Preface - 30-Year Edition.

To make this book more gender neutral and to avoid the awkward "he or she" construction, I have alternated "he" and "she" throughout these chapters when I refer to both parents and children.

Peter Wyden insisted that I write this book. When I resisted, he did a sales job, telling me that such a book could change the lives of parents, help them raise more responsible, self-disciplined children, and, in case that was not enough inducement, he said he would help out by personally editing the manuscript. He had written several books, and was the publisher of hundreds, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. He did. The book became a best-seller. It helped change the lives of millions of people, spawned hundreds of other books about parenting, and, according to the Pew Foundation, was the model for many of the 50,000 parent training programs in the United States, and who knows how many in other countries.

The model that I developed and describe in this book has, over the years, become a part of the way we all talk about communicating and resolving conflicts. Almost everyone nowadays has heard of Active Listening, I-Messages, and no-lose conflict resolution.

Early on, we learned that this model, known as the Gordon Model, does not apply just to parent-child relationships. It applies in all relationships: at home, at work, at school, and in the world at large. Its terminology can be found in psychology texts, books, and courses for business leaders, in adult education courses, and, in fact, everywhere interpersonal communication and conflict resolution are important topics.

Over the years, I came to realize that as people use these methods and skills, their relationships become more and more democratic. These democratic relationships produce greater health and well being. When people are accepted, when they are free to express themselves, and can participate in making decisions that affect them, they enjoy greater self-esteem, are more self-confident, and lose a sense of powerlessness that is always present in autocratic families.

These are also skills necessary for world peace. Democratic families are peaceful families, and, when there are enough peaceful families, we will have a society that rejects violence, and finds warfare unacceptable.

Something I did not think about, when I was writing the book, was the stream of life. I simply did not look into the future far enough, to see that kids raised with P.E.T. skills would not only grow into healthier, happier adults, but they would also become democratic parents themselves, continuing the cycle of nonviolence into another generation. It has been very gratifying to me, to have lived long enough to have talked to many young people, whose grandparents brought P.E.T. into the family.

A friend of mine once said, "Every person is granted at least one grand, positive surprise in life." I suppose my life's greatest, positive surprise, is that Peter Wyden was right.

Not only has P.E.T. spread across America, but the book has also been published in thirty languages, with more than 4 million copies now in circulation, and the P.E.T. program has been introduced in forty-three countries. That is not just a grand surprise: It is extremely gratifying.

We have discovered that P.E.T.'s major concepts and skills, are as valid now as they were nearly four decades ago, when I taught the first P.E.T. course to a group of seven parents of teenagers, in a cafeteria in Pasadena, California. All that has changed is the interest in this. P.E.T. has grown larger and more significant, as more and more studies support the findings that spanking, hitting, and other forms of violence in the home, cause violence in society. The book you hold in your hand has remedies for home violence, and brings, instead, peace and democracy.

In the years since that first P.E.T. group, public opinion has made a remarkable shift. In 1975, almost 95 percent of the American people supported corporal punishment of children at home, and at school. Recent polls indicate that less than half the people now hold that belief, and the number who still support corporal punishment continues to fall rapidly, and I am thrilled about that.

It is my sincere wish that reading this book will be a rewarding and enriching experience for you.

DR. THOMAS GORDON
Solana Beach, California