Back Talk for Your 8-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship, and growing your child’s skills to communicate respectfully provides an excellent opportunity.

Conflict happens in families — between spouses, among siblings, and between parents and children. Arguing in family life is typical and expected. “Back talk” can be defined as “argumentative replies.”¹ Children can respond in anger, hurt, frustration, hurtful tones, or with hurtful words. Back talk also represents a power imbalance children are trying to rectify. To regain some power, children lash out with hurtful words. Power, after all, is a basic human need. Children ages 5-10 are growing their listening, empathy, assertive communication, and problem-solving skills. Growing your child’s skills to respond assertively but non-aggressively is essential to their success.

Anyone can face challenges with back talk. “You can’t tell me what to do!” your child may exclaim in embarrassment and frustration after riding a bike into a busy street. Your child’s responses can make you angry and upset. As your child develops, they will need to test their limits and rules to internalize them. This can lead to arguments between you and your child. Your child will also have evolving emotional needs but sometimes lack the communication skills necessary to ask for what they need. Using the steps below can help navigate this challenge with skill. The steps below include specific, practical strategies and effective conversation starters to prepare you.

Why Back Talk?

Whether your five-year-old is screaming, “I hate you,” your second grader is shouting, “No, I won’t go!” when you need them to leave a friend’s house, or your nine-year-old crying, “It’s all your fault,” when they’ve spilled a plate of spaghetti on the floor, establishing healthy ways of responding to life’s most challenging moments is vital skill your child needs to thrive.

Today, in the short term, teaching skills to respond to disagreements in healthy ways can create

• greater opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment
• trust in each other, and
• a sense of well-being and motivation

Tomorrow, in the long term, teaching your child effective ways to communicate their feelings and needs

• develops a sense of safety, security, and self-belief
• grows skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making, and
• deepens family trust and intimacy

Five Steps for Managing Back Talk

This five-step process helps you and your child communicate during your toughest, most emotional moments in ways that do not harm. It also grows critical life skills in your child. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

You can get your child thinking about healthy ways to communicate by asking them open-ended questions. You’ll help prompt your child’s thinking. You’ll also better understand their thoughts, feelings, and challenges related to how they feel when confronting them so that you can address them. In gaining input, your child

• has a greater stake in anything they’ve designed themselves (and with that sense of ownership also comes a greater responsibility for solving their problems)
• has more motivation to work together and cooperate because of their sense of ownership
• will be working in collaboration with you on making informed decisions (understanding the reasons behind those decisions) about critical aspects of their life and
• will grow self-control, empathy, assertive communication, and problem-solving skills

Actions

Consider what challenges your child’s ability to communicate healthily. For example, if your child is hurt or rejected, is their typical response to lash out in self-protection? Begin by considering the following.

• Ask how your child feels when arguing with a family member or friend.
  • “What gets you upset or mad at a friend, a relative, Mom or Dad?”
  • “What feelings do you experience?” (If your child finds it difficult to label their feelings, you can provide guesses. Your child will likely correct you if you guess wrong. For example, “When I asked you to turn off the screen before dinner, you seemed mad. Is that right?”)
  • “How does your body feel when you’re upset?” (Name ways you physically experience being upset, whether it’s a red hot face or a racing heartbeat, to invite your child’s curiosity about how they experience upset. For example, “How does your body feel when it’s upset?” If your child has difficulty replying, you may add, “ When I’m upset, I feel my neck and back get all warm, my heart starts to race, and even my breath gets short and high in my chest.”)
• “Have you hurt another person’s feelings when you’ve argued? How did that feel?” Be sure to express empathy for negative feelings your child may express. You could continue modeling by adding, “I have felt crummy, too, when I’ve gotten heated and said things in anger.” It is helpful for kids to know you make mistakes, too, and that you also know how to take responsibility and make amends.
• “How might you have argued differently to express your needs but not harm the other person?” 
• Practicing naming feelings will enable your child to identify their feelings as well as the feelings of others and seek support when they need it. This can help your child gain competence.
  • A printed feelings chart can be a great tool to help your child connect words to their emotional experience. Keep the printout somewhere handy, like on the fridge.
  • Even adults find it difficult to label feelings. The more you model identifying your feelings and use tools such as a feelings chart, the more your child will learn to identify their feelings. Don’t be afraid to tell your child, “I sometimes find it challenging to know my feelings too. Maybe we can both work on this.” Your child may be enthusiastic about helping you learn something new.
• Use your best listening skills. Remember, what makes a parent or those in a parenting role angry or frustrated can differ significantly from what angers or frustrates a child. Listen closely to your child’s concerns without projecting your thoughts and feelings.

