Let them make a second dinner they like, take off the time limits on the computer, not be their friends on Facebook, no grounding for bad grades, let them text at the dinner table, not check in where they are at, wake them when they oversleep, don’t remind them to brush their teeth or take a shower or pick up their dirty clothes. Let them leave their dishes everywhere, stay up as late as they want, have snacks right before dinner, not have to go to church or youth group with the family or say thank you or please, drive them to school when they are late and take their homework when they forget it. Buy them whatever they ask for in the store and drive them where ever they want to go whenever they want to go. Let them go to parties without checking to see if parents are going to be there or go places with their “friend” without chaperoning no matter what their age. Allow them to talking rudely to us or others without any reprimand. Don’t do chores or participate in family work projects. Never ask them to help set the table, clear the table or empty garbages. Oh how much easier life would be!

Or would it?

Maybe for just the moment but boy would I pay later. Why, you ask? Because an undisciplined child feels unloved. And in order to get disciplined (aka be loved) they will up the ante. “Where is the boundary?” they will ask and push until they find it. So for my momentary respite I pay for it with at least hours of recuperation. I muster on!

Could you use some parenting help?

One tool that we’ve used is Total Transformation by James Lehman. It’s given us a lot of solid, common sense ideas for parenting our challenging children.

About the author: By Julie Hellstrom

Julie is an awesome parent (along with her husband Matt) to five adopted kiddos and the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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I have a child who is self-declared lazy. He has no bones about looking you straight in the eye and saying “NO” when asked to do something. And if he is mad because he can’t do something he wants, simply walking away is his method of rejection your request. Only if there is a tangible reward, he may comply. But if he can’t get his way, no carrot is sufficient.  Sadly, sometimes he will let others down just to not give in to us. Yeah, it is a lesson in frustration.

Now don’t get me wrong. We have trained this child up since he was a toddler, “brush your teeth, make your bed, get dressed”. As the years have progressed, daily and weekly chores were added with appropriate training, rewards and eventually consequences if needed. Then he hit adolescence and found out he has power. And the boy who decided at 2, he no longer wanted to wear diapers and potty trained himself in 3 days, used that inner drive to get only what we wants in life. I gotta teach this kiddo about accountability.

Since we can check off the training, we must still work on rewards and consequences.  I did find some good tips on how to do this in the Total Transformation parenting information.

A Different Way of Saying Things

Words are powerful. It always amazes how adding (or sometimes deleting!) a word can totally open up the communication between two people. Boy, can I use that for this new challenge.

1. Responsibility. Start pointing out all the responsibilities everyone in all the house is doing. “Cooking dinner is my responsibility”. “Dad’s responsibility is going to work so we can have food so I can cook dinner.” “Brushing your teeth is a responsibility”. You get it, I am sure.
2. Rewards. Now use the same philosophy with rewards. “This is your reward for doing your homework”. “You are getting this reward because you didn’t yell at your brother today”.
3. Consequences. Then – “This is the consequences for not completing your schoolwork”. You are getting this consequence because you didn’t complete your chores this morning”.

It might be helpful to have worked up some rewards and consequences beforehand. That way you don’t have to think on your feet. Ask them what they would like rewards to be, like what they would like to do. Just be sure it doesn’t money, buying or spending!  And remember teens rewards do not usually involve spending time with you.

Consequences also can be discussed.  This may look like withholding things, like electronics, or assigning extra chores. It is important here to find the buttons that work. If I were to withhold electronics and then assign extra chores, I would be spitting in the wind. Also, I have had to learn to be reasonable about my time lengths for consequences.

So I had better get started with this new language. The clock is ticking…

That’s a couple Total Transformation Techniques that work for us. For many more tools and techniques make sure to check out Total Transformation today. It’s worked for us!

About the author: By Julie Hellstrom

Julie is an awesome parent (along with her husband Matt) to five adopted kiddos and the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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A+ Child Requirements

We tell our children that they need to be A+ kids, and there are only three things they have to do to accomplish this. These three things are to be respectful, responsible, and fun to be around. When you think about it, pretty much any behavior can fall in these three areas, and therefore if they aren’t A+ kids then you can name the category pretty easily.

