Games Students Play: I win/you lose

(Be sure you have read the introduction to these "games":Games Students Play)
A youth/adult game. The goal for the youth is to turn a nice, calm adult into the “bad guy” by goading them, “pushing their buttons.” forcing issues. There are a thousand variations on what they will do, but the end result is that the adult over-reacts (“one more animal noise during prayer time and I'm calling your parents”). All the kids will know that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, so the adult looks mean to everyone present.

Since the youths that do this are good at finding our weaknesses and exploiting them, this is a hard game to break up.:

• We can be superhuman in not over-reacting no matter how badly we want to
• We can watch and when we see another of the adults being goaded into this game, intervene, taking over interacting with the youth while the adult can go cool off.
• Establish in advance rules with consequences for things that are unacceptable to you. For example, before it becomes a problem ask the group what the consequence should be for being disruptive and rude during prayer time. This then allows you to be the good guy (“The rule is that you must **** for being disruptive but, since this is the first offense, I'll soften it a bit – is that ok group?”)
• Have a discussion about what you see happening (“Is it fair that I'm being pushed into over-reacting? What do you all think about this?”) Of course disruptors usually don't want a discussion. They may be trying to get out of a discussion with their disruptive behavior.