Recently there was one of those home-garden-art events—you know where people open up their yards for tours and local artists can display their creations? This one was for Mother’s Day and I thought it would be a unique thing to do with my mom.
The day of the tour was a beautiful, sunny day full of incredible flowers, stunning art—and Parent Effectiveness Training.
What?
Well, as we were walking through one of the garden/backyards of a home, “oohing” and “aahing” at the amazing love and care the owner clearly took with their yard, I heard a familiar voice. I looked over and saw this woman in her sunhat and gardening apron, talking to a guest, saying “Oh yes, thank you…yes, I am the gardener”.
She sure was, in more ways than one.
That gardener was Catherine Dickerson, a local P.E.T. Instructor whose yard/garden, turns out, was a part of the tour. She has come by our Gordon Training office many, many times over the years to pick up her P.E.T. materials for her classes and she and I have chatted about her admiration of Dr. Gordon, parenting, P.E.T., world events, politics, P.E.T. and sometimes P.E.T. She’s a huge fan in case that wasn’t clear.
I went up to her and said, “Do you teach P.E.T.?” “Yes, I do!” she replied enthusiastically. (Wearing a baseball cap, not expecting to see me in her backyard, she didn’t immediately recognize me, but then it sunk in and we had a laugh and yes, we talked about P.E.T.).
Since she was certified to teach the program in 2009, Catherine has been spreading the seeds of P.E.T. and the Gordon Model wherever she can. She’s a passionate, caring, sensitive, determined ambassador who is on a mission to reach parents with the Gordon Model. But not just P.E.T…she also is talking to her friends, contacts and neighbors about L.E.T. (Leader Effectiveness Training) as well.
I knew I wanted to write a blog about her after our chance encounter in her garden…so she came by Gordon Training recently and we had a great talk.
She has read A LOT of parenting books and participated in many different parenting programs throughout her long career as a Montessori teacher and psychotherapist. Then she read P.E.T. and she was hooked.
Catherine explains, “Thomas Gordon is more consistent than any parenting or education specialist I have ever read over the past 35 years in understanding that everyone, including children, needs to, wants to, and can do their own thinking.”
She then attended an instructor training workshop and when it was over, was nervous because she felt like “How am I going to master this stuff???”.
But then something happened with a new client—a non-communicative, high-risk teenage boy who exclaimed, “I don’t talk to therapists!”
Gulp.
So she decided, “I am just going to Active Listen to this kid.” Forty-five minutes later, he was still sharing and talking and she had to interrupt him to tell him the session was ending in five minutes.
This kid just needed the space, the freedom, the acceptance…to share and she was able to give that to him. That day, they didn’t solve any problems, but he got to “look” at them, get them out because she created a safe space with empathic listening—she provided rich soil where he could begin to grow.
A pivotal, powerful moment for Catherine the Gardener—she knew then and there, “I can do this.”
Sixteen years later, the energy and passion for P.E.T. that springs out of Catherine is quite simply, inspiring. She witnesses the transformation within parents who take her classes. She sees how the skills allow for closeness, more honesty and more recently, realizes how much P.E.T. impacts creativity. Catherine speaks freely about the wonderful impact P.E.T. skills have had on her own life, both in her career with children and families, and in her personal life.
When parents and kids use Method III, there is an abundance of ideas that are shared—families and especially kids feel more free to contribute their thoughts and ideas which helps spark creativity or as she said, “You get to do your own thinking.”
Kids love to do their own thinking, they love to solve their problems and P.E.T. allows them to do that. And ANOTHER thing that she loves about P.E.T., is that parents can learn how to let their kids discover their own values, learn who they are, how to create a great life for themselves, how they can be the best person they can be—and for Catherine, that’s what it’s all about—helping people be their best self.
Finally, I asked her about her legacy as a P.E.T. Instructor and one of the things she wants is to retire after she’s “planted” ten P.E.T. Instructors to carry on the work. And knowing Catherine, she will make it happen. She’s great at nurturing others’ growth and her love for and commitment to the Gordon Model is powerful and something to behold.