In this scenario, when Johnny first asks Ken, “does your friend have to stay here all the time?”, he is coming off rather strong and it is catching Ken off guard since Johnny is not being fully clear about his question to Ken, therefore, Ken is more likely to respond negatively and defensively. After Ken responds, Johnny gives a vague response and does not provide and reasons why he changed his mind. Johnny’s reply is also a high level abstract language response and it makes it hard for Ken to understand how Johnny is feeling and what he is going through. In this response, Johnny should use language of responsibility where he uses “I” and “we” to express how he feels and what can be discussed about the situation. This is making it harder for Ken to understand Johnny’s situation and how he is feeling and affecting him and it makes Ken reply back with a defensive reply. Ken takes …show more content…
Their conversation turns into disruptive language and they begin to take out their frustrations out on one another rather than being objective about the situation. What Johnny can do instead to bring up the subject of conversation is to change the way he asks the question. This way he will not come off very aggressive. He can ask something like, “Hey Ken, can we talk about your friend? He’s been spending a lot of nights here and its affecting me.” What Johnny can then do is use language of responsibility and explain why his friend is affecting him. He should give a low-level abstract explanation in order that Ken can understand how his friend is affecting his sleep and his school work. For example, he can say that one night, Ken and his friend stayed up late and made a lot of noise, which distracted him from his studying and had a bad night’s rest and resulted in a poor test grade. By being specific and giving an example of how it is affecting him, it is