Last week we dealt with chil­dren and young peo­ple's right to be treat­ed with re­spect and how dif­fi­cult it is when teach­ers dis­re­gard this.

But one of the bright spots is that teach­ers are al­ways tem­po­rary: soon­er or lat­er you'll be mov­ing on from that class and the re­la­tion­ship will be over. While you're still in the class, you can al­so use the oth­er stu­dents as 'cov­er' and just try to avoid be­ing no­ticed. (If the class trou­ble­mak­er is a friend of yours, s/he might even de­cide to give you 'cov­er' by wreak­ing hav­oc at just the right time!)

But what if the dis­re­spect/put-downs/ver­bal abuse hap­pens in what should be your sanc­tu­ary, in oth­er words, your home? How do you es­cape from your fam­i­ly?

And the hard­est voice to es­cape is the one in your head say­ing that you are in fact clum­sy, ug­ly, unlov­able, dis­or­gan­ised, stu­pid, in­com­pe­tent, fat, sloven­ly and on and on for­ev­er?

How do you re­sist fam­i­ly ver­bal abuse and al­so es­cape that re­lent­less voice in your head? First, you have to un­der­stand what ver­bal abuse is.

Ver­bal abuse is putting down, in­sult­ing, curs­ing some­one, say­ing hurt­ful things to them, mak­ing threats (whether the threats are ever car­ried out or not), speak­ing in a deroga­to­ry or de­mean­ing way to some­one or about some­one. Ver­bal abuse now in­cludes talk­ing via tech­nol­o­gy – so­cial net­work­ing sites, cell phone texts, In­ter­net con­ver­sa­tions.

What of­ten con­fus­es the is­sue with fam­i­ly mem­bers is when they are say­ing some­thing to or about you that seems to be part­ly true. So here are some guide­lines to help you know when the state­ment is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

Any crit­i­cism should be de­liv­ered in fac­tu­al and ob­jec­tive lan­guage. If the per­son is tired or frus­trat­ed, there may be ir­ri­ta­tion in the tone or lan­guage or both, for ex­am­ple, "I can't be­lieve you're feed­ing the dog late again!"

But the crit­i­cism shouldn't con­tain in­sult­ing per­son­al ref­er­ences, shouldn't be de­liv­ered in a voice which is in­tim­i­dat­ing or over­ly loud and shouldn't be de­signed to hurt as much as, or more than, it aims to teach.

For ex­am­ple, "You lazy stu­pid id­iot, you spend all day stuff­ing your fat, ug­ly face and you can't even feed the dog on time! Are you re­tard­ed? Can't you tell time? An­swer me, dum­my!" Crit­i­cism should be brief and to the point.

It's not le­git­i­mate if the crit­i­cism turns in­to a tirade which brings up all your past be­hav­iour, com­pares you un­favourably with oth­ers, or los­es its point in gen­er­al be­cause of the ea­ger­ness to con­demn you.

• Does the crit­i­cism al­ways hap­pen, when­ev­er the be­hav­iour hap­pens? If it hap­pens in­con­sis­tent­ly, per­haps it hap­pens ac­cord­ing to the per­son's mood rather than in re­sponse to your be­hav­iour.

• Was there an au­di­ence and is there some­how al­ways an au­di­ence when the 'crit­i­cism' hap­pens? Does the per­son ap­peal to the au­di­ence to back him/her up in the den­i­gra­tion of you? Then the aim of the in­ter­ac­tion is in­sult and abuse.

• Is all this done in the ab­sence of any­one who might help you? Just as some­how there's al­ways an au­di­ence for the abuse, if you have an al­ly, that al­ly is nev­er present to help you.

Ver­bal abuse, like all bul­ly­ing fo­cus­es on mak­ing its vic­tims feel as bad­ly as pos­si­ble. If that's some­how the aim of what's been hap­pen­ing, then it's abuse.

So there you are. If you have been ac­cept­ing what's been said to you un­der these cir­cum­stances, then you have been ac­cept­ing the voice of abuse. It is time to free your­self of that voice and the 'truths' it has claimed to ut­ter.