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We have noted that the problem youth frequently has labeled his problem behavior as cool, sophisticated, and fashionable, and sees “good” behavior in a negative light. Whenever this distortion of values is reflected in the language of young people, staff must relabel the behavior so that hurting behavior will be made undesirable and helping behavior fashionable. Thus, for example, if the delinquent youth perceives criminal types as cool, mature, smart, and masculine, then we might counter this view by noting that many 50-year-old criminals are locked in cages because they act like babies and must be watched all the time. If “truancy” has an exciting quality to it, we ought to give this problem a label that sounds less mature, perhaps “playing games of hide and seek.1I If delinquent youth feel that their mass rape of a girl is cool, then we should relabel this act as “messing over a helpless person.” If stealing is seen as slick, then it should be relabeled as “sneaky and dumb.” If a youth gets some rewards from his tendency to act in violent ways, then the attractiveness of such behavior can be diminished when it is relabeled as “having a childish temper tantrum” or “acting like a hothead.” If a youth brags about his fighting prowess (“I gave him a knuckle sandwich”), staff can relabel it by asking, “Do you mean you hurt him?” Likewise, if the group under the guise of helping is possibly communicating a veiled threat (e.g., “You had better change or we will be climbing on your back”), staff can question the intent by posing new labels: “Does that mean hurting or helping?” The general concept is this: Delinquent behavior is often accompanied by a romanticizing terminology that reinforces such behavior. Staff in a PPC program are alert to these terms and attempt to lower the attractiveness of the behavior by calling it by a name that is undesirable to the youth. Likewise, all reference to positive, helping behavior should be made with labels that are desirable. This will produce a state of dissonance that will motivate youth to develop negative attitudes about negative behavior and positive attitudes about positive behavior. This is the essence of “making caring fashionable.” PPC staff quickly become adept at describing all positive helping behavior with adjectives associated with strength and maturity and relabeling all hurting behavior with adjectives associated with weakness and immaturity. Many labels are useable. Thus, reference to positive behavior as great, intelligent, independent, improving, winning will help to make such behavior more desirable for most students, while the description of negative behavior as childish, unintelligent, helpless, destructive, copping out, losing will help to establish such behavior as undesirable and unfashionable. Certain labels are more effective with boys' groups than with girls' groups, and vice versa. For example, reference to positive behavior as sensitive, lovely, attractive may be helpful with girls' groups but may have just the opposite effect with boys' groups. In the same way, the description of positive behavior as brave, daring, and gutsy will be useful with male groups but will not achieve the same effect with female groups. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that any negative label is meant to apply to behavior rather than to person; otherwise we are attacking a person's self-concept. Staff and groups should not get into a situation in which they are merely calling a young person names under the pretense of helping him. We can label an individual's explosive behavior as a childish temper tantrum, but we should never tell him he is a child; rather, that he is too mature to continue such childish behavior. Since group members pick up many of the relabeling techniques, staff must keep alert in honoring this subtle but important distinction. “Sometimes you act in babyish ways” is quite different from “you are just a big damn baby.” |
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