If you’re looking for Total Transformation program reviews, you’re going to find stuff that’s all over the board. There are some people that really love the program (like me) and some that can’t stand it. There are also those that call it a scam, but I’m not going to talk about those people here. I’ve got an entire post dedicated to that topic.

So why is there such disparity when you look for Total Transformation program reviews on Google or another search engine? Here are a few reasons I came up with:

• Total Transformation by James Lehman is a product that you have to use. Many people get all excited about something because they think it’s going to solve all their problems magically – like a silver bullet or something. That’s just not how it is. Everything takes work and the Total Transformation program is no exception. There is much to learn and practice, and it just doesn’t happen overnight. The whole premise of the program is to teach us as parents to help our children to learn to problem solve, and that’s not an immediate fix. Yes, there are some techniques in there that help you to stop arguments quickly and easily, and to change some of the unwanted behaviors pretty fast, but if you really want a lasting change, you’re going to have to work at it.
• It’s not for some kids. The Total Transformation program is designed for difficult, challenging children – ones that might have special needs like ODD, ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, etc. These children are abusive and out of control and if you’ve got those kinds of kids this program is going to help. If you’ve got normal kids that are just a little obnoxious once in a while (as all kids are!) you’re not going to need this system and I wouldn’t suggest buying it.
• Both parents aren’t on board. When training your kids to problem solve, you’re going to want to be a unified front, so they can’t work one of you against the other. If one of the parents doesn’t believe in the product or think that there’s a problem, it’s going to be much less effective.

Those are three reasons why you might see negative Total Transformation reviews when you go searching the web. If you want to read my review, click here. We’ve got five challenging kids, we’ve worked hard on the techniques the program teaches, and both of us are on board. And it’s worked for us.

Want more information on the Total Transformation program? Click here for a page of testimonials and reviews for many others that have used the product.

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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One of the questions that quite often gets asked when people come to this website is does Total Transformation really work? They want to know many different individual’s opinions on the program when they don’t have anything to gain or lose from reviewing it.

(Click here to see a sample of the type of training you’ll find on the CD’s and DVD’s in the Total Transformation Program. You actually can click on each CD or DVD to preview that  lesson. Especially take a look at the Jump Start DVD. See if you think this is the kind of information that might help you parent your children.)

I love the Total Transformation program, and use the tools I’ve learned from it every day with my five kids. I’ve tried to be as honest and straightforward with my Total Transformation review as possible, but I also thought it might be useful to give some unbiased opinions from others when asked if the Total Transformation really works?

So I searched the internet and found as many unbiased opinions as I could as to whether Total Transformation really works or not.  So here you go!

Crystal G says:

We just bought it ourselves, got it yesterday. I watched the first disk (Jump Start) and although it kind of played like a long commercial for something I had already bought, there was some good information in there. It gave me hope that this just may help. I think the thing that jumped out at me the most was when he said “You don’t have to attend every argument you are invited to”.

Hey if this program can show me another way of dealing with things and how to deal with things in order to get a different reaction from my child than I am getting now it will have been worth 20 times what it cost… All I know is that it can’t hurt to try a different way since what I am doing now certainly isn’t working.

So, bottom line is I haven’t had it long enough to tell you if it is going to work, but just watching the first DVD gave me hope, which I didn’t have much of before that.

Diane says:

I have used this program. This program is good stay consistent with it. The first day I started putting things in motion my kids hated it. Use words like you had a choice and you choose to do this. And now because you chose this you also chose this punishment. It gives a lot of practice steps etc. I think the older your child is and how far they are gone really needs professional help, but if your children are not severe than this program can work for you.

I want to say that as a parent, you have to be very dedicated to this program and be very consistent. What I did was watched a new video every week and then practiced each level for a couple of weeks before moving on. I would say give it a try.

The program will work if you are dedicated as long as there aren’t other issues as well, my oldest son was too far gone to have it work for me and he is in a juvenile detention center, but my other children it has worked very nice.

Denise Says:

I have the Total Transformation System (bought for me by my well-meaning parents) and while I think it is probably a good system, I have to admit that it was hard for me to get through the audio CDs….they actually put me to sleep! I hope to get through the entire program some day…..

Good luck!

Seasidesu says:

I started using The Total Transformation …. a couple of months ago. What I really like about this program (and there are so many things!) is that it gave me some practical things to do immediately to help stop my son’s obnoxious behavior. Like July said, there’s a series of CDs. It’s helped me understand how my child thinks, how (and WHY) he has these outbursts and some different roles that he and I have both fallen into. It’s definitely helped me implement a more effective parenting style, and his siblings are happy, too!

