‘90s FAMILY : The Age...

The sweet-faced 11-year-old felt unfairly accused. A classmate had stolen her ruler and the teacher said it was her fault for leaving it unprotected. In the sixth-grade world of personal justice, something had to be done. So the girl said she stole the classmate’s ruler, then marched past the teacher and loudly proclaimed: “In your face, Miss Plumley!”

A mild enough retort perhaps, but enough for Miss Plumley to ground the girl for recess.

It’s the sort of bold back talk used by kids today that shocks many adults. Most of this girl’s friends have told their mothers to shut up, that they’re stupid or that they hate them. “I have a friend whose 2-year-old called her a bitch,” said Julie, the mother of a 5-year-old boy. High school students in affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs are said to regularly curse teachers who try to discipline them. One braggart told the Washington Post: “I called (the teacher) a lot of stuff for a minute straight.”

Julie, 35, was aghast last fall when her son started to use a “nasty tone” to defy her. “The way he stands there and says ‘No,’ I can’t believe it. My first reaction is to hit him. I feel like I’m a lousy parent. Out of control. Like he’s going to try to run me and I won’t know how to turn him around and it’s going to get worse and worse. Like when he’s 8 and doesn’t want to do his homework, or when he’s a teen-ager and we don’t care for his friends.” Then, too, she said, “I’m concerned about what all the other mothers are going to think.”

“I’m torn,” she said. “I want him to be strong. Just not to me.”

But when parents look for advice, they are apt to find two schools of thought among experts.

The first advocates zero tolerance (“We will not allow that kind of language in this house. Ever. And there will be consequences.”). The other advocates unflappable obliviousness--if at all possible.

In any case, experts said parents should try to first understand that shocking back talk is a normal part of child development, intended to gain power for young children and identities for teen-agers. At the same time, they admit it is magnified by the specific characteristics of our era: TV, rap music, working and single parents, and the continually rising limits of what is acceptable. In order to shock anybody, children are forced to raise the ante.

Psychologist Timothy Jay, author of “Cursing in America,” also suggests that as society has grown disapproving of physical punishment, some families have increased their use of verbal insults as conflict tactics.

But in most cases, the experts say the kids’ language for their time is no different than the “hells” and “damns” that in the Eisenhower era would get a kid’s mouth washed out with a bar of Lifebuoy.

“Almost every parent is going to encounter this kind of language from teen-agers unless they’re Amish,” Jay said.

Hearing other parents’ war stories and understanding that back talk is common helps, “but I still don’t like it and I don’t handle it terribly well,” said Richard, 55. After fruitless attempts to get his 15-year-old daughter to pick up, clean up and exercise without any back talk, he said he finally realized, “Hey, what’s the point? I’m not accomplishing anything by making too much of these things.”

Now he said he tries to “strike some sort of balance, so I’m not a total pushover, and yet to try to keep my own respect. It’s much more a matter of changing me than changing her.”

Cynthia Whitham, licensed clinical social worker and author of “Win the Whining War and Other Skirmishes,” always suggests ignoring back talk because “they would not push your buttons if you had no buttons to push.”

“If we get bent out of shape by yelling, correcting or punishing just for words, it just feeds it and it will become more of a habit. We need to save our more serious punishments for tougher stuff--hitting a brother or sister, breaking a safety rule, taking something without asking.”

Other suggested techniques:

* Repeating the offending phrase 100 times, singing it high and low, fast and slow, so it becomes less shocking, or saying, “That’s an interesting term. Where did you learn that?”

* Fining the offender 50 cents per word.

* Avoiding such language yourself.

What does not work:

* Taking it personally or too much talk of hurt feelings.

* Insisting on control, even through super niceness.

* Insisting on having the last word, rather than letting the child save face with a mumbled misdemeanor such as “OK, I’ll empty the damn trash.”

Said Jay: “What we are interested in is healthy expression of anger and differences. Parents don’t want to be so punitive that they can’t establish themselves as a source of information later, especially with sex and drugs.

“The reason you don’t want to spank them or wash their mouths out with soap is so later at 8, 10 or 12, they will come to you for this information. If parents are always punitive, they’ll go someplace else.”