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Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children Paperback – October 31, 2000
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P.E.T., or Parent Effectiveness Training, began in 1962 as the first national parent-training program to teach parents how to communicate more effectively with kids and offer step-by-step advice to resolve family conflicts so everybody wins. This beloved classic is the most studied, highly praised, and proven parenting program in the world—and it will work for you. Now revised and updated, this groundbreaking guide will show you:
• How to avoid being a permissive parent
• How to listen so kids will talk to you and talk so kids will listen to you
• How to teach your children to “own” their problems and to solve them
• How to apply the “No Lose” method to resolve conflicts
Using the timeless methods of P.E.T. will have immediate results: less fighting, fewer tantrums and lies, no need for punishment. Whether you have a toddler striking out for independence or a teenager who has already started rebelling, you’ll find P.E.T. a compassionate, effective way to instill responsibility and create a nurturing family environment in which your child will thrive.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarmony
- Publication dateOctober 31, 2000
- Dimensions5.21 x 0.82 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100609806939
- ISBN-13978-0609806937
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From the Inside Flap
How to avoid being a permissive parent
How to listen so kids will talk to you and talk so kids will listen to you
How to teach your children to "own" their problems and to solve them
How to use the "No-Lose" method to resolve conflicts
Using the timeless methods of P.E.T. will have immediate results: less fighting, fewer tantrums and lies, no need for punishment. Whether you have a toddler striking out fo
From the Back Cover
How to avoid being a permissive parent
How to listen so kids will talk to you and talk so kids will listen to you
How to teach your children to "own" their problems and to solve them
How to use the "No-Lose" method to resolve conflicts
Using the timeless methods of P.E.T. will have immediate results: less fighting, fewer tantrums and lies, no need for punishment. Whether you have a toddler striking out fo
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Since readers will not be able to express their concerns face-to-face with an instructor, here are some questions and answers that may be helpful at the start.
question: Is this another permissive approach to raising children?
answer: Definitely not. Permissive parents get into as much trouble as overly strict parents, for their kids often turn out to be selfish, unmanageable, uncooperative, and inconsiderate of the needs of their parents.
question: Can one parent use this new approach effectively if the other sticks to the old approach?
answer: Yes and no. If only one parent starts to use this new approach, there will be a definite improvement in the relationship between that parent and the children. But the relationship between the other parent and the children may get worse. Far better then, for both parents to learn the new methods. Furthermore, when both parents try to learn this new approach together, they can help each other a great deal.
question: Will parents lose their influence over the children with this new approach? Will they abdicate the responsibility to give guidance and direction to their childrens' lives?
answer: As parents read the first chapters, they may get this impression. A book can only present a system step by step. The early chapters deal with ways to help children find their own solutions to problems they encounter. In these situations, the role of an effective parent will seem different--much more passive or "nondirective" than parents are accustomed to. Later chapters, however, deal with how to modify unacceptable behavior of children and how to influence them to be considerate of your needs as parents. In these situations, you will be shown specific ways of being an even more responsible parent--acquiring even more influence than you have now. It might be helpful to check the Table of Contents for the subjects covered in later chapters.
This book teaches parents a rather easy-to-learn method of encouraging kids to accept responsibility for finding their own solutions to their own problems, and illustrates how parents can put that method to work right away in the home. Parents who learn this method (called Active Listening) may experience what P.E.T.-trained parents have described:
"It's such a relief not to think I have to have all the answers to my children's problems."
"P.E.T. has made me have a much greater appreciation of the capacities of my children for solving their own problems."
"I was amazed at how the Active Listening method worked. My kids come up with solutions to their problems that are often far better than any I could have given them."
"I guess I've always been very uncomfortable about playing the role of God--feeling that I should be knowing what my kids should do when they have problems."
Today, thousands of adolescents have fired their parents, and for good reason as far as the kids are concerned.
"My mom doesn't understand kids my age."
"I just hate to go home and get lectured to every night."
"I never tell my parents anything; if I did they wouldn't understand."
"I wish my dad would get off my back."
"As soon as I can, I'm going to leave home--I can't stand their constantly hassling me about everything."
The parents of these kids are usually well aware of having lost their jobs, as evidenced by these statements made in our P.E.T. classes:
"I have absolutely no more influence over my sixteen-year-old boy."
"We've given up with Annie."
"Ricky won't ever eat with us, and he hardly ever says a word to us. Now he wants a room out in the garage."
"Mark is never home. And he'll never tell me where he goes or what he's doing. If I ever ask him, he tells me it's none of my business."
To me it is a tragedy that one of the potentially most intimate and satisfying relationships in life so often creates bad blood. Why do so many adolescents come to see their parents as "the enemy"? Why is there such a rift between parents and children? Why are parents and youth in our society literally at war with each other?
