Parent Effectiveness Training

Parent Effectiveness Training is a parent education program following the Gordon Model by Thomas Gordon.

Active listening
Active listening describes the ability to reflect back in your own words the opinions and emotions of group members. An important goal of active listening is to enable a group member or a child to understand his or her own problems and to deduce solutions independently.

I-messages
I-Messages are non-blameful, non-judgmental descriptions of the addressee's behavior, especially where it collides with the speaker's interests. I-Messages describe how the unacceptable behavior affects the speaker and how it makes him or her feel. I-Messages confront the behaviour of the addressee but do not attack the person. An example of an I-Message is:


 * "If you throw sand from your sandbox on my carpet I have to spend some time cleaning it and I don't like to do that."

No-lose conflict resolution
The No-lose conflict resolution (Win Win conflict resolution) is based on John Dewey's six steps to creative solutions for conflicts. The goal is to find a solution all involved parties can agree with and to invite all parties to the conflict resolution because children, and people in general, are more motivated to comply with decisions which they had a part in reaching.

Behavior window
The Behavior Window is a concept of the Gordon Model which allows to determine acceptance and problem ownership. If a behavior is acceptable for the observing parent but not for the child the problem is with the child and the method of resolution is Active Listening. Is the behavior inacceptable for the observing parent it can be a conflict in needs or a conflict in values. If it is a conflict in needs the parent can use I-Messages to communicate his or her needs. In the case of a conflict in values the parent may have the problem of not being able to explain a legitimate interest. In this case powerless conflict resolution is the recommended method of resolution.