On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 01:38:42 -0700, Doan wrote:


From the thomas gordon's website:

"Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course
There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation
studies.
The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23
different
studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had
methodological
discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons
between
P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored
P.E.T., 11%
favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant
differences."

I have found that people that come from a strong belief in punishment
have a very difficult time with the concept that one can go about
human affairs virtually devoid of punishment as a tool.

It confounds their beliefs. You may have noticed this in international
affairs, as the epitome of the punisment mindset. I certainly have.

When I taught PET I saw a lot of that very thing...a belief in
punishment, even extending to things very far removed from dangerous
to one's self or others.


That conditioned mindset in folks sharpened my skills as a teacher.
What I learned to do was use the principles of PET as my teaching
method. The participants then had not only first hand experience by my
example and their participation.....THEY felt the result the child
would feel.

One day I might use them here. Or have I already?

The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but
learn
and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even
Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-)

Even Dobson can't spend all his time torturing children and be
believable enough to seel books. He has his public and his publisher
to consider. {;-

Do you really think that people who debate you here just blindly, out
of some Disney "Zippidy Do Dah" syrupy, emotional, thoughtless grab at
a picnic of life chose this or other non punitive parenting methods?

It took me years to even hear of it, and I struggled to stay away from
punishment with my own children...lacking a repertoire. It taught me a
great deal about patience....but PET turned the corner for me. For the
first time there were the very tools I had been looking for. I read it
standing at a supermarket book stand cover to cover...it was that
striking...but then one has to be looking.

And I put PET, Thomas Gordan, and his trainers to the test, not on
children, but on adults first, and allowed the methods to be used on
me by other parents learning.

The results you see above in that survey are remarkable. In a
population that is 90% spanked, if you are to be believed, THAT MANY
got it?

Damn, man. It took far more than that to get people to believe the
world was round, even with the circumnavigation of the globe.

Spanking is GONE GONE GONE, if that many are getting it. Wave goodbye.

Doan

And I'm quit curious what a "comparison" is. Who did the comparing?
People that had attended and applied a number of programs and
alternatives? Or a panel of "experts?"

I suspect that, just by the language of the claim (look familiar to
you at all, Doan?) that this is a weasel research.

But I still like that that percentage got it, even with the deck
stacked, very likely, by the research, and the fact that 90% of the
population are spanked, and probably 99.99999% were punished fairly
regularly.

You have succeeded in brightening my day.

Wanna talk about my citing of Singapore police claims about youth
crime in the past few weeks? Or didn't you lie? Could it simply have
been a mistake.

Unlike you, I don't need the ego boost of calling others liars when
they have NOT attempted to deceive.

Did you make a mistake, or did you attempt to deceive?

Kane





On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:


How Children Really React to Control

by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.


When one person tries to control another, you can always
expect
some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power
involves two
people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and
the
other reacting to it.

This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in
the
writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they
leave the
child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the
youngster
reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers.

They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say
anything
about how children respond to having their needs denied in this
way.
"Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they
counsel,
but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based
coercion. By
omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates
leave
the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to
adults' power and does precisely what is demanded.

These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent
books
I've collected along the way:

"Be firm but fair."
"Insist that your children obey."
"Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking."
"Discipline with love."
"Demonstrate your parental right to lead."
"The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to
parental
leadership."

What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of
power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it.
In
other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present
power-based
discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an
action-and-reaction event.

This omission is important, for it implies that all
children
passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in
an
obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and
teachers and,
eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter.

However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support
this
view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our
childhood, we
did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control.
We
tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from
it. We
lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded,
begged
for mercy, or promised we would never do it again.

We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing,
demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced
into doing
something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to
our
dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs.

Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as
opposed to
need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if
it is
felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When
controllers
employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or
deprivation.
It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive
discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe.
No child
"asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And
it is
probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a
punitive
parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the
authors of
power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline
with such
statements as:

* "Kids not only need punishment, they want it."

* "Children basically want what is coming to them, good
or
bad, because justice is security."

* "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents
love
them."

* "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking
appears
almost relieved when it finally comes."

* "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the
child]
understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him
over his
own impulses."

* "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent
is
entirely different in purpose and practice [from child
abuse]....One is an
act of love; the other is an act of hostility."

* "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be
spanked, and their wishes should be granted."

* "Punishment will make children feel more secure in
their
relationship."

* "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy
relationships."

Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the
guilt that
controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical
violence
against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated
insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing
it
only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent
leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be
justified
by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as
it's
"Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a
"benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're
not a
"dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as
you
"do it lovingly."

Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and
constructive might be explained by their desire that children
eventually
become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This
can only
be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their
parents
and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and
time
again:

* "While yielding to the loving leadership of their
parents,
children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of
God
Himself."

* "With regard to the specific discipline of the
strong-willed
toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of
age....To
repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight."


It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify
the
means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to
some
higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of
punitive
discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are
distorted
to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful.

The hope that children eventually will submit to all
authority is,
I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try
to
control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of
reactions,
an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions
"coping
behaviors" or "coping mechanisms".

The Coping Mechanisms Children Use

Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various
coping
mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This
list comes
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and
Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple
but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline
when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in
every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms
are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how
varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)

* Resisting, defying, being negative

* Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing

* Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking,
vandalizing

* Hitting, being belligerent, combative

* Breaking rules and laws

* Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry

* Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth

* Blaming others, tattling, telling on others

* Bossing or bullying others

* Banding together, forming alliances, organizing
against the
adult

* Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping,
bootlicking,
currying favor with adults

* Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming

* Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to
look
good, making others look bad

* Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off

* Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running
away,
quitting school, cutting classes

* Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment,
writing
the adult off, keeping one's distance

* Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless

* Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up,
hesitant
to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking
constant
approval, feeling insecure

* Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments

* Overeating, excessive dieting

* Being submissive, conforming, complying; being
dutiful,
docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody,
teacher's pet

* Drinking heavily, using drugs

* Cheating in school, plagiarizing

As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the
class
generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their
own
experience, they invariably make such comments as:

"Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the
behaviors it produces?"

"All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I
wouldn't
want to see in my children [or my students]."

"I don't see in the list any good effects or positive
behaviors."

"If we reacted to power in those ways when we were
kids, our
own children certainly will, too."

After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a
180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly
that power
creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children!
They
begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a
terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or
students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered
both
unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health
professionals.





For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and
Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training
International:

USA
Gordon Training International
531 Stevens Avenue West
Solana Beach, CA 92075
Telephone (858) 481-8121
E-mail:
Website: http://www.gordontraining.com