WOW, someone just asked me this Yom Tov, how do you respond to chutzpadik kids and I told him to ignore them. He said “ignore them” in the times past we used to show them the strap or the stick…..I told him you don’t ignore them in the sense that you let chutzpah slide, you tune them out, look the other way, hum a tune…. show them that you don’t hear them when they are being chutzpadik like you and them are not in the same room or even on the same planet. That you can’t hear their words, that they can’t reach you or penetrate you. Eventually they will learn that they can’t speak that way to you because you have elevated yourself to a higher madreigah and you can only hear them when they speak b’kovod and with derech eretz. What I told this “divorced” parent is this. If you lower yourself to that level and respond in kind, your children will remember every painful or sarcastic remark and it will repeat itself in the tape recorder of their minds and hearts. They will conveniently forget what brought on the remark and their accountability in it. But they will never forget the hurtful response to them. By tuning out to them when they are being chutzpadik you engulf yourself in the protection of your own sense of security whether you sing a song to yourself to tune out the hurtful words, you say tehilim, you daven, whatever. But they are basically talking to an unmovable force and they will eventually stop.
WOW, you are a safe and easy target. When he starts in on you he is probably drunk and for sure over tired. If you choose not to stop and listen but continue doing what you were doing before he came in and started his tiraid, or become a moving target instead of a sitting duck it would not be so easy for him to attack. If he starts in, say tehillim in your mind, sing a song to yourself and realize that it is NOT your son yelling at you it is his yetzer horah.
If he tells you that you are “not listening to him” you can choose to respond with “when you speak to me with respect I will show you respect in kind and will listen to you with respect. If you choose to yell at me disrespectfully I don’t have to accept such unacceptable behavior”.