Parents who rely on Method I to resolve conflicts pay a severe price for “winning.” The outcomes of Method I 
are quite predictable—low motivation for the child to carry out the solution, resentment toward his parents, difficulties for the parent in enforcement, no opportunity for the child to develop self-discipline.
When a parent imposes his solution to a conflict, the child will have very little motivation or desire to carry out that decision because he has no investment in it; he was given no voice in making it. Whatever motivation the child may have is extrinsic—outside himself.
He may comply, but out of fear of parental punishment or disapproval. The child does not want to carry out the decision, he feels compelled to. This is why children so often look for ways to get out of carrying out a Method I solution. If they cannot get out of it, they usually “go through the motions” and carry it out with minimal effort, barely doing what was required and no more.
Children generally feel resentful toward their parents when Method I decisions have made them do something. It feels unfair to them, and their anger and resentment naturally are directed to the parents, whom they feel to be responsible. Parents who use Method I sometimes get compliance and obedience, but the price they pay is their children’s hostility.
Observe children whose parents have just resolved a conflict by Method I; they almost invariably show resentment and anger in their faces or say something hostile, or they may even physically assault their parents. Method I sows the seeds for a continuously deteriorating relationship between the parent and child. Resentment and hate replace love and affection.
Parents pay another heavy price for using Method I: they generally have to spend a lot of time enforcing the decision, checking to see that the child is carrying it out, nagging, reminding, prodding.
Parents who come to P.E.T. often defend their use of Method I on the ground that it is a fast way to resolve conflict. This advantage is frequently more apparent than real, because it takes so much of the parent’s time afterward to make certain the decision is carried out. Parents who say that they constantly have to nag their children are invariably the ones who use Method I. I could not count how many conversations I have had with parents that are similar to this one that occurred in my office:
PARENT: Our children are not cooperative around the house. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to help. Every Saturday it’s a battle getting them to do the work that has to be done. We literally have to stand over them to see that the chores gets done.
COUNSELOR: How is it decided what work has to be done?
PARENT: Well, we decide, of course. We know what has to be done. We make a list on Saturday morning, and the kids see the list and know what has to be done.
COUNSELOR: Do the kids want to do the work?
PARENT: Not at all!
COUNSELOR: They feel they have to do it.
PARENT: That’s right.
COUNSELOR: Have the kids ever been given a chance to participate in determining what has to be done? Do they have a voice in determining what work needs doing?
PARENT: No.
COUNSELOR: Have they ever been given a chance to decide who is to do what?
PARENT: No, we usually give or assign the different jobs as evenly as we can.
COUNSELOR: So you make the decision about what has to be done and who has to do it?
PARENT: That’s right.
Few parents see the connection between their children’s lack of motivation to help and the fact that decisions about chores are generally made by Method I. An “uncooperative” child is simply a child whose parents, through Method I decision-making, have in effect denied him a chance to cooperate. Cooperation is never fostered by making a child do something.
Another predictable outcome of Method I is that the child is denied the opportunity to develop self-discipline—inner-directed, self-initiated, responsible behavior. One of the most universally accepted myths about child-rearing is that if parents force their young children to do things, they will turn out to be self-disciplined and responsible persons. While it is true that some children cope with heavy parental authority by being obedient, conforming, and submissive, they usually turn out to be persons who depend upon external authority to control their behavior.
As adolescents or adults, they show an absence of inner controls; they go through life jumping from one authority figure to the next to find answers to their lives or seek controls on their behavior. These people lack self-discipline, inner controls, or self-responsibility because they were never given a chance to acquire these traits.
If parents could learn only one thing from P.E.T., I wish it were this:
Each and every time they force a child to do something by using their power or authority, they deny that child a chance to learn self-discipline and self-responsibility.