One of the young men I work with was doing afternoon chores today, and he asked me to show him how to tie up a garbage bag. When I finished, I asked, “Would you like me to help and take the trash out for you?”
“If you would, please.”
Such a simple response — something most of us might not pay much attention to. But when working with kids who sometimes demonstrate that, through no fault of their own, they have somewhat limited social skills, I notice.
Indeed, it’s my job, among other things, to notice.
I pointed out that I felt he’d earned 2,000 points for that interaction. He pulled out his point card and jotted them down, and after I signed it, I asked, “Do you know what you did to earn those points?”
He explained that he’d been polite.
“Correct.” I asked, “Do you know why it’s important to accept help politely like that?”
“Not really.”
Indeed, why? I paused for a moment, thinking about it. Why is it better to say, “If you would, please” than respond, “Yeah,” or “If you want to,” or any number of less-than-perfect formulations. It’s one of those things many of us parse without thinking, a response we expect to hear.
I thought for a moment, but not long. To be honest, I’m beginning to develop a skill for this explaining of social conventions.
“Because the next time you need help, I’ll be more likely to offer it. If you’d just said, ‘Yeah, if you want,’ I probably wouldn’t have felt that you really appreciated my help. But saying it like you did showed me that you really appreciated it, and so I’ll be more likely to offer to help you the next time I see you working on something.” Not a bad reason.
He accepted it and moved on.
The question is, will he remember it next time?
I’m starting to be optimistic enough about my job to think it’s quite possible. Dare I say, likely?
With all the negative re-inforcement and incentives offered to teens, I wonder how often “treating them like adults when they act like adults” has been tried. My mother, who also worked with troubled youth, got good milage out of that strategy as well.
I was going to say “the simple stragegy of…” but then it occured to me that it’s not simple; you have to be able to see a person, not a collection of inappropriate behavior.
Working with autistic children really helped me in seeing the child and not the behaviors. But admittedly, there are some moments that it’s hard to see through the fog of inappropriate behavior.
Re: “treating them like adults when they act like adults.” It’s a great strategy, but they have to act like adults first, right? It’s the chicken-egg paradox of behaviorism. The “good behavior” we’re rewarding is really mature behavior: accepting consequences for actions, accepting “no” for an answer, etc.