he article is devoted to the analysis of the communicative norm and disorders in informal Russian verbal communication on the basis of children’s speech in conversations between children, children and parents, teenagers. Such parameters of communication as rules of speech behaviour for the convenience of the recipient and etiquette genres are considered based on a material of authentic children’s statements published on the Krasnoyarsk Internet forum “Krasmama” and in the modern Russian literature for children. The article also considers a mechanism of communicative errors. Communicative scenarios of compliance and violation of the rules of speech behaviour are reconstructed. Particular attention is paid to statements having the purpose to manipulate the recipient.

As a result, it was found that unconscious violations of communicative norms and, in particular, the rules of speech behaviour in the interests of a listener are characteristic of children’s speech. The cause of errors may be the imitation of adult informal, reduced speech.

On the other hand, following the communicative norm, namely observance of the rules of speech behaviour and the use of etiquette speech genres in child-parent communication leads to ambiguous results and may indicate a conscious intention of a child to influence or manipulate an adult. Etiquette statements coming out of a child’s mouth are markers of adult speech.

In communication between children, and especially between adolescents, as shown by the analysis of texts of modern literature for children, inappropriate compliance with etiquette standards may signalize the author’s hidden goals that are still unknown to the addressee (influence, manipulation), or a communicative error.