As you know, one of the things that has kept me going when my son is looking to provoke a reaction is not to give him one - or at least not the twisting myself inside out he was expecting.

It can be a difficult path to tread because I never want him to mistake my lack of response for acceptance of his sarcastic and sometimes bullying tone.

I may not be able to stop his use of skunk, but the masterplan is to at least wean Matt off the addiction to referring to me as '****head' or worse whenever he feels like entertaining himself at my expense.

This in itself can be draining, although I hide it well from him. Inside I counter the loss of dignity by noting that not only is he unnerved by my apparent thick skin, but the incidents are diminishing.

A lot of the time I treat his minor digs and diatribes like an annoying telly programme playing in the background. Mentally I turn down the volume until the episode is over.

That's fine.

But there are those occasions when I am desperate to switch him off, pull out the plug and throw the Matt set in the bin.

At support groups for parents of troublesome teenagers they encourage you to develop strategies to help you through situations like this. It's like anger management for people in raging despair rather than blood-boiling tempers.

Some learn to start walking before their mouth kicks in and to keep on going until the joy of gentle exercise does the trick.

Madmum was never one for organised yoga classes and I only go swimming on holidays, so many of the stress-relieving hobbies are unlikely to hold my attention.

So it's confession time - the answer for me is that if, say 30 minutes after Matt has had a horrible dig at me I still feel mentally bruised, I take a petty little revenge. Sometimes a quite ridiculous one. He doesn't even have to know I've done it.

It definitely makes me feel better. Am I a bad person? You judge.

Here's an example. He will tell me: "You are as thick as ****."

Ignored, he goes upstairs and I realise he is now flopped on his bed listening to music. So I stand in the dining room under his bedroom making crazy and exaggerated rude gestures at the ceiling.

Imagine doing this yourself.

Within about 30 seconds I am laughing (not too loudly) and feel both spiritually and physically lifted. Now, I'm thinking that the laughter is at myself, rather than him, but either way it definitely stops me feeling low. We are more than equal, even if he doesn't know it.

And is this really revenge if the person it's aimed at has no idea you've taken it?

Confiding in friends, who have also admitted to some sneaky, secret and even bizarre swipes at husbands and brothers, I've come to the conclusion that the joy of petty revenge is very much a female thing.

Perhaps we developed it over centuries of watching men punch each other.

Who cares? It works for me.