Because intense feelings like anger and hurt occur as you go about your daily life, you may not consider their role and impact on your child. Intense feelings can majorly influence the day and your relationship with your child. Your child is learning how to be in healthy relationships, and in the learning process, they will make mistakes and poor choices. How you handle those moments as a parent or someone in a parenting role can determine how you help grow their conflict management skills. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is going through. Here are some examples.

• Five-year-olds are working on understanding rules and routines. Consistency helps them feel a sense of stability.
• Six-year-olds may be more apt to question your rules. They thrive on encouragement, can become critical of others, and need experience with kindness and inclusion.
• Seven-year-olds crave structure and may dislike changes to their schedule. They may be moody and require reassurance from adults.
• Eight-year-olds are more resilient when they make mistakes. Their peers’ and teachers’ approval is very important.
• Nine-year-olds can become easily frustrated. They need directions that contain one instruction. They may worry about peer approval and their appearance and interests.
• Ten-year-olds are developing a strong sense of right and wrong and fairness. They tend to be able to work through conflicts with friends more rapidly.

Teaching is different from just telling. It grows basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and sets your child up for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive words and tone of voice you want your child to use, promoting skills, and preventing problems. It is also an opportunity to establish meaningful, logical consequences for unmet expectations.

Actions

• Reflect on how you currently model communication when you’re upset. Any actions, words, or tones of voice you use with your child will be repeated and mimicked back to you by your child. If you yell, your child will yell. If you criticize, your child will criticize. Consider how you react to your child when you are upset.
  • Ask yourself, “If my child repeats what I say when I am angry and in my tone of voice, will it be acceptable to me at home? In public?”
  • Consider which words, actions, and tones you want to see in your child and which you do not. Next, decide what words, actions, and tones you do not want to use so you only model what you want to see and hear.
• Research shows that the following fighting habits hurt others and destroy trust in one another.² These can encourage more back talk from your child. These fighting habits should not be used to forge healthy communication with others, including your child.
  • Do not use physical force. Using physical force in a conflict (including spanking) signals that the individual has lost control and only believes they can regain it with physical dominance. This is harmful and breaks trust.
  • Do not talk about others negatively when they are not present. The healthiest way to address an issue is to go directly to the person with whom you have the problem.
  • Do not criticize. Judging or commenting on a person’s character hurts the other. Instead, focus your energies and words on solving the problem at hand.
  • Do not show contempt. Using hostile humor, sarcasm, name-calling, mockery, or baiting body language harms the other person. These all involve some kind of aggression or character attack with the intention of causing harm.
  • Do not become defensive or blaming. Pointing fingers and using “You…” language is blaming. Words like “always,” “never,” or “forever” cannot represent the truth and break down trust. Own your feelings and role in the situation, and the argument will remain constructive.
  • Do not stonewall. Actively refusing to listen, shutting down the argument, or giving the silent treatment harms the other person and breaks trust.
• One strategy to help calm down is to teach your child to play like a hermit crab. Explain that when hermit crabs get scared, upset, or stressed, they bury themselves in their shell, and you cannot see them. Pretend with your child that you are upset. Create a simple, even funny problem like, you are so mad because there’s no ice cream in the freezer.
  • Talk about how you feel. Angry? Sad? Worried? Is your heart beating faster? Do you feel like shouting? Instead, go into your shell by crouching on the floor and burying your head in your arms. Close your eyes and breathe together slowly.
  • After a few moments, reemerge and tell each other specifically how you were feeling then and how you are feeling now. Owning your feelings in an argument is key to resolving the argument constructively.
  • Now, say what you feel you need. For example, “I need your attention,” “I need you to listen to me,” or “I need you to understand my point of view.” After you’ve heard each other’s needs, talk about how you can help each other meet your own.
  • End the game with love. A hug or a high five can show that you are in this together, even when you are upset and disagree.
• Begin to teach your child to repair harm. An essential step in teaching children about managing anger is how to repair harm when they’ve caused it. Harm could be physical, like breaking something, or emotional, like hurting someone’s feelings. Mistakes are a critical aspect of their social learning. Everyone has moments when they hurt another, but that next step matters in repairing the relationship.

