Backtalk: 4 Steps to Ending Rude Behavior in Your Kids

Imagine this scenario. You pick up your son at school, and ask him how his day went. He says, "You always ask me that. Get a life, Mom." You feel hurt, insulted, frustrated. Silent, you drive him to band practice. In this scene, experts Audrey Ricker and Carolyn Crowder would argue that both of you lose. What is a better response? Tell Billy matter-of-factly that his comment was inappropriate, and that you aren't going to drive him to band practice. When he, suddenly more polite, tells you he has to go to band practice, you tell him he can practice the next day at school. You stand your ground, without arguing with him.

Backtalk--fairly easy to recognize--may be wrecking your family life. As flip or relatively harmless as it may seem, verbal rudeness gets in the way of real communication between parents and kids. It may be holding your children back at school, and ultimately in life. Ricker and Crowder have teamed up to create a four-step program--simple but not easy--to create a backtalk-free home. Through a large number of all-too-familiar-sounding sample "backtalk scenarios" and bullet-point lists, this book explains how to recognize backtalk for what it is, how to choose and enact a response that will make sense to you and your child, and when to disengage from the struggle and move forward. Whether your preschooler is saying "Bad Mommy" or your teenager is saying, "That's lame, Dad," Backtalk suggests ways for you to regain a sense of balance in your relationships with your children.