Chapter 14 will deal with these questions and show why it is unnecessary for kids to rebel and revolt against their parents. P.E.T. is revolutionary, yes, but not a method that invites revolution. Rather, it is a method that can help parents avoid being fired, can prevent war in the home, and bring parents and children closer rather than grouped against each other as hostile antagonists.
Parents who at first may be inclined to reject our methods as too revolutionary may find the motivation to study them with an open mind by reading the following excerpt from a history submitted by a mother and father after they had taken P.E.T.
"Bill, at sixteen, was our greatest problem. He was estranged. He was running wild and was completely irresponsible. He was getting his first D's and F's in school. He never came home at the agreed times, offering as excuses flat tires, broken watches, and empty gas tanks. We spied on him, he lied to us. We grounded him. We took away his license. We docked his allowance. Our conversations were full of recriminations. All to no avail. After one violent argument, he lay on the kitchen floor and kicked and screamed and shouted that he was going crazy. At that point we enrolled in Dr. Gordon's class for parents. Change did not come overnight . . . We never had felt like a unit, a warm and loving, deeply caring, family. This only came about after great changes in our attitudes and values. . . . This new idea of being a person--a strong, separate per- son, expressing his own values but not forcing them on another, but being a good model--this was the turning point. We had much greater influence. . . . From rebellion and fits of rage, from failure in school, Bill changed to an open, friendly, loving person who calls his parents 'two of my favorite people.' . . . He is finally back in the family. . . . I have a relationship with him I never believed possible, full of love and trust and independence. He is strongly internally motivated and, when each one of us is also, we really live and grow as a family."
Parents who learn to use our new ways of communicating their feelings are not likely to produce a child like the sixteen-year-old boy who sat in my office and announced with a straight face:
"I don't have to do anything around the house. Why should I? It's my parents' job to take care of me. They are legally required to. I didn't ask to be born, did I?"
When I heard what this young man said and obviously believed, I could not help but think, "What kind of persons are we producing if children are permitted to grow up with the attitude that the world owes them so much even though they give back so little? What kind of citizen are parents sending out into the world? What kind of society will these selfish human beings make?"
Almost without exception parents can be categorized roughly into three groups--the "winners," the "losers," and the "oscillators." Parents in the first group strongly defend and persuasively justify their right to exercise authority or power over the child. They believe in restricting, setting limits, demanding certain behaviors, giving commands, and expecting obedience. They use threats of punishment to influence the child to obey, and mete out punishments when he does not. When conflict arises between the needs of the parents and those of the child, these parents consistently resolve the conflict in such a way that the parent wins and the child loses. Generally, these parents rationalize their "winning" by such stereotyped thinking as "This is the way my parents raised me and I turned out pretty well," "It's for the good of the child," "Children actually want parental authority," or simply the vague notion that "It is the responsibility of parents to use their authority for the good of the child, because parents know best what is right and wrong."
The second group of parents, somewhat fewer in number than the "winners," allow their children a great deal of freedom most of the time. They consciously avoid setting limits and proudly admit that they do not condone authoritarian methods. When conflict occurs between the needs of the parent and those of the child, rather consistently it is the child who wins and the parent who loses, because such parents believe it is harmful to frustrate the child's needs.
Probably the largest group of parents is made up of those who find it impossible to follow consistently either one of the first two approaches. Consequently, in trying to arrive at a "judicious mixture" of each they oscillate back and forth between being strict and lenient, tough and easy, restrictive and permissive, winning and losing. As one mother told us:
"I try to be permissive with my children until they get so bad I can't stand them. Then I feel I have to change and start using my authority until I get so strict I can't stand myself."
The parents who shared these feelings in one of the P.E.T. classes unknowingly spoke for the large number in the "oscillating group." These are the parents who are probably most confused and uncertain, and, as we shall show later, whose children are often the most disturbed.
The major dilemma of today's parents is that they perceive only two approaches to handling conflicts in the home-- conflicts that inevitably arise between parent and child. They see but two alternatives in child-rearing. Some choose the "I win--you lose" approach, some the "You win--I lose" approach, while others seemingly cannot decide between the two.
Parents in P.E.T. are surprised to learn that there is an alternative to the two "win-lose" methods. We call it the "no-lose" method of resolving conflicts, and helping parents learn how to use it effectively is one of the principal aims of P.E.T. While this method has been used for years for resolving other conflicts, few parents have ever thought of it as a method for resolving parent-child conflicts.
Many husbands and wives resolve their conflicts by mutual problem-solving. So do business partners. Labor unions and management negotiate contracts binding to both. Property settlements in divorces are often arrived at by joint decision-making. Even children frequently work out their conflicts by mutual agreement or informal contracts acceptable to both ("If you do this, then I'll agree to that"). With increasing frequency, corporations are training executives to use participative decision-making in resolving conflicts.