If you seize the opportunity, your daily disagreements can allow your child to practice new, vital skills. Practice grows new brain connections that strengthen each time your child works hard to constructively manage feelings, words, and choices.

Practice also provides essential opportunities to develop consequential thinking, or the ability to anticipate the potential impact of a particular choice and evaluate whether it’s a positive choice based on those reflections.

Actions

• Allow your child the chance to assert their needs in small ways, like ordering for themselves in a restaurant or respectfully asking for your attention.
• Consider how you can create the conditions to support their success (like offering coaching or guided open-ended questions to prompt thinking) so your child learns to become their best problem solver.
• Share a range of feeling words regularly to become more comfortable expressing feelings.
• Practice the hermit crab game on more challenging problems. Then, when in a heated moment, gently remind your child, “Do you remember what the hermit crab does?”
• Practice deep breathing to help you calm down when you have spare moments together, such as while waiting in line, driving in the car, or at bedtime.
• Follow through on repairing harm. When your child has caused harm, they need your guidance, encouragement, and support to repair it. They may need to hold your hand through that process, and that’s okay! They are learning the valuable skill of responsible decision-making.

At this point, you’ve taught your child how to meet their challenges with skill and persistence, and you are allowing them to practice so they can learn how to do those new tasks well and independently. Now, you can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, coaching, and, when appropriate, following through with logical consequences. Parents or those in a parenting role naturally provide support when they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.

By providing support, you reinforce their ability to be successful, teach cause-and-effect thinking (as they address problems and conflicts), and helping them develop skills in taking responsibility.

Actions

• Initially, your child may need active support. Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity. Ask them to demonstrate how they can work to resolve a problem. When a child learns a new skill, they are eager to show it off! You could say, “Show me you can go into your shell and calm down before we talk about this.”
• Recognize effort using “I notice…” statements like, “I noticed how you talked to your sister about how you were feeling and then worked with her to agree. That’s excellent!”
• On days with extra challenges, when you can see your child is frustrated or feeling incapable, proactively remind your child of their strength. In a gentle, non-public way, you can whisper in your child’s ear, “Remember how you talked to your sister yesterday? You can use that same strategy with your friend today.”
• Actively reflect on how your child is feeling when approaching challenges. For example, you could say, “It seems you are holding onto angry feelings toward your friend. What are some ways you could approach your friend? What options do you think you have?” Be sure to reflect on the outcomes of possible choices.
• Apply logical consequences when needed. Logical consequences should come soon after an inappropriate behavior and need to be provided in a way that maintains a healthy relationship. Rather than punishment, a consequence is about supporting the learning process and avoiding harm.
  • First, recognize your feelings and practice a calm-down strategy when needed. It helps to know which calm-down strategies work best for you and have a plan. Not only is this good modeling, but when you control your emotions, you can apply logical consequences that fit the behavior.
  • Second, invite your child to reflect on the expectations established in Step 2.
  • Third, consider a logical consequence of their actions as a teachable moment. Consider the following questions before deciding: (1) What will you teach with this consequence? (2) Has a natural consequence already taken place (3) Will the logical consequence be connected to the poor choice so that you can teach cause and effect with the action? Learning new behaviors to replace inappropriate behaviors takes time. Your child will likely need to do it right the first time (or even the second or third!). That’s OK. What’s important is that you approach growing skills to manage conflict by understanding feelings, teaching new behaviors, and practicing while maintaining a healthy, supportive, loving relationship with your child. Your healthy, supportive, loving relationship with your child is most important.

No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

If your child is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your child’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships — a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.

There are many ways to reinforce your child’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your child’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You talked with your classmate about what was bothering you—I love seeing that!”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.

Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.  A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you behave in the store, you will get a treat on the drive home.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice. For example, when children complete their homework on time, a short, specific call out is all that’s needed: “I notice you answered me respectfully and did not argue. Excellent.”
• Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after you’ve completed your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once you’re ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

Closing

Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.