The author of "Pet Parents' Effectiveness Training Manual" is Dr. Thomas Gordon. Dr Gordon is a practicing psychologist, and his teacher is carl rogers, a famous humanistic psychologist. Dr. Gordon spent nearly 50 years studying and teaching parents a set of methods on how to establish a good relationship with their children, which was later called "Gordon method" by the public.
The core idea of "Gordon Law" is that coercion will affect and destroy interpersonal relationships. At present, most parents still use the traditional methods of the past 2000 years in the process of parenting. Daily communication is full of "evaluation, judgment, criticism, preaching, warning, command and intimidation", which will destroy the parent-child relationship without exception, and then make children have resistance to their parents. Dr. Gordon believes that there are no winners in this relationship, and they are all losers. Now, we can use an alternative method, which is the Gordon method, that is, the PET method (note: PET is the abbreviation of English Parent Effectiveness Training, that is, parent effectiveness training).
After reading this book quickly, several keywords that attracted me more: active listening, "I-information", are winners. Here is a brief introduction.
Active listening enables parents to help their children solve their problems and let them find their own solutions from beginning to end. Although active listening is only the first step to solve the problem, it plays a huge role-helping parents and children release their emotions and clarify the problem. Usually after using active listening, children can continue on their own and finally find their own solutions.
"I-information" helps parents to quit using "you ……" as a way of speaking, so that there are a lot of "accusations, comments, complaints and threats" in the interaction, which will undoubtedly greatly improve the parent-child relationship. But it is not easy for adults to get used to a new expression. In his book, Dr. Gordon encourages readers that parents will inevitably encounter problems when using "I-information". None of these problems is insurmountable, but each one needs extra skills. In this content, we can learn these skills through disguised "you-information", "don't emphasize negative information", "choose the right tools for the right work", "the eruption of Mount Vesuvius" and "other applications of I- information".
"All winners" is the most attractive part for me. In the consciousness of most parents, the process of parenting has long been accompanied by a "power struggle". If the child is obedient, it means that I have successfully exercised my power, and on the contrary, I have lost my power. For children, they will instinctively "defend" their rights. Therefore, for a long time, the parent-child relationship has always been an endless struggle around the ownership of power, either losing or winning, and one party will always be a loser and unhappy. In the book, there are three chapters to explain the causes of this problem, and also provide readers with specific solutions and implementation methods. Dr. Gordon said, "compared with the decisions imposed on him by others, a person will have greater motivation to implement the decisions he personally participated in." This view is highly consistent with my past work experience, and it is also highly consistent with the view in another classic book on family education, Positive Discipline.
In a word, the Handbook of Effectiveness Training for Pet Parents is a book that instinctively "makes you and your children closer". Solve family conflicts, make children more willing to talk and listen, help children learn to solve their own problems, so that there are no more "losers" in parent-child relationship. I started reading this book with great expectations, and I hope that after reading this book, I can share more exciting content with you and have a deeper exchange with you!