How we raise our children is critical in determining what kind of people they will grow up to be. If they are brought up by parents who expect them to obey and use power or the threat of if to enforce their rules, they are more likely to be willing to obey other authority figures such as bosses, religious leaders, presidents.
Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) isn’t just a way of helping parents have better, more harmonious relationships with their children, it also provides them with the skills to help their children (and themselves) learn how to live in a democratic society.
It does this by offering them essential communication skills including the ability to listen with acceptance, empathy and understanding; the skills of self-disclosure for clearly and honestly expressing their needs and feelings; and the skill of No-Lose Conflict Resolution to use so that when conflicts crop up as they inevitably do, they can be resolved by a solution that works for both the parent and the child.
When children grow up in such an environment, they integrate these skills into their own lives. They listen to others with empathy and understanding, they honestly express their needs and feelings and they resolve their conflicts with others so both get their needs met.
Because they have been free to think for themselves, they have formed their own values and feel free to express and act on them. Because they have been raised without power being used on them, they learned to trust their own judgment and to question outside authority.
Because their parents allowed them to own their problems themselves, they learned to take responsibility for solving them instead of being dependent on others to solve them. Because they learned how to collaborate to solve conflicts, they don’t avoid conflict or try to win at the other’s expense.
In our country, while we have been taught the value of democracy, even now few of us have had the experience of being brought up in a family where we actually learned how to put it into practice. As Dr. Gordon put it:
“A democratic way of life would become more than ‘a system of government’…Rather it would be a set of conditions for all human relationships, if people are to fulfill their maximum potential, become what they are capable of being, and continue to relate to one another in mutual respect, friendship, love and peace.”