Parents who survived pre-teens and teens... how? Help.

How do I keep my calm when they talk back? How do I set an example of being respectful and patient when they get ANGRY and offended during conversations that have nothing to do with them? (Example: we were talking about how this other kid in class was throwing an eraser around in class and my son said "because he thinks he's smarter than everyone else." I added "yeah he probably also--" Then my son got MAD and cut me off insisting he (my son) was right. I told him after calming down myself that I wasn't disagreeing with him. What I was going to say before I got cut off was that this kid probably valued the fun of throwing the eraser over learning BECAUSE he thought he was smarter than everyone else.) Like, what the hell? Why do you get so offended over nothing? I was agreeing with you.It's wearing me down. Kids can be really huge pricks sometimes. Silver lining is I keep imagining how close me and my boys will be when they're in their 20s and 30s and they have all their emotional shit together. Probably focused primarily on crippling student loan debt like me.I'm never going to stop loving my boys and letting them know I will always be here to give them unsolicited dad advice, but how do you do it while retaining your sanity when they act nasty and ungrateful in return? How do you not let your anger flare up when they act so disrespectfully and inappropriately to the situation? I try calmly telling my pre-teen that he's not being nice and that our conversation would go better if he kept an eye on his emotional responses and whether they're appropriate. But he just keeps pushing my buttons and I don't have infinite patience, so I try to explain why his actions are fucked up and it ends up a long dad lecture that both of us are getting sick of at this point.​My wife suggested starting today we should stop trying to explain why his behavior is wrong and leaving it at "Please don't talk to me like that" and if he continues we say "Alright, we can resume this conversation when you have your feelings and behavior more under control" and wait.This sounds okay in theory, but my son has already complained to me about how he feels lonely a lot and wishes he could play with us more. I worry if we do this he's going to use it as an excuse to lash out even more. Can't get him to understand that we both work full-time, there's an almost 2 year old baby brother in the picture, and we take the pre-teen to sports three times a week, play beyblades, watch movies, read books, and talk about his day and his feelings all the time. Give me a break there's only so many hours in the day and the entire family is already doing as much as we can to keep his shitty attitude at bay and sometimes it's just exhausting...Maybe I should've posted this in /rant. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2nm0Z3u