IF there’s one thing I hate it’s badly behaved and foul-mouthed children.

I’m obviously not alone in this as, when you hear youngsters coming out with very industrial language, you can see adults looking disapproving.

Unfortunately for 23 year-old Rian Birtwell, he went one step further. He challenged six year Alfi Forsyth, from Sunderland, about kicking an old man’s stick but Alfi called him a “gay boy” and told him to “f*** off.” Nice.

Mr Birtwell obviously decided to teach him a lesson so went off to get a bar of soap, and washed out Alfi’s mouth. The action landed him in court, with a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

Alfi’s mum, Lynne Cook, says that it’s up to her to chastise her son, not other people. And here we have an interesting dilemma.

It really doesn’t seem that long ago, although it probably is, that children were expected to respect adults and not answer them back – certainly not with a foul-mouthed rant.

Unfortunately, now that so many parents are rearing precious princes and princesses who can do no wrong and must be pandered to and persuaded at all times, things are different.

Children now appear to have the upper hand and their behaviour, whatever it is, must be defended. Or perhaps it is the adults defending their parenting skills that we’re seeing?

It’s plain that Mr Birtwell made a mistake in physically touching the lad. It was the wrong thing to do. However, you do suspect that if he had approached Alfi’s mum about her son’s behaviour he might not have had the positive result he would have liked.

Yes, it is up to parents to chastise their children when they’ve done something wrong, and Alfi’s mum said she did do that. But, it would have said much about her own definition of both chastisement and acceptable behaviour if she had condemned her son in rather stronger terms.

Perhaps the punishment did not fit the crime, but the spirit of it will be acknowledged by many.

Children copy adults and siblings and what they hear around them. If parents talk to their children in a reasonable way without resorting to bad language then, usually, that is how the children will speak. The alternative is obvious, so perhaps there’s a lesson here in keeping the bad language down around children full-stop.