The Parent Trap : Is your kid challenging authority? Advice is plentiful--and confusing.

A mother and daughter, having argued over what video to rent, are waiting in the checkout line, where the 9-year-old announces to a stranger: “My parents treat me like crap.”

The mother, a widely read believer in democratic child-rearing techniques: a) Says “Stop it!” b) Talks to the child about her feelings. c) Tells the stranger, “She’s strong-willed.” d) Decides to buy a new book on child rearing.

Like many parents of the ‘90s, the mother did all of the above, hoping something would work.

In her words, child rearing has become “wide open and complicated.” Because she sees too many choices, “it’s like you can’t move in any direction without consequences. If you spank them, we’re told they could turn into an abuser.

“Sometimes you feel you can’t win.”

Children of the ‘90s are challenging their parents’ authority more than ever. And, lacking community consensus on the best way to respond, they frequently succeed.

Parents say their once-sweet children come home from school reciting their rights, announcing: “You can’t make me,” “Shut up and mind your own business,” “Child abuse! Child abuse!” or “I’ll write a book about you when I grow up.”

Some blame it on the Zeitgeist of individual rights, society’s 30-year disenchantment with all sorts of authority. Others blame democratic parenting techniques that have been taught to millions of parents over the last three decades, emphasizing reason, choice, listening and self-esteem.

Often, the targets of blame are baby boomer parents who may have challenged authority themselves and now, feeling guilty for or exhausted from working too hard, or being divorced, are uncomfortable with laying down the law.

Fred Gosman, a Milwaukee father turned talk-show guest as a result of his book, “Spoiled Rotten,” says parents are terrified of imposing even the most reasonable discipline. “Now, when a child swears at you, you’re supposed to be happy he’s communicating,” he said. “When he plays with matches, you compliment him on developing his small motor skills. . . .

“There’s a school of thought now that says any time you try to give helpful advice to a child and it’s not what the child wants to hear, you’re denying hope.”

In any case, some experts say the state of parental authority is in a frail condition.

Despite a healthy industry of books, magazines and seminars on the subject, there is little agreement on what to do about the erosion of parental authority. Groups favoring the democratic approach, like Active Parenting, STEP (Systematic Training for Effective Parenting) and P.E.T. (Parent Effectiveness Training), teach parents to compromise, negotiate and enforce “logical consequences.”

Groups like Back in Control advocate parents step up their enforcement of mandatory rules--not excluding the possibility of making a citizen’s arrest of their own children.

Some school districts offer both types of programs. Some child protective agencies require troubled parents to enroll in one or the other even though the techniques are contradictory.

The most maddening aspect of it all, says Charles Fishman, executive director of the Princeton, N.J.-based Institute for the Family, is that “nobody’s wrong and nobody’s right. . . .

“The true American religion is freedom. We want our kids to have voices. But we’re hung by our own petard.”

Beverly Yost, 37, is a Pasadena mother of four who has been taking parenting classes for seven years, since her first child was born. “I always wanted to do well at what I did,” she said. In the beginning, she said, she would arrive at potlucks and picnics with a separate, well-balanced lunch for her daughter “with little cut up ham slices and several courses.”

Over the years, she said, she’s noticed that “the more choices you give them, the more challenging they are to you.” Now, instead of asking them, for instance, “Would you like to pour the milk or set out the silverware?” she said she tells them what to do.

“A certain amount of compliance is not going to hurt them,” she said. “We all have to learn to conform.”

Many parents observe that their tolerance for totalitarian techniques increases in inverse proportion to the time they have available to handle a situation.

Before she was working full time, Kimberly Francis, 33, of Palos Verdes Estates said, “Many a time I stood in an aisle of a store and let my daughter have a tantrum. It was only proving to her she would not get her way.” One day she said she waited for 10 minutes while her child screamed in a drugstore. She was letting her decide when to stop.

“That day I was willing to stay as long as I could. I didn’t have anything to do. When I have a schedule conflict, I get more anxious.”

In that case, she said she might pick and choose from the various disciplinary techniques she learns on the way to work by listening to audiocassettes.

Children, she says “go through phases, and you have to do different techniques. If you only knew one and it’s not working, you’re in deep yogurt.”

But faced with so much competing, contradictory information, some parents wind up confused.

Or they are left with an eclectic smattering of knowledge which, according to UCLA parent educator Cynthia Whitham, can be a dangerous thing.

For instance, she said if a parent hugs a child after giving “time out,” it “totally messes up the good work of the time out.” If parents practice “empathetic listening” at the same time they try to ignore bad behavior, “it would really muddy what we’re trying to do.”

Whitham, staff therapist at UCLA’s Parent Training Program, said her goal is a “benign dictatorship.”

Kathe Humberstone, 44, of Rancho Bernardo describes herself as a “former power parent.” Twelve years ago, she was converted to democratic parenting and now teaches “win win” negotiating techniques with children.

Whenever she has a problem at home, she says, she takes it to the family “bargaining table.” Six years ago, she said, she was angry that her four children were eating all the cookies and ice cream before she was ready to shop again.

“I had to figure out my need,” she said. “My need was not to have to buy more ice cream than I felt was appropriate with six of us in our home. . . . I went to the table with what was going on.”

Using “active listening” and “I-message” (“I don’t like like the way you are acting,” rather than “You are bad”) techniques, Humberstone said, the group decided that each child would get a maximum half-gallon of ice cream and one package of cookies for a month.

“We still do it very month,” she said. “I’m happy. They’re happy. It’s never been an issue again.”

But then, advocates of every technique have fables to tell that prove their theories.

In one of the few academic evaluations of different parenting styles, UC Berkeley psychologist Diana Baumrind concluded: “Authoritative parents who are highly demanding and highly responsive were remarkably successful in protecting their adolescents from problem drug use and in generating competence.”

But she also concluded: “Authoritative upbringing, although sufficient, is not a necessary condition to produce competent children.” In addition, her study looked only at middle-class, educationally advantaged white families.

Although many parents would feel lost without it, much parenting advice is flawed in that it doesn’t take into account the parents’ background, their temperament, their child’s temperament, the amount of stress the family is under, the particular situation nor the number of children one is dealing with, said Roberta Berns, professor of human development at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo.

“They’re really dealing with the ideal situation where everybody’s quiet, everybody’s calm and you can be rational. In real life, I don’t think people have the time and the emotional stability to take the time to think before they act.”

An Orange County mother of two agreed. “You don’t think you’ll feel this way as a parent, but sometimes you feel vengeful.”

Since she took a democratic parenting class, she said, she now tries to think of natural consequences for her children’s bad behavior. “But you can’t always think of natural consequences. What is the natural consequence for speaking rudely?” she asked.

Sometimes she screams and feels guilty for it. Her child, aware that she is supposed to get a “natural consequence” instead, has replied, “See? I knew I couldn’t trust you. . . .

“We’re all searching and trying,” sighed the mother.

“My hope and prayer is that my children will forget all this when they grow up.”