"We Did Stuff" Makes Your Kid Forgettable

When your kid tells you the field trip was "good" and they "did a bunch of stuff," they're not hiding anything. They just grabbed the emptiest words in the drawer. And empty words make a sharp kid sound like they weren't paying attention. The fix is small. Trade one vague word for one real detail, and the whole sentence comes alive.

Here's the scene. You ask how the game went. "Good." You ask what they learned in the unit. "Like, a lot of stuff." A teacher asks what the book was about. "It was about this guy and some things that happened to him." An interviewer asks what they liked about a club. "It was fun, we did a bunch of cool stuff." The kid answered every single time. They just said nothing.

Why does my kid answer everything with "stuff" and "good"?

Because vague words are fast, and fast feels safe.

When a question lands, the brain reaches for the nearest general word before it goes digging for the specific one. "Stuff" is always sitting right there at the front of the drawer. "The chemistry lab where we lit magnesium on fire and it burned too bright to look at" is further back and takes a second to retrieve. Your kid grabs the easy one and moves on, because grabbing the easy one ends the question quicker.

There's a second reason, and it's quieter. Specific is a commitment. The second your kid says "the book was about a kid who lies about everything and it slowly wrecks his family," they've put a real opinion on the table, and a real opinion can be wrong or judged. "It was about some stuff that happened" can't be wrong, because it doesn't say anything. Vagueness is a hiding spot. Smart, careful kids live in it the most.

And a lot of it is pure habit. They say "good" and "stuff" and "things" a hundred times a day, nobody ever pushes back, so the words go invisible. The kid doesn't hear themselves doing it anymore. From the inside, they feel like they answered the question. They have no idea the answer was blank.

A parent I work with in Kennesaw had a son exactly like this. Genuinely interesting kid, did cool things, and every answer came out as "it was fine, we did some stuff." In a mock interview I asked what he did over the summer. "I worked at a camp, it was pretty fun." I asked one follow-up. Turned out he ran the archery range for forty little kids and taught a seven-year-old who was terrified of the bow to hit the target on his last day. That's a great story. It was in there the whole time. "Pretty fun" buried it.

Vague words and filler words are not the same problem

Parents mix these two up, and they need different fixes.

Filler words are the "um," the "uh," the "like" that pop up while the brain is still loading. Those are noise between the words. We've written plenty about those.

Vague words are the words themselves. "Stuff." "Things." "Good." "Nice." "A lot." "Cool." They're not noise. They're the actual answer, and the actual answer is empty. A kid can speak in perfect sentences with zero "ums" and still tell you absolutely nothing, because every noun is a placeholder.

Why this matters: if you keep telling a vague kid to "slow down" or "stop saying um," you're aiming at the wrong target. Their delivery might be fine. The content is the hole. The note they need is about specifics, not smoothness.

What does vague language actually cost your kid?

It makes them forgettable, and forgettable loses every room that counts.

Start with how memory actually works. The concreteness effect is one of the most reliable findings in how people remember language. Allan Paivio's research going back decades showed that concrete, specific words are recalled far better than abstract, general ones. "The magnesium burned too bright to look at" sticks. "We did some stuff in lab" evaporates before the listener finishes hearing it. Your kid can give a technically complete answer that nobody remembers thirty seconds later, because there was nothing concrete to hang onto.

Then there's the read it creates. A vague answer sounds like a kid who wasn't paying attention, or didn't do the reading, or doesn't care. Even when none of that is true. In class, "it was about this guy and some things" reads as "I skimmed it." The kid who did the reading and the kid who faked it sound identical when both answer in blur. The only way to prove you were actually there is a detail only someone who was there would know.

And it costs the most in interviews, which is the worst place to be forgettable. An interviewer talks to a dozen kids in a day. The one who says "I like science" blends into the other eleven who said "I like science." The one who says "I like the days we get to break something and figure out why it broke" is the one they remember at the table that night. Same kid, same interests. One made a picture. One made a fog. Being specific is most of what separates a kid who gets remembered from a kid who gets politely forgotten, and it's the same muscle behind getting to a point the room can actually hold onto, which runs through all of our programs.

How do you teach a kid to get specific?

Give them one rule. Name one thing.

