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P.E.T., or Parent Effectiveness Training, has been called "the 'no lose' method that has become the national movement" by The New York Times. For the first time since its 1970 publication, Dr. Gordon has revised and updated his classic guide.

Designed for toddlers through teens, P.E.T. pioneered active listening, encouraging kids to negotiate win/win solutions and resolve conflicts. This comapssionate guide helps parents teach their children self-discipline and stresses the ineffectiveness of external punishment.

Update with contemporary example throughout,and featuring a new introduction, this edition of Parent Effectiveness Training will introduce a whole new generation of parents to the country's most trusted and widely recognized program for raising happy, responsible children in a conflict-free home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #812957 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-31
• Released on: 2000-10-31
• Format: Deluxe Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 4
• Binding: Audio Cassette

From the Inside Flap
Read by
4 cassettes/ 6 hours

P.E.T., or Parent Effectiveness Training, has been called "the 'no lose' method that has become the national movement" by The New York Times.  For the first time since its 1970 publication, Dr. Gordon has revised and updated his classic guide.

Designed for toddlers through teens, P.E.T. pioneered active listening, encouraging kids to negotiate win/win solutions and resolve conflicts.  This comapssionate guide helps parents teach their children self-discipline and stresses the ineffectiveness of external punishment.

Update with contemporary example throughout,and featuring a new introduction, this edition of Parent Effectiveness Training will introduce a whole new generation of parents to the country's most trusted and widely recognized program for raising happy, responsible children in a conflict-free home.

About the Author
Dr. Thomas Gordon, a licensed psychologist, received the 1999 Gold Medal for Enduring Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association. He has brought P.E.T. to 43 countries with international sales of more than 5.5 million copies. His work has been endorsed by many organizations, including Head Start, and hundreds of churches, schools, and family service agencies nationwide. He lives in Solana Beach, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
P.E.T. will be described in terms familiar to everyone, not in technical jargon. Some parents may find themselves initially disagreeing with some of these concepts, but very few will find themselves not understanding them.

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.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

If you're a parent you need to read this book
Before I had children, I oscillated between thinking that I would have no idea how to be a father and thinking that I would certainly do better than my parents. Of course, in practice many of my preconceptions have been dispelled as mere imaginings. My son is now thirteen and my daughter nine, so with the notion that I perhaps have not done as good a job as I might, I've been taking a more serious look at some of the parenting guides at my disposal. There are many of these around, but you would do well to start with Gordon's, "Parent Effectiveness Training" or alternatively, with "Liberated Parents, Liberated Children" of Faber and Mazlish. Don't be put off by the P.E.T. acronym or the cover of the book as I was, or the apparent commercialism of the approach, because this is one of the best books on the subject. It is a complete training guide for parents, and it confirmed for me that I had indeed made almost every mistake I could make, even if not in the most severe way possible.

Gordon's premise is that parents need training. He comes to this from a background in psychology and training. He first trained pilots, where he succeeded in replacing ineffective command and control methods of training with demonstrably more effective collaborative forms of training. Building on the theories and client-centered approach of his teacher and mentor Carl Rogers (On Becoming a Person, 1961), Gordon further developed his educational model in providing leadership training for an organization consulting company before returning to psychotherapy for children and families. In these beginnings lie the strength of PET. It is an eminently practical, yet solidly based therapeutic approach, honed by countless hours of classes dealing with the real problems of parents and children.

Gordon builds his model on three key principles: Active Listening, I-messages, and the No Lose Method of conflict resolution. These are not his invention, but these are essential and valuable concepts. In particular, Gordon's mentor Carl Rogers and his collaborator Richard Farson invented the term "Active Listening" and wrote an influential paper on the subject in 1957. Since then this idea has been used by many people in many fields. However, Gordon deserves credit for synthesizing these principles into a practical program for helping parents and children and popularizing them. Steven Covey, incidentally, uses these same three principles in his book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." In fact, of all Covey's 7 habits, Habit 4, Empathic Listening, is probably the one that makes the most positive difference people's success in life, and this is simply Active Listening in another form.

The biggest eye-opener for me and probably for every parent, no matter how well informed or well intentioned, is the chapter "Parents are Persons not Gods." This lays out an undeniable characterization of parenting types and the "12 roadblocks to communication." After reading this, you will inevitably realize that you are, or have been, either a "winner" a "loser" or an "oscillator" depending on your parenting style and that you too have fallen into every trap that lies lurking for unwary parents. Not only that, that you will find you have used, at one time or another, every negative tactic available to control you child. You won't feel good about it, but you can be heartened by the fact that you are in the same boat as 99% of humanity. There is something relatively easy that you can do about it -- and you can start right now.

The 12 roadblocks deserve some attention -- a good exercise would be to be aware of your own use of these methods, not only with your children but with your spouse and colleagues at work. Briefly stated, the 12 roadblocks are:
* Ordering, directing, commanding -- telling the child to do something, giving him an order or command
* Warning, admonishing threatening -- telling the child what consequences will occur if she does something
* Exhorting, moralizing, preaching -- telling the child what he should or ought to do
* Advising, giving solutions, or suggestions -- telling the child how to solve a problem, providing answers or solutions for him
* Lecturing, teaching, giving logical arguments -- trying to influence the child with facts, logic, information, or your own opinions
* Judging, criticizing, disagreeing, blaming -- making a negative judgment of the child
* Praising, agreeing -- offering a positive evaluation or judgment, agreeing
* Name-calling, ridiculing, shaming -- making the child feel foolish, shaming her
* Interpreting, analyzing, diagnosing -- telling the child what her motives are, communicating that you have her figured out
* Reassuring, sympathizing, consoling, supporting -- trying to make the child feel better, talking him out of his feelings, denying the strength of his feelings
* Probing, questioning, interrogating -- trying to find reasons, motives, causes; searching for more information to help you solve the problem
* Withdrawing, distracting, humoring, diverting -- trying to get the child away from the problem; distracting the child, kidding him out of it, pushing the problem aside
Reflection will show you why these typical reactions are not helpful when your child has a problem: they all tend to shut down communication and prevent children from gaining confidence in solving problems for themselves. Instead, active listening is preferred. Gordon argues that listening to, acknowledging and truly understanding your children's feelings are far more effective than providing them with your own solution.

