The topic of the use — and misuse — of the power of speech has certainly had its hour in the spotlight recently. It's interesting to note the reactive response that offensive public utterance can elicit, and to wonder just when and how we'll be willing to dig down and address the roots of it all. At what point might our values determine that freedom of speech was never intended as license to debase others — and ourselves?

When a friend of mine recently chaperoned a school field trip, she was appalled at the way the kids spoke to and treated each other. As the bus lurched along, Mary was treated to an earful of what the driver overhears daily — merciless teasing as grade-school peers freely branded each other "dorks," "buttheads" — and worse.

She also got to watch her own children, whom she knows as kind and considerate people, scanning uncomfortably between her and their schoolmates, obviously wondering how much to participate in the melee.

At home, her children know that teasing and name-calling aren't just discouraged, they're unacceptable. Mary and her husband aren't unrealistic enough to believe that they can keep their children from sibling battles, but they stringently enforce a standard that all members of their family speak to each other with respect; even in the midst of one of those disagreements. If emotions run too high, then each needs to take time out until civility can be restored.

"They know how serious we are about this, because my husband and I hold ourselves to the same high standard of civil behavior and consideration of others' feelings," Mary says.

On the bus that day, she finally spoke up in a forceful voice that knows how to get attention quickly: "The teasing and rudeness stop right here, or the field trip does and we go back and sit in school for the rest of the day. Everybody understand?"

They did, and after a period of uncomfortable silence, quiet conversations eventually resumed until the young riders reached their destination.

Like a number of other adults I know, Mary has grown impatient with a somewhat pervasive attitude that kids are just naturally mean to each other and that, as long as things don't escalate into physical violence, that's the most we can hope for. Teasing and other verbal and emotional abuse are accepted as givens, as if it's inevitable for children to be nasty and even downright cruel to one another. While political correctness tries to quash racial or sexual taunts, when it comes to garden-variety insults, anything goes.

"Not in my house, and not within my hearing anywhere else, either," Mary affirms. "I simply tell them that that's enough. Unlike the old adage about sticks and stones, names and teasing do hurt, and are usually even more damaging and long-lasting."

Tolerance is a common theme that adults use when trying to address and discourage bullying and teasing. But how about a little intolerance for such hateful behavior, she suggests, a firm message that clearly says, "You are behaving in an unacceptable way, and we're not going to tolerate it."

There's one childhood memory that guides my conscience and has helped police my behavior for decades now. My best friend's father was one of my favorite people in the world. He was the quintessential great dad — kind, soft-spoken, gently humorous and thoughtful. A hard-working man with a big family, he always made time to interact with his kids and their friends, whether drawing caricatures of us as we watched, giggling, or hunkering down his 6-foot-6-inch frame to help us construct the miniature villages that took over his living-room floor.

Whenever he spoke with me, as he always made time to do, I felt supremely special, as though I truly mattered. Their family had a household standard about respectful behavior among all members that was similar to that of my chaperoning friend, Mary.

One day, this kind dad gave me a real gift, even though it felt like something quite different at the time. I was riding in the back seat of his wood-paneled station wagon after he picked up a small gang of us from a Girl-Scout Christmas party. We were all comparing the gifts we'd drawn in the gift exchange, and I wasn't very happy with mine. When one of my peers leaned over and observed under her breath that someone had obviously spent the low end of the price range for it, I felt license to begin holding forth on how worthless and disappointing it was and how unfair that I got it. I was probably enjoying my companions' attention as I bewailed my plight and began berating both the gift and the giver.

I'll never forget the look in that dad's eyes as they met mine in the rear-view mirror and he said evenly but firmly, "Hey now, that's enough." I'd never heard this man raise his voice, and he didn't this time — just set an unmistakable limit. Although I wanted to leap from the car or otherwise disappear at that moment, I've been as grateful to him for this unexpected disciplinary action as I have for the hundreds of kindnesses he's bestowed on me.

Knowing that he was disappointed and displeased with my behavior had an enormous impact on me. I was stunned and then, appropriately, embarrassed and remorseful.

He didn't need to point out things like how potentially hurtful what I was saying was, how the donor of that gift could have been sitting in the car, for all I knew. Awareness of all of this came very quickly once I was jolted out of my little rant.

All he had to tell me, this man whose opinion I cared about so much, was that it was time to stop, with four words that changed my life forever. He spoke up when my behavior was eroding into meanness and helped set a limit for me that has somehow become internally reinforcing. I believe that he helped activate my healthy sense of shame, and I'm eternally grateful.

Regarding the power of what we say, Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Faith, wrote: "Every word is endowed with a spirit, therefore the speaker or expounder should carefully deliver his words at the appropriate time and place, for the impression which each word maketh is clearly evident and perceptible. The Great Being saith: One word may be likened unto fire, another unto light, and the influence which both exert is manifest in the world. Therefore an enlightened man of wisdom should primarily speak with words as mild as milk, that the children of men may be nurtured and edified thereby and may attain the ultimate goal of human existence which is the station of true understanding and nobility" (Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, Page 172).

Baha'i writer Phillipe Copeland, in his Baha'i Thought blog, also offers some excellent food for reflection about the recent speech-related events that have received so much media coverage.

Most often, undisciplined stewardship of the power of speech trickles over into our work and social environments as gossiping and mean-spirited fault-finding. I've yet to see how this differs very much from the nasty behavior of children treating each other deplorably — it just gets sneakier and more surreptitious, of course.

Obviously, we're responsible first for our own behavior. But what kind of change might we effect if, as adults, we accept the role and authority that maturity supposedly confers and determine to intervene and "break the spell" of such meanness, even if it's inevitably awkward to do so? Some people creatively interrupt such things by leaving the room, creating a distraction or changing the subject.

But sometimes, just like my friend Mary, and that dad who helped me head off an unpleasant aspect of my own behavior, it's simply time to say enough is enough.

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Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.