And But Because

When teaching the early days of "yes, and," I focus on the word "and." Word choice is often demonstrative, and our intentions are revealed when we choose different words. If you really listen to yourself and the sentence you are creating, the words you say after "and" will likely be different than the words you will say after "but" or "because." Sometimes I describe what those other words tend to signify, descriptions I got from a book somewhere sometime.

Recently, one of my students asked me to break that down for them, so Iooked for that reference everywhere. I even asked some other SCIT teachers. No sign of it.​

So I figured I'd recreate it from my memory and my own experience and put it up here for reference. As a bonus, if anyone knows where this is from, please let me know!

• "Yes, and" says I agree with what you're saying and am going to build on it
• "Yes because" and "Yes so" say I heard what you said but I want to follow the plot of the story rather than the emotional truth of what's happening between us right now.
• "Yes, but" says I heard what you said but I think my idea is better. Or I heard but I don't feel comfortable with where this is going

Of course, over time we focus less on words and more on agreeing to the emotional truth, the game, the offer being made. But I think this distinction is interesting early on.​