No gimmick or quick road to effective parenthood, the "no-lose" method requires a rather basic change in the attitudes of most parents toward their children. It takes time to use it in the home, and it requires that parents first learn the skills of nonevaluative listening and honest communication of their own feelings. Consequently, the no-lose method is described and illustrated in later chapters of this book.
Its position in the book, however, does not reflect the true importance of the no-lose method in our total approach to child-rearing. In fact, this new method of bringing discipline into the home through effective management of conflict is the heart and soul of our philosophy. It is the master key to parent effectiveness. Parents who take the time to understand it and then conscientiously employ it at home as the alternative to the two win-lose methods are richly rewarded, usually far beyond their hopes and expectations.
Product details
- Publisher : Harmony (October 31, 2000)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0609806939
- ISBN-13 : 978-0609806937
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.21 x 0.82 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #70,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #161 in Family Conflict Resolution
- #171 in Conflict Management
- #461 in Interpersonal Relations (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Widely recognized as a pioneer in teaching communication skills and conflict resolution methods to parents, teachers, youth, organization managers and employees, Dr. Thomas Gordon was the founder of Gordon Training International. His Gordon Model concepts are now known world-wide.
A licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Gordon received his B.A. from DePauw University, his M.A. from Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he served on the faculty for five years. From 1942-1946 he served in the Army Air Force.
He was the author of nine books: Group-Centered Leadership, Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.), Leader Effectiveness Training (L.E.T.), Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.), Parent Effectiveness Training in Action, Discipline That Works, Sales Effectiveness Training (co-authored with Carl Zaiss), Making The Patient Your Partner (co-authored with W. Sterling Edwards, M.D.) and Good Relationships: What Makes Them, What Breaks Them (co-authored with Noel Burch). His books have been published in over 32 languages and over 7 million copies have been sold worldwide. (If you’d like an in-depth biography on Dr. Gordon, we offer an e-autobiography from our “Books” page.)
In addition, Dr. Gordon contributed over 50 published articles on organizational leadership, communications, counseling, discipline, parenting, conflict resolution and democratic decision-making.
The Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) program, which he introduced in 1962, is widely recognized as the first skill-based training program for parents. It spawned the widespread parent training movement in the U.S. and it has been taught to over a million parents in over 50 countries around the world.
The P.E.T. book was updated and revised in 2000 and again in 2019. GTI has revised and updated the P.E.T. program and workshop materials periodically.
The Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) program was introduced in 1965 in response to parents who wanted their children to be treated the same way at school as they were at home. T.E.T. has been taught as an accredited course to hundreds of thousands of teachers in the U.S. and in a number of foreign countries. The T.E.T. book was revised in 2003 and the T.E.T. workshop materials have been revised and updated a number of times.
The Leader Effectiveness Training (L.E.T.) program was introduced in 1957 and revised many times since then. L.E.T. has been taught in hundreds of corporations in the U.S. and worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies [click here to see our list of our clients]. Dr. Gordon is recognized as a pioneer in developing a model of democratic and collaborative leadership and identifying the effective communication and conflict resolution skills required to implement it. The L.E.T. book was revised in 2001 in a 25th anniversary edition and is now in it’s 35th printing.
Dr. Gordon was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of its Division of Peace Psychology. He was also a member of the National Peace Foundation, the Association of Humanistic Psychology, and a past President of the California Psychological Association. He was the first recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the National Parenting Instructors Association. He was a consultant to the 1970 White House Conference on Children and an invited speaker to the White House Fellows.
Dr. Gordon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, 1998 and in 1999. He was the recipient of the American Psychological Foundation’s 1999 Gold Medal Award for Enduring Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest. He was also the recipient of the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Psychological Association.
He was married to Linda Adams, the President and CEO of Gordon Training International, has two adult daughters, two grandchildren and three great grandchildren. He passed away on August 26, 2002.
Widely recognized as a pioneer in teaching communication skills and conflict resolution methods to parents, teachers, youth, organization managers and employees, Dr. Thomas Gordon was the founder of Gordon Training International. His Gordon Model concepts are now known world-wide.
A licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Gordon received his B.A. from DePauw University, his M.A. from Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he served on the faculty for five years. From 1942-1946 he served in the Army Air Force.
He was the author of nine books: Group-Centered Leadership, Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.), Leader Effectiveness Training (L.E.T.), Teacher Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.), Parent Effectiveness Training in Action, Discipline That Works, Sales Effectiveness Training (co-authored with Carl Zaiss), Making The Patient Your Partner (co-authored with W. Sterling Edwards, M.D.) and Good Relationships: What Makes Them, What Breaks Them (co-authored with Noel Burch). His books have been published in 32 languages and over 6 million copies have been sold worldwide.
