[pp.int.general] Beating someone with a stick to change his mind

[Zbigniew Łukasiak]

I have just finished
http://www.gordontraining.com/store/parent-programs/parent-effectiveness-training-p-e-t-book-3/
- I would recommend it to everyone here, not only to parents.

According to it there are three ways parents can resolve conflicts
with children.  The first two are:

1. Children do what parent wants.

2. Parent do what child wants.

In other ways this is about coercion - either parent coerces the child
(by punishment or by bribes) or the child coerces the parent (by being
terrible).  They are often kind of automatic default way, but there is
also a third way that we use when we deal with people that are our
peers: it is about negotiating, sometimes the effect is a compromise,
sometimes it is a completely new solution that is acceptable to both
sides.

I have the feeling that some people try to use this list a coercion
mechanism - they attack people verbally and think that this will beat
the other side into submission, but:

1. Beating someone is not a good way to change his mind.

2. Attacking someone on a mailing list is a very ineffective way to
beat him - it is all imaginary and it will never coerce that someone
into submission.  It only opens an endless spiral of flames.

We are all peers here - please use appropriate means of conflict resolution.

--
Zbigniew Lukasiak
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/