Want some examples? We have family night every Saturday night, and on one family night much to my children’s chagrin we filled out a big poster board with examples of the three categories. Here are some of the things they came up with:

Respectful

• Saying “Yes, Mom” and “Yes, Dad”
• Leave other people’s things alone
• Keep your word
• Be kind

Responsible

• Do your chores without being asked
• Fast and snappy and right the first time
• Clean up after ourselves
• Ask for help
• Be honest
• Take care of feelings in an OK manner

Fun to be around

• Don’t call names
• Give people a chance
• Brush teeth
• Listen and don’t interrupt
• Don’t swear
• Good manners

In addition, we also came up with a list of “feeling words”, which we’ve discovered our kids have difficulty using. We’ve been trying to teach them how to tell each other (or us) how something makes them feel, instead of just saying “You’re a jerk” or “I hate you”. Some of the feeling words they came up with were:

• Embarrassed
• Angry
• Happy
• Lonely
• Sad

So, if you’re really looking for something fun to do on a Saturday night, make an “A+ Child” poster of your own!

Looking for parenting help?

One tool that we’ve used is the Total Transformation program by James Lehman. It’s given us a lot of solid, common sense ideas for parenting our challenging children.

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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James Lehman created The Total Transformation, a comprehensive, multi-media program offering parents practical solutions to the most challenging problems facing them from their children, including disrespect, lying, swearing, defiance and acting out in school.

James Lehman, MSW (Masters of Social Work) worked for more than 30 years with troubled teens, children, and their families to educate, treat, and assist them in improving child behavior. He certainly had the experience to help these families, as evidenced by his own life.

James was born in 1946 and was abandoned at the age of 2 by parents unable to care for him. He was adopted by Teddy and Marguerite Lehman, who went on to raise him. He exhibited defiant behaviors as he grew up, and they gradually grew more severe, until he quit school, left home and lived on the streets of New York City. He started using drugs and alcohol, which eventually led to a life of crime. He spent more than 6 years in various prisons. He was then given an opportunity to participate in an accountability-focused treatment program.

After graduating from that program, he became a staff coordinator and his career as counselor and therapist began. He went to several schools including Fordham University and Boston University where he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Social Work.

While working at a residential treatment center, James began private practice and started providing treatment and training to families, schools and state agencies. This is where he started providing the tools to parents, teachers, and case workers that eventually were developed into the Total Transformation program, which is designed to teach kids problem-solving skills so they would be able to be successful in life without using disrespectful and abusive behavior.

James Lehman has a no-nonsense but compassionate way about him, and though most of the things he tells you in his program seem very simple and “are just common sense”, there were a lot that I didn’t think of on a daily basis. He has definitely helped our family to learn to problem solve, and our house to become a calmer, more peaceful place. I totally recommend the Total Transformation Program to anyone that has difficult children they are trying to bring up properly.

Note: Information for this article was obtained mainly from the Total Transformation website and personal knowledge of the life and methods of James Lehman.

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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Do you have teenagers in your house? Then you absolutely have to have an internet monitoring software solution loaded on all the computers in your house! This is mandatory, and if you don’t have it there is no telling what your kids are looking at on the web.

Not only that, but in this age of social networking, sites like MySpace, YouTube, and especially Facebook are extremely popular – and extremely dangerous! One of the goals of users of MySpace and Facebook is to see how many friends you can get. I’ve seen kids with thousands! Do you really think a kid has more than 1000 friends, especially ones that he or she talks with on a regular basis? Doubtful! So obviously, many of these so-called “friends” are people that the kids don’t know at all. For this reason, there are many predators hanging around these sites. It’s no problem at all for someone to pass themselves off as someone they’re not and gain the trust of your child. From there, it’s simple to find out where they live and to possibly show up at your house!

Obviously, that’s not all. There are also sites filled with pornography, how to make weapons, hatred, and on and on. So what are you supposed to do about this?

The most important thing you can do is to get an internet monitoring software program. James Dobson recommends K9 Web Protection. I haven’t used this one, but it must be good if Dr. Dobson likes it. The one we use at our house is called Safe Eyes. I think this is the most advanced internet filtering software available. In addition, it’s extremely easy to use. It really works for our family.

Safe Eyes gives you a great amount of flexibility in how you limit your kid’s time on the internet and content they are able to view. You can set up individual accounts for each of your kids and you’re able to control when they can get on by time of day. You can also limit the sites they are able to view by the category. Some of the categories you can choose are Nudity, Pornography, Profanity, Swimsuits, Social Networking, Gambling, Jokes, and many, many more.

Another option that is available is to block certain video sites: You can block all YouTube videos, or any with inappropriate content. You can also block internet TV based on the rating of the show.

Music: you can block any music with explicit lyrics and if you want you can restrict peer-to-peer file sharing, which keeps your kid from sharing illegally downloaded music and videos. These type of files also often contain malware which can harm your computer.

You can also block and/or monitor instant messaging services like Yahoo!, AIM, and MSN/Live Messenger, and you can block access to web-based chat rooms.

Gaming/Gambling. You can block access to online gameplay and access to gaming websites.

You can block Social Networking sites and/or monitor posts containing addresses, profanity, and sexually suggestive terms. In addition, you are able to restrict access to email, whether it’s web-based or non web-based.

One of the other cool things about Safe Eyes is the fact that you get a report sent to your email from each computer and detailing each user’s activity over the prior period, whether it’s daily or weekly. It gives you the terms they searched on, sites that were blocked, and other various information. It’s a great accountability tool.

If you think your child will never look at any of these sites, think again! They’re young and they haven’t really developed a conscience yet, and these sites are extremely enticing. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to have this software on your computer even if you don’t have kids in the house – it will certainly cut down on temptation.

So, if you’re looking for a great internet monitoring software, look no further than Safe Eyes.

Note: If you’re looking for a program to limit the actual time the child can be on the computer, not just the internet, the one we use is ComputerTime. To read our review of ComputerTime, click here.

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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The Total Transformation by James Lehman

If you’ve been looking for Total Transformation Reviews on the internet, you’ve stumbled across the right site. Quite often, the people that review products don’t actually use the product, they’ll just listen to the CD’s or read the book, and write a review based on their feelings whether the product will work or not. This is especially true about parenting courses. Unless you actually have kids to “try it out on”, you won’t know for sure whether it works or not.

So what makes us different? We’ve got five adopted kids, that’s what! With the oldest being 17 and the youngest being 11, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to test many, many different parenting styles, programs, books, courses, etc. Our kids have issues including Reactive Attachment Disorder, ADHD, ADD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and more. If you want to learn all about the different disorders that can affect children, all you have to do is adopt five of them!

So what have we discovered? That there are tools and techniques to be gleaned from most of the resources that you try. For Reactive Attachment Disorder kiddos, our favorite is When Love is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas. This is the RAD bible, as far as we’re concerned. If you have RAD kids, you absolutely must get this book!

With all the rest of our children, we’ve found the Total Transformation program by James Lehman to be most helpful. The good thing about the Total Transformation is that it puts many different techniques together in one set of CD’s, DVD’s, and a workbook. If you want to listen to a preview from some of the actual CD’s, click here. You’ll very quickly get an idea what the program is all about.

What are some of the things that have worked for us? Here are 3, just to get you started:

1.       Transition time. This is one of the most important tools we’ve learned, and possibly one of the simplest. The way it works is that when Dad or Mom get home from work, they get 10 minutes of “Transition Time” to read they’re mail, emails, change their clothes, etc. until they’re approached by the kids for requests or problems. It can also work the other way, too – kids get a 10 minute break when they get home from school to “wind down” and relax a bit before they have to do and chores, or are reminded about areas where they need to improve. Here’s a fun video we made showing this technique.

2.      Direct statements. When you want something to happen, be very firm and clear. Say something like “Don’t talk to me that way. I don’t like it”. Then walk away. This is very powerful because you’ve held the child accountable, no matter how he or she reacts.

3.      Be an empowered parent. Unempowered parents are unable to empower their children with the problem-solving skills necessary to be successful. Use whatever social, environmental and legal options you have at your disposal. If your child won’t get up for school, let the school deal with it in the way they would with any other truancy issues, because that’s what it is. Don’t let the kid make it your problem – put it back on them.

