Messenger, How to disable ^ exponent character being removed and elevating the next characters

Me and my friend sends a lot of textmojis on messenger, like for example (^O^)／

But as of late the ^ char seems to be interpreted as an exponent, and the end result gets formated more like this: (°)／

Is there a way to disable this function, or perhaps a combination of characters that tells messenger not to interpret it as an exponent mark?