Dr. Gordon was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of its Division of Peace Psychology. He was also a member of the National Peace Foundation, the Association of Humanistic Psychology, and a past President of the California Psychological Association. He was the first recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the National Parenting Instructors Association. He was a consultant to the 1970 White House Conference on Children and an invited speaker to the White House Fellows.
Dr. Gordon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, 1998 and in 1999. He was the recipient of the American Psychological Foundation’s 1999 Gold Medal Award for Enduring Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest. He was also the recipient of the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Psychological Association.
He was married to Linda Adams, the President and CEO of Gordon Training International, has two adult daughters, two grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
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Why I was sceptical at first :
basically, what the author says is to make a difference between:
-children-owned problems (child's trouble in their own life away from home, eg bad grades, argument with a friend etc.) which you solve by active listening - with examples of dialogues, do's and dont's.
-parent-owned problems (child directly interfering with the parent's limits, eg not doing house chores, coming home late, etc.) which you solve by I-statements, again with examples.
The good news : parents can be themselves, can and should be honest with their feelings because children detect insincerity miles away, and don't even have to be 100% consistent or in agreemen with each other all the time because hey, we're humans, not robots, and children know this.
So far so good, by now probably most people know of these 2 concepts, active listening and I-statements, and they are thoroughly described in the book, but I thought it was a bit thin and nowhere near enough to cover all possible aspects of parent-child conflicts.
Then the author went on to address more complicated or recurring issues by explaining the 3 possible methods of dealing with discipline problems :
-"method I" eg authoritative : the parent "wins", the child "loses".
-"method II" eg over-permissive : the child "wins", the parent "loses".
Most families are entrenched in one or the other, or worse, keep on oscillating between the two.
The bad news : whichever way you choose your children will end up disliking you, even "firing" you as parent (I) or using you (II).
More bad news : the whole system of rewards and punishments does not work long term because as soon as children get older, a parent has less means to pressure them or reward them in order to make them do, or not do, something.
The solution presented as "method III" consists of creative problem-solving together with the child, still using I-statements to express the parent's problem, and active listening to define the child's perception of it. The idea is that children actively participate in solving the issue,don't feel blamed and are more committed to carrying it through
There were lots of examples and a very good conclusion about how to save themselves some pain, parents should just drop issues that are just not harmful to them (teenage with punk haircut for ex) and lead fulfilling lives in order to avoid "over-investing" in their children's lives. Living your values fully is the best way to influence your children with them.
Now, I realize this last part won't go down well with everyone... but by then I was completely won over and ready to try, not least because every single one of my objections was addressed :
-how to deal with toddlers was covered in different parts in a quite satisfactory way
-how not to make active listening feel like parroting to the child
-urgent, crisis situations
-what if/when children just don't listen
-what are the typical mistakes a prent using method III might do a first/what may hinder the resolution
-lots of good reasons to try it and let go of old-fashioned, carrot-and-stick methods!
-
I enjoyed reading Connection Parenting, Unconditional Parenting, and How to talk so your kids will listen and listen so your kids will talk. But this book, is just my favorite of them all. And I believe that many of the ideas in How to Talk so your kids will listen are taken from Dr. Gordon's method, but PET has a bit of an easier to understand and implement concept if I were to compare the two books.
So what makes this my favorite:
It's clear and easy to understand.
-It tells you exactly what steps a parent should follow (and how to follow them in your own home) to eliminate being a parent that uses punishment or rewards or from being a permissive parent.
-His methods are able to be used with all age children, non verbal children, to teens.
-He talks about the misconception of the wild uncontrollable teen and how that is a fallacy.
-It's a respectful, kind loving way to parent. But is not permissive.
-He has quite a good bit of info on both the controlling and permissive parenting style and the effects of using them with children. Especially because many parents who are new to respectful parenting mislabel it as permissive.
Key points of this book:
-Punishment can be discarded forever, all kinds, not just the physical kind.
-Parents can raise children who are responsible, self-disciplined, and cooperative without relying on the weapon of fear.
-He teaches about a conflict resolution method that has no losers and no winners.
-He helps parents discern behaviors. A behavior is something your child does or says, not your judgement of that behavior.
-Door openers: These are constructive ways of responding to a children's feeling messages or problem messages. (He gives a list of these, to help us parents out!)
-Talks about how to figure out what is your child's problem and what is a parent problem.
-Effective ways to deal when a child's behavior interferes with a parents need.
-He has great information on Parental Power and all the negatives about using this method on your children. If you use a traditional parenting model, this will really be informative.
-He talks about ways to change unacceptable behavior and gives concrete ways to help you make those changes.
If you want to treat your children with respect and kindness but have no idea what to replace traditional parenting models/methods with, this book will provide the answer.
I am a Christian Mom and found this book and these methods to fully support gentle Christian Parenting.
*Please excuse any typos.