PET meaning in Community ?

Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) is a parent education program based on the Gordon Model by Thomas Gordon. Dr. Gordon taught the first P.E.T. course in 1962 and the courses proved to be so popular with parents that he began training instructors throughout the United States to teach it in their communities. Over the next several years, the course spread to all 50 states. In 1970, Dr. Gordon wrote the Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) book which gave many more parents access to this new parenting philosophy. As a result, people in many parts of the world became interested in making the course available in their countries. The book became a best-seller and was updated in 2000 revised book.

P.E.T. is neither authoritarian nor permissive, both of which are win-lose approaches to parent-child communication. Central to P.E.T. philosophy is how parents can raise children without the use of punitive discipline which is damaging both to the parent, the child and their relationship. Permissiveness doesn't work either. Instead, Dr. Gordon advocated a no-lose method, a method of resolving conflicts in which both the parent and the child get their needs met.

Gordon's Model upon which the P.E.T. course is based, is a set of concepts and skills for more democratic, collaborative relationships. Core skills are Active Listening, I-Messages, Shifting Gears and No-Lose Conflict Resolution. Knowing which skill to use when is facilitated by the Behavior Window, inviting clarity on "whose problem is this?" Identifying "who owns the problem" is promoted as a big first step in resolving interpersonal conflict successfully.

Gordon Training International, the organization that Dr. Gordon founded, has a network of P.E.T. Representatives and Instructors in 53 countries (in a year of 2020) who make the course available to the parents of all cultural, racial and religious backgrounds.