So my wife has bought a bunch of how to raise your child books. Similar to her buying books about being pregnant. I fear she might have bought more books than she has time to read. She's read a few and from what she's told me they've had some good information in them. Seeing that I'm a part of raising Willow I figured that maybe if I read some of the books and she the others, we could pool our newly learned knowledge and hopefully be better parents for the effort. So I asked my wife to pick one of the books and I'd give it a go. Which is how I came to read P.E.T. or Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children.
By Dr. Thomas Gordon
I think that Dr. Gordon has sold himself short by saying that this book is only for parents. I would say that this book has some good techniques for better communication for every relationship, personal or professional. The book uses examples from the in-person classes that are used to teach the P.E.T. methods and dialogue between the children and the parents who were in those classes. Unfortunately for me, the book is geared more towards those with teenagers. For every 30+pages of examples there is 1.5 pages covering children younger than 5. Oh well.
The main ideas in the book:
- How to avoid being a permissive parent
- How to listen so kids will talk to you and talk so kids will listen to you (Active listening)
- How to teach your children to "own" their problems and to solve them
- How to use the "No-Lose" method to resolve conflicts
The beginning of the book goes into great detail about active listening. The idea is that you repeat back to the talker (your child) the feelings that you hear them saying so that they know you are understanding the message that they are trying to tell you. You then allow them to come up with their own solution. The examples lead me to believe that you do this by repeating what your child said to you back to them.
I read the examples this way:
Child: I don't want to go to school.
Parent: You don't want to go to school.
Child: No, I hate it there.
Parent: You hate it at school.
Child: Why are you repeating everything back to me, aren't you even listening to what I'm saying?
Parent: You think I'm repeating everything you say back to you. (Thinks: Damn where is that book again?)
Really this is what I got when I first read about active listening. Then the book goes on to state that active listening isn't just repeating what your child told you (which is what I got from the examples) but that you are trying to understand the feelings behind the words that they are saying. The next couple of examples demonstrated this and were completely different than the earlier ones that showed how you repeat what the talker is saying to you.
Dr. Gordon goes on to explain more and hopefully you'll understand better than I did. Though by the end of the book I got the message that the goal of active listening is to show your child that you hear and understand what they are saying and this will make them feel better and allow them to talk to you freely because you can listen to them without judging them.
The book then goes into detail about effective communication with your child. It breaks down the 12 mistakes that parents make when talking to children. This part of the book was very eyeopening. The basic message I got was don't accuse your child of things, namely saying You ____________. Instead tell your child how their actions affected you through an I-message.
The idea is that by starting off telling your child "You did something wrong" or "What were you thinking when you did that?" you are putting them on the defensive and they won't open up to you nor change their way. If you tell them "I was upset when ________" or "It really worried me when _______ happened" your child is more likely to see that their actions affected you and they will (hopefully) change their behavior.
The book spends a lot of time backing up the claims it makes and giving reasons why the doubts you have about each method are unfounded. It seemed a bit tedious to go though to me. I also got the feeling that Dr. Gordon advocated that you never show or demonstrate anything to your children more than once and never tell them what you actually think about something, only let them come up with their own solution. Near the end of the book he addresses these thoughts (almost like he knew that I had them) and reiterates that these methods are to help solve problems, not to stop you, the parent, from teaching your child by example, or telling them your thoughts on a subject.
Overall, I think that the books points about letting your children own their problems, allowing them to come up with solutions instead of you giving them your solution right away, letting your child know you are listening and understand what they are saying, and working out solutions to conflicts together (the no-lose solution) are pretty sound advice. For me the way that all this was presented in the book, all the pages of reassurances that your initial rejection of the ideas are unfounded, muddled the message.
The website for Dr. Gordon training has a lot of good (and free) information. The gist of the P.E.T. system is explained.
All about the book.
http://www.gordontraining.com/parentingclass.html
Origins of his Model
http://www.gordontraining.com/about-origins-of-the-gordon-model.html