Gordon provides many examples of PET in practice -- what works and what doesn't. He addresses those common questions of how to discipline children and how to get the parent's needs satisfied as well as the child's. Gordon, in line with the evolutionary thinking of many of the visionaries and leaders in this field, such as Dr Spock (Baby and Child Care, 1946), Haim Ginnott (Between Parent and Child, 1956) and Alfie Kohn (Punished by Rewards, 1999) does not believe in strong parental control, including spanking, "time-outs," withdrawal of privileges, or rewards. These are all instruments of parental power. He worked with thousands of parents and became convinced that all but a small handful of parents hate to use power over their children and continue to use it anyway only because they have no experience in their own lives with people who use non-power methods of influence. The consequences of using parental power are severe. As Gordon puts it, ""more and more often, children fire their parents. As they move into adolescence kids dismiss their mothers and fathers, write them off, sever their relationships with them." This doesn't have to be. You can find many examples in these books and on the Internet where parents have successfully used Gordon's methods to maintain loving relationships with their children through to adulthood, even after making a bad start.

There are other gems in the mold of PET. For example, my personal favorite is "Playful Parenting," by Lawrence Cohen (2001) because one of his examples helped me understand something that I was completely missing and make a breakthrough in my relationship with my daughter. He believes in connection rather than separation - a "meeting-on-the-couch" rather than "a time-out." Surprisingly Gordon doesn't mention Haim Ginnot, the renowned child psychologist who wrote "Between Parent and Child," and who inspired a previous generation, although he does provide this book as a reference in his later book, "PET in Action." The latest edition does however acknowledge, in the suggested reading list, Faber and Mazlish, whose many contributions follow in Ginnot's tradition. It's interesting to read Ginnot for historical perspective, because his work was done in a time when spanking was the norm and children were meant to be "seen and not heard," But his book is inevitably dated and you would do better to spend the time with Faber and Mazlish.

In contrast, even in comparison with more recent books, the latest edition of Gordon's book does not appear dated in any significant way, and is totally relevant and actionable in today's world. As Gordon points out in the preface, the need for PET is greater than ever with more violence in the world, and perhaps Gordon's greatest contribution is to point out in a forceful and coherent way that peace starts in the home. He has helped spread this message to millions of parents in countries all over the world.

At the end of the book, Gordon talks about other adults in a child's life: "By and large, the adults who touch the lives of children lack the basic attitudes and skills to be effective helping agents. Like parents, they have not been adequately trained to be effective...and so, unhappily, they can do damage to your children." It is unlikely that you can do much to change the culture in which your children grow up, or the society of their peers. You can, however, fight some of the influences of school, TV, and video games. "Parents must get off the bench and go to bat to protect their children's civil rights whenever they are threatened by adults who feel that kids do not deserve such rights," says Gordon. By truly understanding our children's needs and becoming more effective parents, we can create a safe home and start repairing the damage.

This book could really change your life. If you're analytical and can get what you want from books, start with PET, which is a complete method and has a sound practical and theoretical basis. Or you might want to start with Faber and Mazlish, which is less structured, but is generally more accessible and easier to read. Of course, reading a single book once is not necessarily going to change anything, so if the only thing that works for you is to get the support and help of other people, then you might consider signing up for a PET course. It could well be worth it, because this stuff really works and may help you succeed in the most important job you have.

Graham Lawes

An ex-child's perspective of P.E.T.
My parents swear by P.E.T. They used its techniques with me when I was a child. I can't describe how nice it felt to be listened to, treated like an intelligent being, given the freedom to regulate my own behavior, to chose right from wrong and have credit for the outcome of my decisions (or to deal with the consequences). It taught me self-control. And it taught me that I control my behavior based on consideration for others, not because I fear punishment. Now, as an independent adult, that's the self-regulation that keeps me from commiting crimes or cheating others. I don't keep from doing bad things to others because I fear punishment (jail, being fired, etc.), I do it out of consideration for their feelings. I guess if I had to distill PET's message down to its core, it would be: Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. Now that I'm an adult -- even though I don't have kids -- I've read the book several times and use the 'Gordon Model' with all my relationships. So does my girlfriend. Our relationship is the envy of all our friends. I like this book so much I just replaced my yellowed, dog-eared copy with the new 30th-anniversary edition.

Great tool for communication
This book was a great tool in helping me communicate better with my kids. Using this book in combination with Adele Faber's "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk" and Matt Pasquinilli's "The Child Whisperer," I have developed cammunication lines with my children that I thought only existed on the Cosby Show.

While I liked the book, it was denser and less fun to read than the other two books I mentioned. It was a nice suppliment but in order of ease of reading and ease of implementation, I would suggest you buy "The Child Whisperer" first, then Faber's book, and then this book.