just about anything inappropriate with enough coordination. If every child in America started saying “Bazinga” from Big Bang Theory on the playground, should we ban Young Sheldon? I remember when my parents’ generation thought Bart Simpson telling an adult to “eat my shorts” was the end of western civilization. Looking around at the world today, maybe they were right. But was that really the tipping point, or was it The Apprentice? I’m not arrogant enough to say one way or the other.

Nothing makes a stupid child want to say or do a thing more than banning it. My mother telling me I couldn’t watch MTV just made Mariah Carey music videos seem like free softcore pornography. Today’s kids say all manner of completely abhorrent things on social media, YouTube or Roblox because we’ve told them they can’t. This is not to imply that children should be given no rules or structure. Just that, when given that structure, they will inevitably rebel against it. That’s frustrating, but it’s also incredibly natural. Our job as parents isn’t just to create rules, but to give practical and clear reasons for why those rules exist in the first place.

If “6-7” truly means nothing, then why are we, as adults, telling kids to stop saying it? Can you tell a child why they can’t say it without sounding like a complete buffoon? “Because it’s distracting” isn’t going to work, either. It’s like telling a dog to stop humping the air because you can’t focus on bingeing the latest season of Stranger Things. You could just, you know, learn to ignore it.

If adults really want to squash the “6-7” phenomenon, then I recommend doing what I’ve been trying at my house. Say it. Say it all the time. Suggest a “6-7”-themed birthday party. Randomly scribble it on the walls in water-soluble ink. Scream it in the middle of your child’s soccer practice. When you pick them up, give them a hug and whisper “6-7” into their ear. Prank-call their friends’ parents and say it. On pizza night, arrange the pepperoni into a “6-7” formation and take tons of pictures that you tag them in on Instagram. Nothing in this world is lamer than adults understanding and appreciating youth slang. Stop fighting it. Stop acting like you are above such nonsense. What are you, your own parents?