Verbal Judo

This week I attended a library conference down south where I presented two programs. One of them I co-presented with a colleague and friend of mine on the topic "Managing Teen Behavior." This is a subject that comes more and more into play nowadays with librarians dealing with teens adopting the library as a hang out place, and a place where they are left for hours until their parents come home. These teens are restless and bored and often cause problems for staff.

In our presentation we covered verbal judo, a tactical communication style used to generate compliance. Among the topics covered in verbal judo was "things never to say to a teen." Among them are "Calm Down", "You Never... or You Always...," "What's your problem?" and in my opinion one of the most used and awful of them all: "Because I said so." I am guilty of the "Because I said so" statement probably because it has been used on me. Whenever this statement is uttered the first response from a teen will be "why?" When you say "because I said so" you are not supporting your rules with logic and reason and thus will not gain any respect. After I studied these verbal judo techniques I made a promise to keep out "because I said so" from my vocabulary no matter how easy it is to say to an unruly teen.

Male v. Female Presence

Last week my anime club had its annual sushi activity. This year I invited the local high school's Japanese teacher, Cook Sensei, to show the kids how to make their own maki rolls and some bean curd thing that I cannot begin to spell. The kids were delighted and there were over 30 of them jumping and bouncing around, high on wasabi.

The noise level increased to a roar and after attempts to quiet them down with more reasonable tones I raised my voice to a loud shout above the din asking them all to listen to the sushi instructions. This quieted them down for like two minutes and then the roar increased to school lunchroom levels. Cook Sensei had had enough and with a huge, deep MASCULINE voice he said the same thing I did. This shut them up immediately and they stayed quiet.

I have noticed this same kind of reaction with the teens with my male manager. I will say the exact same thing to the teens, in the exact same tone but their response to my FEMININE presence is different than my manager's masculine one. The teens reacted to Cook Sensei the same way. People don't respond to female authority figures the same way men do. That's why no matter what I say to the teens I just won't get the same response.