"You stink like a stinky stinkeroo!"
"You're not the boss of me!"
It seemed kind of funny when my son, Henry, then just a preschooler discovering the power of words, began to hurl them at me like arrows. Two years later, his sister Eleanor followed suit. Her salty rants, most of them bathroom inspired ("You're a poop with wee in your butt!"), sounded so improbable coming from her tiny, tutu-clad body that I had to turn away so she wouldn't see me giggle.
I'm not laughing anymore. Tots flexing their linguistic muscles are one thing. Now that Henry and Eleanor are 8 and 6, however, they just sound disrespectful. I'd hoped mouthing off was just a phase. Instead, it's getting worse. "Leave me alone, you big bag of beluga!" I was told only yesterday while supervising my first-grader's homework.
Verbal defiance is hard to ignore. There's the sarcastic "Give me a break!" The insulting "Don't you know anything?" The challenging "Make me!" The foul "That sucks!" And let's not forget that insolent preadolescent favorite, "Whatever." Just as annoying are the accompanying theatrics -- rolled eyes, knitted brows, crossed arms, Shakespearean sighs.
"Yes, it's disrespectful and rude," agrees Robert Billingham, Ph.D., professor of human development and family studies at Indiana University. "But it's the parents' responsibility to teach children how to disagree and express ideas in ways that are respectful." The key word here is "teach" (rather than punish), with equal doses of patience and persistence.
Paula Spencer is the author of Everything ELSE You Need to Know When You're Expecting: The New Etiquette for the New Mom.
