LOL @ John Doe - interesting link, too. Definite food for thought, as I'm one of those people who always intends to follow up with a letter of complaint when I receive lousy customer service, but I never seem to get around to actually doing it.
If I sadi and did what my daughter does when I was her age, my dad would have hit me so hard I would be half dead.
Stilla, what do you do when your daughter does these things?
Whenever my daughter shows disrespect, I address it immediately. I ask her, "Why are you talking to me that way?" And then we discuss whatever the real problem is. Because we're both stubborn and because she's 13 and doesn't yet really understand that I have figured out a few more things about life than she has, we have our fair share of arguments. Or maybe intense conversations would be a better description, since they're never all that acrimonious and we usually end up laughing at and with each other. We've followed this pattern since she was old enough to talk, so disrespect just isn't that big of an issue anymore. Maybe because she knows she has the freedom to call me on the carpet as well when I'm the one who's being a bitch. I've made plenty of apologies through the years for my own behavior and I hope she respects that.
I had a friend with a disrespectful child though, so I can definitely relate to how frustrating and irritating it was to be around someone like that. However, I think the blame for the child's behavior didn't lie solely on her own shoulders. She was just a kid. Her mother was the adult and should have provided some acceptable guidelines or boundaries for her daughter's behavior. She chose not to and therefore, she had to live every day with a brat.
Andi, you did the right thing by speaking up. The only thing I'd object to is the implication of "all" instead of "some" when referring to those nasty teenagers.
