How to talk to your kids about LFGM

Let’s go Mets! It’s a simple and easy-to-remember chant often shortened to LGM, sometimes with a hashtag thrown in front of it for the views. A great way to show your loyalty to the New York Mets, back in 2019, another letter was added.

LFGM became the unofficial four-letters of the Mets thanks to first baseman Pete Alonso. Still used in 2022, it’s important for parents to know how they can talk to their children about LFGM.

Talking to your young Mets fans about the meaning of LFGM is important

Kids are curious. They ask a lot of questions about everything. They stick their fingers in places they don’t belong. They’ll interfere with a ball in play. If they’re old enough, Moises Alou may even angrily point at them.

Mistakes like this happen. It’s how we, as humans, learn.

Parents out there have been dealing with having to explain LFGM to their kids ever since it became part of the vernacular for the team. They’ll ask, “What does that mean?”

You don’t want to lie to your children about this. You have plenty of other opportunities for that. Just wait until they tell you they want to play big league ball! The lies we tell children when it comes to future aspirations.

When it comes to LFGM, honesty is the best policy but maybe not for your kids.

So how do you discuss LFGM with a child? Do you destroy innocence? Will they leave the conversation with a new favorite word?

You start by explaining to them the difference between an abbreviation, an acronym, and an initialism.

You can bore your young Mets fan into submission with education

Abbreviations are shortened or contracted from a word to represent the whole thing. LFGM is not an abbreviation. It represents four very distinctive words. ERA would be an example of an abbreviation as in the sentence, “Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom has a career ERA that will make your mouth water.”

When the child grasps abbreviations, you move on to acronyms. An acronym is an abbreviation pronounced as words. An example of this would be WAR. You say it as a single word instead of saying it letter by letter. Saying LFGM as a single word sounds like you’re mumbling a swear word. And the whole point of talking to your kids about LFGM is to steer away from teaching them vulgarity.

Finally, if your child hasn’t lost interest, you move on to initialisms. This is what LFGM is! You actually have to say each of the letters. Each represents a particular word. That’s an initialism, the least popular of all yet commonly used.

After this is understood, the kid will want to know what each letter stands for. This is the tricky part. This is when a parent needs to get a little creative.

The L stands for Let’s. The G is for Go. The M is for Mets. Let’s go Mets! What about that F?

As a parent or guardian (not necessarily from Cleveland), it’s up to you to decide how far you are willing to go. Do you say it means Let’s Furiously Go Mets? How about Let’s Forwardly Go Mets? Then there’s Let’s Frustratingly Go Mets. Maybe it’s best to save that one as a learning experience after they’ve gotten to know the team better.

However you choose to talk to your kids about LFGM falls on you. First, though, try to distract them with some education. At least they’ll learn something even if you do burden them with what will, unfortunately, become a child’s new favorite weapon: words.