Games Students Play -- Sweetheart

"Sweetheart" (Be sure you have read the introduction to these "games":Games Students Play)

A Youth to youth game. This is the classic double sided complement put down: “What a lovely dress … I had one just like it, last year” “Good try on that fly ball... if only you had caught it” “they really should have invited you to the party... but I understand why they didn't” so on and so forth.

This game is really hard to break up because if you interfere or try to counter the negative part of the comment it just draws attention to the put down youth. The down-puter can also respond “I didn't say anything mean..” or “they know I'm just teasing.”

Any counter response (such as “yes, that is a lovely dress I've seen a movie star wearing one”) will just sound lame. The best response is to ignore the interchange, but soon thereafter give the victim a real and valid complement.

You can also have a program on put downs and their destructiveness. For younger your this means a surface level discussion identifying specific kinds of put downs and setting some kind of group system for reminding each other that put downs are not acceptable at church. This can be a hand signal or an “insiders” phrase. We used “no plutoing” (in honor of the one time planet that was put down by scientists). This would then be a signal that an unidentified put down just happened. This is how Middle Schoolers learn.