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Yesterday, I finished reading “Parent Effectiveness Training” by T. Gordon. The book deals with two concepts related to communication with children. The first concept is active listening, which is a technique for making a child open and talkative. Instead of giving advice or criticizing the child, the parent, according to this doctrine, must understand the child’s feelings and express his empathy. Here is an example:
Child: I’m tired of doing homework.
Parent: You feel that you have no power to do your homework.
Child: Sure, I don’t like to do it; it’s stupid.
Parent: Your homework makes you anxious.
And the child talks more, reveals more problems and eventually finds a solution to all of them by himself.
The book is full of examples of that sort.
The second concept is the no-lose method of solving family problems stemming from the contradiction of needs and desires. When the child wants something which may be unacceptable because of the parent’s confronting needs, there are usually two ways of dealing with this issue: win-lose or lose-win. The author offers another option, which is a sort of open discussion where everyone participates in the decision-making process based, again, on active listening. Tons of examples follow.
I wouldn’t say that it was a profound book, yet after reading it, I have an intention to apply its techniques to see how it would affect our speaking club discussions.
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