Last week I spoke about common magic words. Words are indeed powerful forces and need to be used respectfully. "Whatever" is a word you will hear teenagers say with great disrespect. Before you go eliminating it from Daniel Webster's dictionary, you may want to teach your child or teenager when to use it. When they use "whatever" with authority figures, they are clearly attempting to dismiss the importance of what has been told them. Not a good idea if your child wants to stay out of detention.
The right place to use "whatever" is as a dismissive device to defuse a provoked attack by a peers. For instance if you child is called "stupid" by someone, you may want them to defend themselves. However, getting into an argument over whether or not you are stupid doesn't really work well. It may be better to ignore the comment by the provoker or defuse it by using the dismissive "whatever." This indicates that the provokers comments are not important enough to argue with. That is taking power with words.
Most social skills are like this. There is a right and a wrong place to use them. If you can figure out the right place to use the skill you can teach your kids not to use the wrong place.
Not everyone will be able to hear this advice. Some won't like it.
Whatever
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