“My Mom is Like…Whatever!” - Life, liberty and the inherited teenage right to speak with conviction (but can we reduce the number of “likes”? And, are we to blame?)

It is the right of every teenager to find their parents exceedingly annoying and embarrassing.  And, as parents, it is our duty to have a thick skin and to stay the course, giving them the assist, the emphatic push, the knowing advice when they need it – and even when think they don’t.  But nothing is more irritating, and met with more eye-rolls – on both sides – than the verbal correction.   

I have two teenagers of my own – one independent, tolerant soul, and one green with mortification at my mere presence in the company of his peers – and both with their own verbal crutches.  I often have to bite my tongue to not constantly correct their likes, ahs, ums and ya’ knows.   (e.g. “Ya know, mom, I can’t even believe you brought the dog to my soccer training and had to have every player like pet her?”)

The truth is, teenagers make for enlightening and heady company.  I love being around them, even if they’d rather I made myself scarce.  But the way teens communicate with all of those “likes, ya knows, totallys and whatevers” gives me pause.  Where do they get this post “Valley girl” lexicon and why is it so pervasive?  

Celebrity Speak's Contagious Influence, Like, Ya' Know?: Three Excerpted Interviews with Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham, and Caroline Kennedy

It should be a party drinking game. Take a drink when you hear a celebrity say “like,” “ya’ know,” or “I can’t even!”

Turns out, the same celebrity role models that influence the way we look and act, also influence the way we speak.  Even those we admire most are riddled with verbal crutches – like, um, ya' know, whatever, ah, so, I mean, I can’t even!

These disfluencies are contagious and most everyone I know in Generation X, Y and Z is guilty of the "like, ya' know" syndrome. But, in order to present our best selves, we should speak to mpress.  

With this is mind, here are three excerpted interviews with Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham and Caroline Kennedy.

Zooey Deschanel

I love singer/songwriter and “New Girl” actress Zooey Deschanel, but this interview made me think, maybe she should be renamed the “Like Girl”?

Hollywood Reporter, Sept. 12, 2011, on writing the theme song to “New Girl.” 

There were theme songs I had like in mind as like inspiration, like, I love the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter. John Sebastian wrote that, from The Lovin' Spoonful. I really like love that sound, so I like wanted something upbeat that really felt like a theme song. Like the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore felt really like upbeat and like gets you ready for a show about someone who is um ya’ know taking on a um like a new um life.  So, um so yeah, so that a was basically my ah, my inspiration, musically, um I wanted something uplifting and then when we went in to produce it, we sort of thought like we wanted to have like a Lovin’ Spoonful type of feel to the production, so ya…