So there you have few reviews. If you’re willing to work, the program works! Click here to learn more and see if the Total Transformation will really 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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I’ve been reading a few articles on the internet lately claiming that Total Transformation by James Lehman is a scam. It kind of makes me nuts when people say that when they’ve never seen the materials or tried the program. My thought is “Why are they knocking something when they don’t know anything about it?” Perhaps you’ve seen a few of these websites as you’re looking for valid, useful information on whether Total Transformation is a scam, or if it’s worth spending the money on.

(Click here to see what the people behind Total Transformation have to say about this scam question.)

The main thing I’ve noticed about these sites is that the writers have usually not had any experience using the products, nor have they actually even listened to the CD’s to review the product. They just feel that since it’s sold on the radio and on the internet, it must be a scam. In my opinion, this is just wrong.

If you really want to find out if Total Transformation is a scam, wouldn’t the best thing to do be see what people who have actually used the product have to say about it? I think that’s the best way, rather than take people’s word for it that don’t know anything about it.

My wife and I are parents of five adopted kids and we’ve had behavioral problems with them since day one. It’s been an enjoyable, but difficult journey raising these guys. At one point we were really struggling, and our neighbor turned us on to the Total Transformation. She let us listen to her CD’s, and we really liked what we heard. We started using the techniques, and they worked! Not magic-bullet worked, but with patience and perseverance, they paid off. To read a full review of our experience, click here.

I also looked around the web and found some independent comments by other people that have used the product, and I posted them here.

Lastly, Total Transformation has a page of reviews that people who have used the product have written. To access this page, click here. As you can see, anyone that’s used the product can post their review.

So make up your own mind – believe someone who has never even looked at the Total Transformation product, or people that have used it themselves. Click here to learn more about the Total Transformation.

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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Many people who are looking for help with parenting ask “Is Total Transformation a Scam?” I can understand this question because of the fact that if you search the web, you’ll find negative reviews as well as positive ones, and some of them say that Total Transformation is a scam. I can also understand why people would be asking this question – nobody wants to throw away money on something that doesn’t work.

Here’s my opinion on whether Total Transformation by James Lehman is a scam.

(Click here to see a sample of the type of training you’ll find on the CD’s and DVD’s in the Total Transformation Program. You actually can click on each CD or DVD to preview that  lesson. Especially take a look at the Jump Start DVD. See if you think this is the kind of information you’d get if this program was a scam.)

Total Transformation is designed to help you change as a parent in the way you parent your children. It gives you skills that you didn’t have before to help your child learn to problem solve, therefore keeping them from acting out in anger, violence, and disobedience. James Lehman, the creator of Total Transformation, says that the main reason kids act out is that they don’t have problem solving skills. Total Transformation is designed to show parents how to give their kids those skills.

Some of these techniques are foreign to parents – after all, if they knew them they wouldn’t have out-of-control, defiant kids. Since they are new skills, it will take the parents a while to learn how to use them, and the kids might react negatively at first. It’s a learning process, and it’s definitely not a silver bullet, where everything is going to be fixed immediately.

I think that what happens sometimes (not always, of course) is that parents try a couple of the ideas, but don’t become consistent with them, and they don’t see a big change right away. After all, it took the kids a long time to get to the point where they are, they’re not going to learn and embrace the problem solving skills right away. Plus, what they’re doing is working for them – they’re kind of in control of the household, right? So they’re not going to go quietly into that good night.

I also think that some parents expect a “magic solution” to their parenting problems, and that just doesn’t exist. The Total Transformation is a program that gives you many, many techniques, tools, and skills to help you be a better parent, and to help you teach your kids to problem solve so they can grow up to be healthy adults. It’s not a quick fix, and since it’s not there are people that consider that a scam.

Now, go read my Total Transformation review and get an idea of what worked (and continues to work) for me. Then, browse around this site and get a feel for the kind of tips you’re going to get from the program. You can also see hundreds of reviews from people that actually have used Total Transformation by clicking here. After you feel confident that the Total Transformation is not a scam, click here to learn more about the program itself.

By the way, James Lehman feels so confident in the Total Transformation program, that he gives you a chance to get  it free. Just order the program and  complete and return the enclosed Feedback Survey.  You can be the judge of whether Total Transformation is a scam or not. One thing I can tell you for sure - don’t buy the Total Transformation if you aren’t open to changing your parenting style, and willing to put in some effort. It’s not going to work – I can guarantee that!

