My kid has been talking back a lot lately and I honestly don’t know how to respond in the moment without either losing my temper or just caving completely. Would love to hear what actually works for other parents. 
okay so no cap this used to send me into full spiral mode 
like my daughter would hit me with some attitude and I’d either go full silent treatment or just start yelling which helped absolutely no one 
what actually started working for me was just… not responding immediately. like I’d feel that spike of oh we are NOT doing this right now and instead of acting on it I’d just pause. take a breath. sometimes literally walk to the kitchen and get a glass of water 
sounds too simple but it changed everything. because what she was doing half the time was testing whether she could get a reaction out of me. once I stopped being so reactive, the talking back lost a lot of its power. it’s not even fun to sass someone who just looks at you calmly and says we can talk about this when you’re ready to have an actual conversation😌
still working on it though lol. some days she hits a nerve and I’m back to square one 
I want to address this from a parent who has been through a few different phases of this. 
When my son was around 9 or 10, the talking back was mostly just testing limits. He’d push, I’d hold the line, things would settle. But when he hit 13? Completely different energy 
The back-talk became more pointed, more personal, sometimes genuinely hurtful.
What I found was that the old approach of just asserting authority made things worse at that age. He didn’t respond to because I said so anymore and looking back, why would he? He’s forming his own opinions and that’s actually what you want long term. 
So I shifted to something that felt uncomfortable at first… actually engaging with his argument before responding. Not always agreeing. but acknowledging it. I hear what you are saying and here’s why I still see it differently. That did more than a hundred don’t talk to me like that responses ever did.
It’s slower. It takes more energy. But he talks to me now instead of just shutting down, which is worth everything. 
let me tell you about the day my son, who was 11 at the time, told me that my rules were unconstitutional 
full sentence. unconstitutional. I genuinely did not know whether to laugh or ground him for a month. I chose to laugh, which I think was the right call, and then we had a 20 minute conversation about what that word actually means and why no, the Geneva Convention does not apply to screen time limits
but here’s the thing after that conversation, the back-talk shifted. he still pushed back, but it got more… articulate? 
like he’d make an actual case for why he thought something was unfair. and I’d make a case back. and sometimes I’d realize he had a point. and sometimes he’d realize I had a point. and it started feeling less like conflict and more like an ongoing negotiation with a very small, very opinionated lawyer 
I don’t think I handled it right in any textbook sense. I just stopped treating it as a discipline problem and started treating it as a communication problem. and that reframe made a huge difference for us.
y’all I feel this post in my bones 
what gets me is the toneee more than the actual words sometimes 
like my daughter could say okay mom in a certain way and it’s technically fine but we both know what she means. and that is somehow more infuriating than if she’d just said the thing directly??
I talked to my sister about this and she said something that stuck with me that pick the thing you actually want to win, because you can’t win everything.
like if the goal is to get her to do the dishes, fighting about the tone she used while complaining about the dishes means you are now fighting about two things and the dishes are still sitting there. sometimes you just take the attitude, get the outcome you needed, and circle back to the behavior separately when everyone has cooled down.
okay I need to share the technique that I accidentally discovered and now use religiously
it’s called the boring wall.
basically when my kid starts talking back with real attitude, instead of matching the energy (which does nothing except turn into a full argument with two people being dramatic 
), I just go completely flat. not angry, not hurt, not anything. just… blank. calm. vaguely inconvenienced, the way a customer service rep looks when you are being difficult..
it is DEEPLY unsatisfying for a child who wants a reaction the whole point of back-talk for a lot of kids is to get a rise. when you just don’t give them the rise, the behavior kind of runs out of steam.
my husband thought I was being weird when I first started doing this now he does it too. we are united in our boringness and it is genuinely working 
This is actually something I read up on a bit after going through a rough patch with my 12-year-old, so bear with me if this gets a little textbook-y 
What a lot of child behavior research points to is that back-talk peaks at certain developmental stages, early adolescence especiall because kids are literally building the capacity for abstract thinking and argument. Their brains are doing something new and they are testing it out constantly. It’s not just defiance, it’s development.
That doesn’t make it less frustrating in the moment, I know 
But it did help me stop taking it so personally.
Right so I read through what @KingSher said and the developmental angle is spot on 
, though I’d add one thing from personal experience.
The feeling heard bit only works if it’s genuine though… Kids, even young ones, are surprisingly good at detecting when you are just performing engagement to move things along.
The version that actually works is slower and messier. Sometimes I have to admit I hadn’t thought about her perspective, Sometimes I change my mind. And yes, sometimes I hold the line anyway and explain why. But the difference between those two things genuine engagement versus managed compliance is something kids feel even when they can’t articulate it.
Takes more out of you as a parent 
But the relationship is better for it and that’s the whole point isn’t it.
oh gosh okay this thread is making me feel so much less alone
I had this moment last month where my son talked back during dinner.. I mean just genuinely rude, said something dismissive in front of the whole family and I completely froze. Like my brain just went offline. I didn’t yell, I didn’t say anything calm and wise, I just kind of stared at him for a second and then very quietly said we’ll talk about this later and went back to eating.
Later I couldn’t tell if I’d handled it well or just… chickened out? Like was that composure or was that avoidance?
But then later that night he came to me and apologized. Unprompted. Said he knew he was out of line.
I don’t know if the quiet response is what did it or if he just thought about it himself and felt bad. Probably both? But it made me think that sometimes not reacting isn’t the same as not responding 
Sometimes giving them space to arrive at their own conclusion works better than making sure they know right away that they were wrong.
lol the fact that we are all out here comparing notes on how to survive our own children is both hilarious and deeply relatable
my approach, which I did not develop intentionally and yet somehow works, I ask a question
kid hits me with attitude, I don’t address the attitude, I just ask a question about the actual thing we are discussing. okay so what would you want to happen instead?
two things happen. one, they have to actually think, which interrupts the emotional momentum, two, sometimes they say something that makes me realize I hadn’t explained my reasoning well and that’s why they were frustrated.
I’m not saying I’m always wrong. I’m not 
But like 30% of the time there’s a real miscommunication underneath the attitude and the question surfaces it.
the other 70% of the time they just realize their argument is weak and the energy deflates on its own, either way it beats getting into a yelling match about who has more authority in this household 
Coming at this from a slightly different angle, I think a lot of these techniques work well in isolation but the thing that ties them together is consistency over time, not any single response in any single moment 