Thomas Gordon > Quotes

“It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I?" ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents can raise children who are responsible, self-disciplined, and cooperative without relying on the weapon of fear; they can learn how to influence children to behave out of genuine consideration for the needs of parents rather than out of fear of punishment or withdrawal of privileges.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents are blamed but not trained.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Most parents hate to experience conflict, are deeply troubled when it occurs, and are quite confused about how to handle it constructively. Actually, it would be a rare relationship if over a period of time one person's needs did not conflict with the other's. When any two people (or groups) coexist, conflict is bound to occur just because people are different, think differently, have different needs and wants that sometimes do not match.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Readers who have owned animals will appreciate how difficult it would be to train a dog to play exclusively in his own yard, to fetch his sweater whenever he sees it is raining outside, or to be generous in sharing his dog biscuits with other dogs. Yet these same people would not even question the feasibility of trying to use reward and punishment to teach their children the same behaviors.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Much of the rebellion of today’s adolescents can be attributed to parents and other adults who put pressure on them to modify behavior that the kids feel is their own business. Children do not rebel against adults—they rebel against adults’ attempts to take away their freedom.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Power suppresses creativity and productivity; it is hazardous to the health and well-being of both the controller and the controllee. Power generates the forces that will inevitably destroy or replace it; power bites its own tail; it stifles creative dissent; it extinguishes trust, fellowship, intimacy, and love; power entraps the controller as it enslaves the controllee.”
― Thomas Gordon, Teaching Children Self Discipline: At Home and At School

“Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“You have created a life, now let the child have it. Let him decide what he wants to do with the life you gave him”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents can modify themselves, and reduce the number of behaviors that are unacceptable to them, by coming to see that their children are not their children, not extensions of themselves, but separate, unique. A child has the right to become what he is capable of becoming, no matter how different from the parent or the parent’s blueprint for the child. This is his inalienable right.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents report that Active Listening when a child is hurt and cries vigorously frequently brings about a dramatic and instantaneous cessation of the crying, once the child is certain her parent knows and understands how badly she feels or how much she is afraid. For the child, getting this understanding of her feelings is what she needs most.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“I often tell parents, “Don’t want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become.” With such an attitude parents will inevitably find themselves feeling more and more accepting of each child and experiencing joy and excitement watching each become.”
― Thomas Gordon

“Parents who satisfy their own needs through independent productive effort not only accept themselves but also needn’t seek gratification of their needs from the way their children
behave. They don’t need their children to turn out in a particular way. People with high self-esteem, resting on a firm foundation of their own independent achievement, are more accepting of their children and the way they behave.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“An accepting parent is willing to let a child develop his own “program” for life; a less accepting parent feels a need to program the child’s life for him.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents teach children values by living their own lives accordingly, not by pressuring kids to live by certain rules. I firmly believe that one of the principal reasons why adolescents today are protestingly rejecting many of the values of adult society is that they have detected how adults in so many ways fail to practice what they preach. To their dismay, kids discover that their high-school textbooks do not tell the whole truth about our government and its history or that their teachers lie by omission of some of the facts of life.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Feelings are an essential part of living, not something pathological or dangerous. Our system also shows that feelings are generally transitory—they come and go, leaving no permanent damage to the child. The key to their going, however, is parental acceptance and acknowledgment, transmitted to the child by empathic Active Listening.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“It is one thing for a parent to feel acceptance toward a child; it is another thing to make that acceptance felt.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“I often tell parents, “Don’t want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“The successful consultant offers her ideas, then leaves responsibility with the client for buying or rejecting them.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Parents who want children to value nonviolence in human relations will seem like hypocrites when they use physical punishment to “discipline.” I recall a poignant cartoon depicting a father spanking his son over his knee, shouting, “I hope this teaches you not to go around hitting your baby brother!”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“It is essential that each parent enters into no-lose problem-solving as a “free agent.” They should not expect to have a “united front” or to be on the same side of every conflict, although on occasion this might happen. The essential ingredient in no-lose problem-solving is that each parent be real—each must represent accurately his or her own feelings and needs. Each parent is a separate and unique participant in conflict-resolution and should think of problem-solving as a process involving three or more separate persons, not parents aligned against children.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“You-Messages are poor codes for communicating what a parent is feeling, because they will most often be decoded by the child in terms of either what she should do (sending a solution) or how bad she is (sending blame or evaluation).”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“I-Messages containing these three parts: 1) a description of the unacceptable behavior, 2) the parent’s feeling, and 3) the tangible and concrete effect the behavior has on the parent. [BEHAVIOR + FEELING + EFFECT.]”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“If a parent has no other source of self-worth and self-esteem, which is unhappily true of many parents whose lives are limited to raising “good” children, the stage is set for a dependency on children that makes the parent overanxious and severely needful that the children behave in particular ways.”
― Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“This is the critical factor in any relationship: how the conflicts get resolved, not how many conflicts occur.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Other parents, as persons, are just plain unaccepting toward others. They somehow find much of other people’s behavior unacceptable to them. When you observe them with their children you may be puzzled as to why so much behavior that seems acceptable to you is unacceptable to them.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“A jó kapcsolatok, sok egyéb mellett őszinteségről, nyíltságról, megértésről, és demokráciáról szólnak.”
― Thomas Gordon

“In conflicts about bedtime, a family may want to discuss who is going to watch the clock and call time.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children

“Active Listening can do wonders in such predicaments. The main thing the child wants is recognition from the parent of how deeply the child is feeling.”
― Dr Thomas Gordon, Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children