These are 3 skills to get you started. There are hundreds more in the Total Transformation program. It’s worked for us, it can work for you too!

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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Being a parent of five children, I’m constantly struggling with child behavior problems, and how to deal with them. It just goes with the territory. But last week, it came to a head, and I came to a few realizations that I don’t think I had before. Here’s what happened:

My oldest son has a new “friend” that’s a girl (we don’t want them to be boyfriend and girlfriend yet, but it looks like they’re moving down that road pretty fast. More on our feelings about that in another post). Anyway, Sarah came over after school to watch a movie with Bobby. That’s it – pretty benign, right? Well, not as far as my kid’s are concerned!

You’d think the sky was falling, or we were going to Disneyland or something. They all just became out-of-control kids: loud, no manners, saying inappropriate things, and on and on. This type of child behavior problems went on all night – long after Sarah had gone home for the evening. It was crazy! I was totally embarrassed, enough so that I canceled a fun family weekend we had planned.

What I came to realize is that my kids need to have a pretty structured schedule. They feel very out-of-control when anything is out of the ordinary at all. I believe this goes back to the very first months of their lives, when they weren’t cared for in a healthy way. So we are trying to keep it orderly and under control – therefore avoiding this type of children behavior issues.

I just happened to be browsing the Empowering Parents website, and I found an article by James Lehman called Are You Embarrassed By Your Child’s Behavior? 5 Ways To Cope that helped me out concerning my embarrassment.  It gave me a few tips, and I’ll share a little bit from the article.

1. Don’t guess what people around you are thinking. Unless they say flat out “You’re a horrible parent”, you don’t really know what they’re thinking. They could be thinking “I remember when my kid did that”, or “I’m glad I’m not going through that phase with my son anymore”. Don’t be a mind reader.
2. Focus on the behavior at hand: It’s not about you, it’s about the child. When your child misbehaves in public, they need something from you – focus on their needs, not your feelings.
3. Use “avoid” and “escape” as short-term strategies. If you know the type of situations that cause your kids behavior problems, try to avoid those situations. Also, give you and your child an “escape” plan – a way to get out of the situation if things start to break down.

These are just a few strategies I learned from this article. To read the whole article, click here.

For many more tips and techniques to deal with child behavior problem’s, check out The Total Transformation. It’s one of the best child behavior programs I’ve ever seen – it worked for our family, I’m sure it can work for yours!

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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Do you have a child behavior problem around your house? The truth is good behavior is a skill that can be learned, just like teaching, sewing, driving a car. I believe there are three important tools that our children are not born with and need to learn as a foundation for good behavior. These are: reading a social situation, managing emotions, and solving problems appropriately.

#1: Reading Social Situations

You and I both do this as adults. You walk into a room and assess the situation. Who is here, where are they sitting, what is the look on peoples’ faces, what is their posture, etc? Well our self-centered little ones normally barge in to a situation like a full force hurricane. Even the shy ones keep their heads down and don’t look around. So teaching them to read the situation helps them to determine if this is a good place to be. For example, if several kids are surrounding one child who looks scared, this is not a place to be. Or even if they are told to leave from a group of kids, it is best to do so as this is evidently a hostile environment.

#2: Managing Emotions:

Start by not asking “How did you feel?” but “What was going on?” Ask the right questions when a situation, like hitting, appears.

Then give a consequence for that situation. Now I don’t think people change simply because they’re punished or are given consequences.  Consequences alone are not enough to change the child behavior problem. It must be coupled with the learning process associated with the consequences to change a child’s behavior. The problem is actually not the behavior—the problem lies in the way kids think. This faulty thinking then gets externalized into how they behave.

And then talk to your child about what he can do differently the next time he feels angry or frustrated. This can even be like role playing. And it gives them an arsenal ahead of time to use.

Skill #3: Teach Problem Solving Skills

There really is not a good or bad child. There are children who know how to problem solve and those who don’t. So teaching them how to solve the problem is the key. If you do not teach your children appropriately how to solve problems, they will resort to what they know – hitting, yelling, hurting others (like a 2 year old). And this won’t work so well when they are adults in the work world.

