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

Rules seem unlikely to help – kids will just rebel. Instead, try saying it all the time yourself

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.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist