• some help coping with your Family?
• to improve communication with in your family?
• less shouting in your home?
• less tension, anger or rebellion in your family?
• to see everyone in your family getting their needs met, including you?
• to understand your children or partner better, or them to understand you better?
If you are a parent and are saying “Yes!” to these types of questions then the Family Effectiveness Training course maybe for you!
I took my first parenting
course when our oldest child was 2 and I realised that I did not
have the parenting skills I needed to raise him. I found the
support of a group of other parents who were also struggling
with similar difficulties to be extremely useful, and the skills
I learned on the course helped me to raise my children with less
difficulty than I would have had without them. I had the
opportunity to train as a FET (Family Effectiveness Training)
trainer several years ago and I enjoy teaching this method of
communication and problem solving to parents who are struggling
or who want to improve their family life; the skills are not
limited to a family setting, they work in all situations.
Thomas Gordon developed this programme in the 1960’s. He had
been seeing more and more difficulties in families with each
person believing that the problem lay with another family
member. He had been a student of Carl Rogers and a follower of
Rogers’s philosophy at university, later they became friends.
Thomas Gordon’s basic philosophy is very similar to Rogers’s
reflecting respect in a non-judgmental and non-blaming
environment as core to good working relationships. If you would
like to read more about how and why he developed his training
courses, visit the
Gordon Training website or to find out a bit more
about Carl Rogers philosophy and how I work with it, visit my
page ‘My Philosophy’
The programme was originally called Parent Effectiveness
Training, but has now been named Family Effectiveness Training,
to reflect a more inclusive attitude, although it is normally
parents who attend my classes.
To learn more about Thomas Gordon his theories and the training
programmes, visit the
Gordon Training website.
The classes cover listening skills, problem ownership, ways of
communicating clearly, problem solving and learning ways to
create rules which will be followed more willingly by all family
members. There is also time for discussing individual situations
as well as some role-playing. Families learn how to work better,
more effectively; children and adults learn how to communicate
better in the family as well as in the world. The family becomes
a less stressful place and the members of it become more
successful as a result.
The classes meet weekly for 3 hours and run for 7 weeks.
They cost £125 which includes the workbook and
light refreshments; I offer concessions for anyone unable to pay
the full cost of the course.
Please contact me if you have any questions or would like to
know the details of the next course I will be running: