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.
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!
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Too often people are afraid to use the words children discipline because it brings up visions of harsh punishment. The word discipline means to disciple, teach , and guide. The word punishment means to hurt. In keeping these definitions straight in our parent minds, we can discern when we are handling children behavior issues, the correct method to use.
There is no need to put on the guilt that has been unfairly attached to discipline and I will tell you why. Children mostly desire to know if they are loved and safe. And discipline takes care of both of those questions. First, guiding them away from incorrect behavior and towards correct behavior. This can and must be done in an almost matter-of-fact way. This approach is not unloving, but loving in that anger becomes a non-issue.
Secondly, with consistent discipline guidelines in place, the child knows there are limits and this makes them feel safe. Explaining the house rules ahead of time and sticking to them is good parenting. Look at it this way, the speeding ticket does not change just because the offender stomps his feet or slams the door. (They will test the limits, you can count on it!). You are teaching them that rules or laws apply to them no matter if they like them or not. Sticking to reasonable discipline is the way all people learn.
It is important for children to understand and see through your behavior that children discipline is a source of parental care and concern. Ultimately, you are doing your job well raising these kids up to be successful, productive adults.
Do you want to learn more on specific children discipline methods that can work for you?
Check out The Total Transformation to give you many great tips. 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!
Remember the program that we saw as teens called “Scared Straight”? It was about teenagers who were in juvenile detention that had meetings with adults currently in the prison system. The adult prisoners minced no words in explaining how they had wasted their lives and how these teens were wasting theirs too. And they used extremely graphic illustrations on what prison life was truly like.
So I was thinking the other day about how using that philosophy might work with my kids when doing their homework or chores seemed stupid to them. What if I sat down and told them what life would look like if they didn’t know how to write a sentence. Like no ability to submit a resume for a job or apply to college even. Or what if they didn’t learn how to vacuum their room or do their laundry. How could they expect to stay healthy in an unhealthy environment let alone attract a great mate if they couldn’t even wash the ketchup off their shirt.
And what if I started pointing out areas where they could expect to live or even jobs that they could expect to do. Maybe take them to a homeless shelter and let the people there share their stories. Explain to them with low paying jobs (if they could get one at all since they can’t add 2+2), they couldn’t afford a car or possibly not even public transportation. Then show them the distance from where they might live to the soup kitchen where they would eat. And explain how walking in the winter on unshoveled sidewalks in freezing sleet with a thin coat for long distances sounds somewhat unpleasant.
Don’t even get me started on all the perks they currently enjoy because Dad and I have college educations and good paying jobs (knowing how to add 2+2), like vacations, toys, video games, ipods, computers, trips to the doctor when they are sick etc.
After this stark reality check, I think I would simply state – “Now about doing that homework/chore?”
So maybe there are other parenting tools that would work before you had to use the Scared Straight philosophy. Check out The Total Transformation to give you some of these great tips. 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!
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