Rhianna Benson
There are countless childhood learning tools out there which have been helping kids memorise important information for years.
'Never Eat Shredded Wheat' helped youngsters learn directions, whilst putting a finger down one by one would teach them their nine times tables.
In recent years, however, parents have had to bid adieu to numerous learning hacks, after they were apparently proven outdated.
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I don't know about you, but did anyone else memorise the names of the solar system's big dogs by saying 'My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets'?
We can't even use that one now, being that Pluto isn't 'technically' a planet. Okay, NASA. If you say so...
And this week, another batch of mums and dads have been left blindsided to learn that the way their children have been learning the alphabet has changed.
Like my parents before me, I was taught my ABCs to the tune of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
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There were pauses after certain letters - with an infamously fast part plonked right in the middle - and it concludes with 'Y and Z', pronounced 'Zed' or 'Zee' depending on which side of pond you hail from.
You all remember the melody, right? 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G / H, I, J, K, LMNOP (!!!) / Q, R, S / T, U, V / W, X / Y and Z'.
It even ends with the cute little rhyme: "Now I know my ABCs / Next time won’t you sing with me?"
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As we say, though, apparently there's a new tune in town, which teachers have been professing to their infant students for several months.
Whilst the new song still claims to mimic the melody of the twinkly nursery rhyme, it now features new pauses between different letters, and even the closing line has been changed to say, 'Now I never will forget / how to say the alphabet'.
It's pretty barbaric if you ask me, and as such, parents are understandably horrified.
After one teacher posted a clip of themselves performing the new version on TikTok, many disgruntled mums and dads took to the comment section.
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"LMNOP got me through a lot. We will never forget you. RIP," one joked.
Another penned: "The took Pluto, then they changed math, and now the alphabet? My whole life is a lie."
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"But we all learned our letters anyways sooooo why are we doing this?" a third asked.
Explaining the two-fold reasons for the change, the social media star - known online as @teacherrachelsorsel - says that, firstly, a bunch of her students believed that 'LMNOP' when said in quick succession was it's own letter.
"They don't say the individual letters," she laughed. "Some even think that this is one letter."
When it comes to the second reason, she says because the 'traditional' way of singing it ends in 'Y and Z', some kids believe that 'y-and' or 'and-z' are letters in their own right.