Adults and the Whole “Talking Back” Issue

I agree that children should listen to adults and not ignore them, but talking back is fine! My mom has always been fine and responded with witty (but not mean) replies to things I said. Therefore, I thought it was okay. But when my mom has a conversation with another adult and I’m standing there the adult sometimes starts talking to me. I’ll say something generally regarded as talking back, not resisting though, just interjecting what I see as a good point about their statement. It’s like an atomic bomb has been dropped. They do all they can to shoot me down, scold me and generally make that the worst moment of my life. I get it, when you were younger it was customary that kids remain silent and ignored, but now, kids can be really quite intelligent, and we’re still expected to act like idiots. I go to school where the teachers support student–teacher conversations, many about complex subjects like the theory of relativity in relation to the U.S. economic history (we’re in 7th grade, who says we can’t be intelligent?) and we call them all by their first names. They’ve taught us to talk to adults in a polite way but to still get our point across. Adults sometimes regard this as talking back. Again, nuclear war is started. New age, people!