As a mom, sometimes I swear that many of my days are filled with almost never ending backtalk. Like anyone, we have our good days and bad days, but as my boys are getting older, the amount of lip they’re giving me seems to keep increasing.
The majority of sass comes from my seven year old and I know most of it stems from one of two things. Frustration and jealousy. He gets frustrated about having to share his toys with his brother or the fact that I can’t give him 100% of my attention every time he needs it. I don’t blame him. I’m the oldest of three, so I get where he’s coming from…I really do. On top of it, he gets jealous when he sees his little brother get things he doesn’t get (ie when he was potty training and I gave him reward gifts for the progress he was making). I did sit him down and explain that he, too, gets things that his little brother doesn’t get. Mainly, he gets privileges, and I do realize that it’s hard for a little kid to accept that staying up a little later in lieu of a toy is actually a reward, but one of these days I swear it will click with him.
With my older son, he’s the type of kid who always has to get the last word. The thing is, I’m also that person and sometimes it really is hard to just let it go, but if I didn’t, we’d be there all night.
So, what do I do? I ignore it. Repeatedly responding to his arguements just fuels the fire. To a kid any attention, even negative attention, is still attention. Here is an example of a typical conversation between myself and my seven year old:
My son: “Can I stay up and watch just one more show before bed?”
Me: “No, sweetie, because you have to get up early for school in the morning”
My son: “No, I don’t. I’m not even tired anyways”
At that point, I literally just walk away. I don’t need to convince him that I’m right and leaving it alone, makes that pretty clear. Or at least I think it does. Besides, if I responded, he’d just keep at me in hopes that I’d give in, and there I would be arguing with a child about something that he really has no say in. I tried time-outs, but my silly kid actually liked them, so that’s didn’t work out so well as far as punishment purposes went.
Then, we have the case of my four year old who want to be just like his big brother. He repeats almost everything his big brother spews out of his mouth verbatim. He’s still to young to understand half of the stuff he’s saying – he just knows I don’t like it, so that eggs him on.
I think as a parent, it’s important to realize that our kids aren’t going to like every decision we make, but we are all doing what is best for them. I always say to my husband “they’ll thank me someday”.
How do you handle sass from your kids?
Great strategy – as my daughter grew up our favorite line as parents was – What makes you think this house is a democracy? and it’s true… our rules until she can pay rent… we’re not there yet with the other kids, but I will always use that line on them too!
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The easiest way to handle kids is boarding school.
LOL If only boarding school weren’t so expensive…I’ve had to resort to actually disciplining my children with time outs and taking away privileges.
I’ve learned to pick my battles. Sometimes it’s just not worth it to try to argue with the kid. I’m actually a lot like you in how I treat my daughter when she tries to extend her bed time. Usually I just told her, “Okay, do as you’d like, but I expect you to wake up by yourself tomorrow on time. If you’re late, you’ve gotta explain it to your teacher yourself.” Then I would just leave her to her own devices.
i do the exact same thing — walk away and refuse to argue with a child. and my kiddos are 17, 15 and 2 — and not one of them gets a debate outta me… lol!
like sweaty said — pick your battles — best bit of parenting advice ever!
sounds like you know what your are doing — great post and message to get out there because as someone who used to work in a biz with kids i cannot tell you how many times i have seen adults literally battling it out with toddlers… lol!
I have zero experience in this. As a teacher I just didn’t tolerate back talk and given the community I worked in all I had to do was pick up the phone to take care of it. I was the oldest child and never realized what I was teaching my younger siblings either. Best of luck!
Right now, warnings and time outs because he’s two but when he’s older probably your approach.
Sometimes I see my boys headed in this very direction. My boys are 4 and 19 months, but my 19 month old already repeats everything his brother says. I come from a family where backtalk simply wasn’t tolerated. We’d get slapped if we talked back to my mom. We don’t do the spanking thing in our house and, I have to admit, that I’m often at a loss of how to handle the situation. I generally just ignore like you do, but beyond that I really don’t know.
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oh I so know how you feel. I have 12 year old. ugh.
Backtalk stinks.
How I handle it? Vitamin B complex for both of us….
It helps a lot!
Wow, are you ever living my life!! My daughter is six, and what a exhausting time it has been trying to correct this. To me it’s rebellion, and she is so intuitive that she knows what pushes my buttons. My daughter too always wants to have the last word, at times I do ignore her but for the most part I punish her by taking things away that are important to her. That’s not working either………pretty sure my parents cast this spell on me….”I hope you have a daughter just like you one day!!” lol, It’s back to bite me in the butt!! Good luck with your son.
Lynn
With my kids I ask myself “is this gonna be worth the battle?”.
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I am all about ignoring, but my husband just can’t do it. He just debates back and forth and it drives me nuts. Most of our back talk is from our son but now our daughter is starting too. She sees Jake do it and thinks that it is ok. Although, I am pretty sure Jake called me a bitch yesterday but I only heard the “itch” part. It was after he was upset with me because I wouldn’t let him boss his sister around. Damn it was hard not to smack him but I know I can’t and it is not good anyways since it is my anger being taken out on him. If it is this bad right now I am horrified as to what the teen years are going to bring.
I’ve got it here too. My almost 5 year old girl has a mouth on her like nobody’s business. And the sweet, should be sweet, 2 year old boy is picking up her ‘tude. I feel like I’m in a no win here. Calling her on the sass just makes her sassier and ignoring it feels like I’m saying it’s ok. I do try to be firm with what I say though. I may not respond to the sass, but that doesn’t change the fact that I said ‘no’ or whatever.
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Jamie @ http://www.mamamommymom.com