And if they can get these tools down as children, their adult ‘tool belt’ will be much better equipped for a successful life. For more tools to help your child behavior problem, check out The Total Transformation. It’s one of the best child behavior programs I’ve ever seen – it worked for our family, I’m sure it can work for yours!

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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Sometimes teenage girls are so out-of-control that parents feel there is no solution other than to send them to a military school for girls, boot camp, or wilderness program. Usually, this isn’t something they want to do – it’s because they’ve tried everything else and they don’t see any other alternative. Residential treatment programs like military schools for girls, reform schools, and boot/wilderness camps can provide short term help. They can teach your teenage girl how to behave in a restrictive, artificial environment, but they rarely bring about permanent behavior changes once she return’s home and is faced with the challenges of the real world.

The problem is that many teenage girls simply don’t know how to problem solve, and that’s why they act out and are disobedient and abusive. It’s how they control their life. They just use it to get what they want, instead of working through the problem.

If you’ve been considering a military school for your teenage girl, please do yourself (and your daughter) a favor and take a look at the Total Transformation Program by James Lehman. This program is designed to teach parents how to help their kids learn to problem solve, thereby eliminating the abusive behavior that comes from poor problem-solving skills. Mr. Lehman give you many tips and techniques to help your daughter to be successful in life.

One of our favorite techniques is to disconnect. What this means is stop communication with the child if they’re being abusive or disrespectful. Make it a power vacuum, and you’ll be amazed how fast things change. This is one that we’ve started using and I can’t believe how good it works. Communication should not resume until the child takes responsibility for their behavior.

This is just one of the tools we’ve learned that has worked for us. Mr. Lehman has hundreds more – and they all make sense and are easy to implement. Maybe a military school for girls is not the right answer. Take a look at The Total Transformation today. You’ve got nothing to lose, because now there is a limited time offer to get it for free! All you have to do is just order it and complete and return the enclosed Feedback Survey.  Do it today before it’s too late!

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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Positive parenting skills – not something you’re just born with! They need to be learned and developed over time. Unfortunately, as far as kids are concerned, the landscape is constantly changing. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, they morph into some other hideous creature that you don’t recognize and you’ve got to learn how to subdue! (Just kidding about the hideous creature – who would ever say that about their kid?)

You can get positive parenting skills in many places: Books, friends, classes, online courses, and many more places. In fact, just surfing the web can give you lots of ideas. Some of our favorite parenting books are [amazonify]1576839303::text::::Parenting Teens with Love and Logic[/amazonify] and [amazonify]1590529324::text::::For Parents Only[/amazonify]. These 2 books will give you lots of helpful advice when it comes to dealing with teens. [amazonify]1590529324::text::::For Parents Only[/amazonify] is pretty cool because it gives you information from a teenager’s point of view – the author interviews several hundreds of teenagers to get their opinions, good stuff.

A good website with lots of great parenting articles is minti.com. This one is full of articles written by experts – parents themselves! Anyone can contribute. Here’s an article called Rules, Boundaries, and Older Children from another great website with tons of good parenting advice.

The best product we’ve found so far that gives us positive parenting skills that are effective, long lasting and cover a huge range of parenting issues is The Total Transformation by James Lehman, MSW. The strategies he uses are simple to learn. They also deal with the heart behind the behavior which is where the long lasting piece comes in.

One of the tips that seems universal and had an immediate effect in our family was the Disconnect technique. The premise of this is to stop communication with your child if they become abusive or disrespectful.  Make it a power vacuum, and you’ll be amazed how fast things change. Communication should not resume until the child takes responsibility for their behavior. It is like a pressure release valve for the parent too. Screaming matches be gone!

This tool is just one of many that he outlines in this CD and DVD set. If you have a household that could use some peace and sanity, you need to read more here. Feel free to browse around this website and take away anything you need. We parents need to stick together!

For many more tips and techniques on parenting tools, check out The Total Transformation. It’s one of the best child behavior programs I’ve ever seen – it worked for our family, I’m sure it can work for yours!

About the author: By Matt Hellstrom

Matt is the parent (along with his wife Julie) to five wonderful kids. He has been self-employed for 25+ years and is the owner of the Positive Parenting Skills website.

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