Why Your Middle Schooler Asks “Is This Vibe Cool?” And How To Respond Without Cringing
Last Friday, I was standing at the kitchen counter folding matched sets of socks (the only laundry I actually enjoy folding) when my 13-year-old Lila and her best friend Mia dragged three overstuffed canvas totes through the front door. Lila brushed a strand of blue-tipped hair out of her face, hauled a giant mushroom-shaped floor cushion onto the dining table, and pointed to a tangled string of fairy lights shaped like tiny flying bats. “Do yall think this vibe is cool or nah? Be honest.” Half a bag of cheddar Goldfish crumbled on the counter next to me, my work phone buzzed with a last-minute request to sub for Monday’s homeroom, and I almost opened my mouth to say what I first thought: Bats as lights? That’s kind of weird. That would’ve been the wrong answer. I still remember three weeks earlier, when she held up a fake septum piercing she’d ordered off Amazon, I made a tiny involuntary face before I even spoke, and she didn’t initiate a single conversation with me for 26 hours. (I counted.)
So I paused, folded the last sock, and leaned against the counter. “Tell me more about the vibe first,” I said. That’s when both of them lit up. They’re redoing Lila’s room, ditching the pastel unicorn wallpaper she begged for in 6th grade, for what they called “quiet spooky cozy.” The mushroom cushion is for when they do each other’s gel nails and watch bad 90s horror movies after sleepovers. The bat lights cast tiny fluttering shadows on the ceiling when the window fan is on, way more interesting than the plain white string lights I’d suggested. They already picked up a thrifted black knit blanket to drape over her bed, and a framed print of a black cat wearing a witch hat.
As a 7th grade ELA teacher, I realized right then that I’d gotten this exact same question three times in the last two weeks from my students, just in different contexts. Last Monday, a boy named Javi turned in his endangered species project entirely as a TikTok script, complete with meme cuts and a voiceover plan scribbled in the margins. At the bottom, he wrote in tiny pencil: Is this vibe cool for the rubric or nah? Be honest. Two days later, a group of girls working on a poetry presentation asked if they could do their whole thing sitting on the floor instead of at the front of the room, and ended with the same question. It’s not a throwaway line, I realized. It’s the way kids this age ask permission to be exactly who they are right now, without being told they’re too much, or not enough, or weird.
A lot of adults mess this up in one of two ways. Either we shoot straight from the hip with our honest opinion, which almost always comes out as dismissal, because our taste is shaped by decades of living differently than them. Or we overcompensate, faking that we think everything they do is cool, which they see through instantly. Nothing makes a middle schooler step back faster than a 40-year-old trying to use their slang like it’s second nature. I’ve been there, I’ve dropped a forced “wow that’s so slay” and gotten the universal side eye that says you’re not allowed to say that.
What’s worked for me, both at home and in my classroom, is three small shifts that don’t take any extra time and don’t require me to pretend I’m 13 again. First, always ask them to explain the vibe before you answer. I don’t care if it’s a bedroom decoration, a school project, or a new haircut they want. Just say “What do you love about it?” Nine times out of ten, they’re not actually asking for your aesthetic opinion—they’re excited about this new part of themselves, and they just want someone to listen to why it matters to them. That 10-second pause also keeps me from blurting out a reaction based on my own discomfort with something I don’t immediately get.
Second, be honest, but separate your personal taste from their right to their thing. I didn’t love the bat lights at first, so I didn’t lie and say I did. I said “Bat lights aren’t something I would’ve picked for my room when I was your age, but that quiet spooky cozy idea sounds really fun. It makes perfect sense for movie nights.” That’s honest, it doesn’t fake it, and it doesn’t shut them down. If it’s something I have a boundary around? Like if Lila had asked to paint all her walls black and I don’t want to repaint the whole room when she changes her mind in six months? I don’t just say no. I offer a middle ground: removable black wallpaper for just the back wall behind her bed, that comes off without damaging the paint.
Third, adjust your expectations if the vibe works for what they need. For Javi’s TikTok project? I told him I could tell he put 10 times more work into that script than he would’ve into a standard five-paragraph essay, so I just asked him to add a one-page summary of his research for me to grade, and that was that. He aced it, and he still talks about that project three months later.
Last night, I knocked on Lila’s door to call her for dinner, and she was curled up on that mushroom cushion reading a graphic novel, the bat lights glowing soft behind her. The old unicorn posters are rolled up in the back of her closet, not thrown away, which I think is just right. This version of her isn’t permanent, and that’s the point. She’s testing out what fits, what feels like her, and she just needs me to not kick the legs out from under her while she does it.
I don’t get it right every time. Last week I made an offhand joke about her new hoodie having too many holes, and she shut her door and didn’t come out for an hour. I had to go apologize later, and I did. Next month she’ll probably bring home something I like even less than bat lights. I’ll probably mess up again sometimes. But for now, the bat lights look pretty good, actually. And that question, “Is this vibe cool or nah?” It’s not that scary, as long as you remember it’s not really about the vibe.
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