Not the whole report. Not five details. One. When a kid feels like they have everything, they panic and retreat to "stuff" because "everything" is too big to grab. "One thing" is doable. "What's one thing that happened at practice?" gets a real answer where "how was practice?" got "good." The small ask is what unlocks the specific.

Hunt the placeholder words and swap them. Teach your kid to catch themselves saying "stuff" or "things" and ask, which stuff? Which things? "We did a bunch of stuff in history" becomes "we argued about whether the New Deal actually worked." The placeholder is a sign pointing at the real answer. The real answer is always right behind it. They just have to go one step further and say the thing the placeholder was standing in for.

Teach them that specific beats complete. Kids think a good answer covers the whole topic. It doesn't. A good answer gives one vivid, true thing the listener can see. "My favorite part of robotics" doesn't need a tour of the whole season. It needs the one moment the arm finally gripped the block at 11pm the night before competition. One sharp detail does more than a complete, flat summary every time.

And reframe the hiding part out loud. A specific answer isn't risky. It's the whole point of answering. A kid who stays vague to avoid being wrong is also staying vague enough to be invisible, which is the actual thing that hurts them. Say the real thing. The real thing is what people remember.

How do you practice this at home?

Ban the placeholder words at dinner, just for one meal. "Good," "fine," "stuff," "things," and "a lot" are off the table. If your kid reaches for one, they have to swap in the actual thing. It'll feel hard at first, which tells you how much they'd been leaning on the blanks. The struggle is the rep.

Play "name one thing." Instead of "how was school," which gets "good" every time, ask for one specific. "What's one thing a teacher said today that was actually interesting?" "What's one thing that annoyed you at lunch?" You're training them to reach for a concrete detail instead of a category word, and you're modeling the kind of question that has a real answer waiting in it.

Run the upgrade drill. Your kid gives a vague answer on purpose, then you make them say it again with one real detail added. "The trip was fun" becomes "the trip was fun, we got lost in the aquarium tunnel and a shark swam right over us." Do it a few times and they start hearing the empty version as unfinished, which is exactly the ear you want them to build.

One warning. Don't pounce on every "stuff" in normal conversation, or your kid will clam up and stop telling you anything at all. Set the drill up, let them run normal talk the rest of the time, and catch it gently. Coach the habit, not every sentence.

And don't push them into cramming ten details into every answer either. A kid who over-stuffs is as hard to follow as a kid who says nothing. The target is one true, specific thing per answer. One detail the listener can see. That's what turns "we did stuff" into something somebody actually remembers.

Quick Answers

Q: Why does my kid answer everything with "good" or "stuff"? Because vague words are fast and safe. They end the question quickly and never commit to anything that could be judged or wrong. Most of the time it's a habit the kid can't even hear anymore, not a lack of something to say.

Q: How do I get my kid to give more specific answers? Ask for one thing, not a summary. "What's one thing that happened at practice?" gets a real answer where "how was practice?" gets "good." Teach them to catch placeholder words like "stuff" and swap in the actual thing they were standing in for.

Q: Is saying "stuff" and "things" the same as saying "um"? No. "Um" is filler noise between words while the brain loads. "Stuff" and "things" are the answer itself, and the answer is empty. A kid can speak with zero "ums" and still tell you nothing if every noun is a placeholder.

People Also Ask

Q: Does vague language hurt kids in college interviews? Yes, a lot. Interviewers talk to many students in a day, and the vague ones all blur together. One concrete detail is often the whole difference between a kid who gets remembered and a kid who gets politely forgotten, because specific, concrete words are far more memorable than general ones.

Q: Why does my kid who did the reading still sound like they didn't? Because a vague answer and a faked answer sound identical. "It was about this guy and some things" reads as skimming whether the kid read it or not. The only way to prove they were actually there is a specific detail only someone who did the reading would know.

Q: At what age should kids work on speaking with specifics? Middle school, roughly ages 11 to 13, is a strong window, because that's when class discussions, presentations, and first interviews start asking kids to produce real answers on the spot. Building the habit of naming one concrete detail early means they're not still answering in blur when the stakes get real in high school.

Helping kids trade empty placeholder words for the specific, memorable details that make a room actually listen is part of what we do at Rhetrix, with in-person small-group coaching for grades 6 through 12 across North Atlanta, where the cohorts stay small so each student gets real coaching time and direct feedback. If you're wondering whether it's a fit for your kid, our FAQ walks through how the cohorts run and what to expect.