When (and How) to Interrupt

I was waiting for the train in earshot of a small group of teens. And I noticed one person kept talking over and interrupting the others. Now I completely understand how tweens and teens much like any group can get riled up and in their excitement, chatter overlaps, sentences get finished in a congenial way, and voices naturally get lost in the shuffle.

But in this particular scenario, it seemed that a couple of girls were being talked over and they just weren't being allowed to speak much, or have a say about the conversation topic. (I know this, because as moms, we naturally develop some serious eavesdropping skills.) So I'm half listening and I kept hearing this one person interrupt the others time and time again.

I kind of wanted to turn around and ask this person, “Do you realize you've been interrupting everyone else? Let them speak!” And then tell the other to girls interrupt back. “You were rudely interrupted. So you go ahead and interrupt back.”

It got me thinking, why didn't they interrupt back? Did they really not care to finish their thoughts? Or were they too polite or nice to call out the interrupter or jump back in with their opinions?

I encourage my daughters to be assertive, to share their stories and participate.

But by raising my daughters to think that manners are morals and interrupting is impolite and rude, am I inadvertently undermining their ability to rightfully claim airtime?

Will they be afraid to assert themselves in a lively discussion, afraid that they'll offend?

Will they choose politeness over being heard?

Or maybe they'll practice their manners and wait for a pause, a time to reenter the conversation.

But what if the topic takes a turn and moves on and their point becomes irrelevant? As I'm sure you're aware, women and girls are conditioned to be nice much more than men and boys.

Sariah Shamali author of Rage Becomes Her, The Power of Women's Anger, puts it this way. Globally, childhood politeness lessons are gender asymmetrical.

We socialize girls to take turns, listen more carefully, not curse and resist interrupting in ways we don't expect of boys.

Put another way. We generally teach girls subservient habits and boys to exercise dominance.

She also adds parents interrupt girls twice as often and hold them to stricter politeness norms. Teachers engaged boys who correctly see disruptive speech as a marker of dominant masculinity, more often and more dynamically than girls.

All of this leads to boys and men being more prone to interrupt and prevent others from interrupting them, while girls and women are more likely not to interrupt and yield when interrupted. This pattern established from a young age, leads to women being seen as having less authority.

Shamali sites research that found in male dominated problem-solving groups, such as boards, committees, and legislators, men speak 75% more than women. Which is why researchers summed up:

Having a seat at the table is not the same as having a voice.

And what if your daughter is quieter by nature? One of my daughters presents as more introverted and quiet. So I'm always curious and maybe concerned that she's not speaking up and being heard for girls like her, that adds another obstacle. Another layer of hesitation on top of the gendered expectations of politeness.

It's a lot to try and wrap your head around. I suspect we need to address this as much as possible when girls are growing up, when they presumably have safe spaces in the classroom and at home when they've been less worn down by everyday slights and when the gender gaps on boards, in PE, et cetera, haven't been subconsciously normalized yet.

So how can we strike a balance? How can we help ensure our daughters feel comfortable, continuing to speak their minds and holding their own, without entirely forsaking good manners?

And if you're like me, if I have to interrupt, I'd rather do so in a user-friendly way that's less likely to alienate others. It can build trust and allyship, both important qualities to have in any setting. So after digging around, I came up with a list.

Here's what I want to teach my girls. 

1. Interrupting and whether interrupting back is appropriate depends on the context. A judge interrupting a lawyer in the courtroom is different than a teacher interrupting a student to make a correction, which is also different from a classmate interrupting as you're sharing your opinion on climate change. There aren't any real hard and fast rules, but as a very loose general rule, if it's in a casual setting, a classroom discussion or a work meeting, I think you should speak confidently and feel comfortable preventing interruptions from others and interrupt back if someone does, which leads me to my second point, interrupting back.

2. If you're in one of those contexts, then you can and should interrupt back when you've been rudely interrupted. Think of Kamala Harris during the vice-presidential debates in 2020, and confidently say, “I'm speaking,” and continue with your thoughts when someone tries to interrupt. Other options, depending on your personality, might be, “Would you mind if I finish?” or “I'm not quite done with my point yet,” or “Maybe as soon as I'm done then you can talk.” Then when you're done speaking, you can loop back to them and say, “Okay, so-and-so, you were saying?”

3. Practice, and be prepared to use the phrases that Sariah Shamali proffers in her article, “10 Simple Words Every Girl Needs to Learn.” It's 10 words between three phrases. These are straightforward ways of getting the point across and taking back the conversation.

   • Stop interrupting me.

   • I just said that.

   • No explanation needed.

4. When you have to initiate an interruption, Casey Erin Clark and Julie Fog of Vital Voice offer a few approaches:

   • You can acknowledge the previous point first. “That's a really good point,” or “I hear what you're saying,” then continue with your thoughts.

   • You can also begin by saying, “I need to interrupt you for a second before we switch topics,” or “I need to interrupt you before we move on.”

   • If you can, use your interruption to throw support behind a classmate or a colleague, then even better, this ties back to that allyship aspect as well. Like, “You know, related to this discussion point, Ella just did a report on that.”

5. When interrupting, speak confidently, loudly, and without any apologies. I used to be one of those people that said, sorry, way too often. Even when I was bumping into tables, like who was I hurting? No one. And even when I wasn't saying, sorry, I sometimes spoke, like I was apologizing. I know you've heard it that, so I, I, I need you to turn in this report, that kind of thing. I've become much better at that, but it took practice speaking with courage and confidence. And I hope my girls learned that and know that practicing will help them feel those emotions too.

6. Don't confuse a step outside of your comfort zone with a misstep. Don't let discomfort or fear stop you from standing up for yourself or others.

7. Remember you are not responsible for everyone else's feelings. Know what you need to say and know that you deserve to be heard, how other people take it is their problem. That's not to say you should completely disregard others' feelings in every context, but if you are interrupting back, and or are interrupting someone who may consciously or subconsciously think men have more authority and should speak more than women, then they'll likely be offended, but that's not your problem. Don't silence yourself to make someone else comfortable.

As I wrote these, I realized that I'm still practicing and fine tuning most of these points. These tips are just as much for me at 46 as they are for my daughters. I'm definitely a product of societal expectations and gendered behavior of the seventies, eighties, nineties.

But I'm optimistic that if I start impressing these ideas upon my daughters now, they’ll become skills that they practice then excel at and over time they'll become second nature.

And then if they're interrupted at Thanksgiving Dinner or perhaps a Vice Presidential Debate, I'll be so proud and tickled to hear them interrupt back with an unapologetic, “I'm speaking.”