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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One of the tools James Lehman talks about using in the Total Transformation Program is called “transition time”, and it’s simply having a short period of time when you get home from work, or your kid get’s home from school, when you’re not to be bugged by the rest of the family.

You get a chance to get settled in, put your briefcase or books down, maybe have a snack or check your email. Then, after 10 minutes of so you can take on the cares of the house. I can tell you, this tool has done wonders for our house, as has many of the others he suggests.

Here’s a fun video we created to illustrate how this works. Enjoy!

Want to learn more ways to have peace in your house? Check out Total Transformation today!

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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One of the ineffective parenting roles James Lehman talks about in the Total Transformation is the over-negotiator. Here’s how that manifests itself in our house.

It is hard to set reasonable rules for our family. And even harder when I try to enforce them that I meet the “master negotiator”. You know what I am talking about, the kid who likes to put his toe over the line. Wants to just see where you will budge. It is the hardest to not give in too.

I like to not always be a “no” mom, so I want to try to find places where I can say yes. But I have found this is not normally a good area to do this. Why? Because this tells the child that your rules are not firm. And I know when I have caved because I get this helpless, I am not in control feeling.

Now I am not talking about general things, like “can I put my socks in the dirty clothes after I save off this video game?”, but more about, “can I stay out 15 extra minutes tonight?”. Which will turn into 20 tomorrow and on and on. So I have to pick which rules I will not negotiate and stick to them.

Then I look for other areas that give me the “yes” mom happiness that I want. It turns into a win-win situation because the child knows your no means no and that creates security for him.

For many more tips and techniques on how to not be a negotiator, 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 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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Since we are going through the Total Transformation DVD’s and CD’s, we thought it would be good to explain what the Total Transformation workbook is all about, since it’s a major part of the program.

The Total Transformation workbook is 118 pages, and it starts out explaining a little about the program, and a little about James Lehman who came up with it. Right away after that it starts the training – it suggests you watch the Jump Start DVD, then you’re instructed to answer some questions about your child. These questions are designed to help you identify the behaviors that your kid needs help with.

Next, you’re supposed to go to lesson one in the workbook, and taking a pre-test to lesson one. After you take the test, you listen to CD #1 and then go through the exercises and/or additional information in the workbook. After lesson one in the workbook, there is a post-test, exactly the same as the pre-test, for you to take and see if your answers changed. The post-test isn’t in every chapter, but the pre-test is.

A few of examples of the true/false questions he asks in the workbook pre-test and post-test are:

1. Children act disrespectfully or destructively because they’ve lost control of themselves.
2. Parents have to work harder to understand a child who is behaving inappropriately.
3. Out-of-control behavior is a sign of mental illness.
4. Kids need to see something as “fair” in order for them to take it seriously.

The answers to the above questions? 1: False 2: True 3: False 4: False

Did you get them all right? When I first took the test I only got 3 out of 10 right! Here’s what’s neat, though - it’s never too late to get started with this program. All of my kids, including my 15 year old, have improved behaviors from the techniques I’m now using.

The Total Transformation workbook goes through each CD in a similar fashion – recap, training, special words from Mr. Lehman, and tests. It’s really good, and easy to do. He suggests you take it one CD per week, and work on one, two, ten, or all of the techniques suggested. I agree – there is a lot in there, and you don’t want to overwhelm yourself.

Next post – the Jump Start DVD.

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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What exactly do you learn from Total Transformation? In other words, how does the program work?

If you think that you’ll change your kid’s behaviors without changing your own behavior, then whatever you do, don’t buy Total Transformation. As we go through the DVD’s and CD’s, it becomes abundantly clear that James Lehman is out to teach us as parents to change how we deal with our children, which in turn will make the child change.

Mr. Lehman states over and over that the main reason that kids are disobedient, out-of-control, and abusive is they don’t have problem solving skills, and acting out is the way they get through life, instead of learning to problem solve. Mr. Lehman shows us many different skills we can start using as parents in order to help our kids learn, but you’ve got to want to work at it! Nothing happens overnight!

There are many different permissive styles that parents have in raising their children, and most of them are ineffective. Some of these include the martyr, the screamer, bottomless pockets, over-negotiator, and the perfectionist. These are the roles that we as parents need to change if we’re going to help our kid to problem solve, and get our house back to normal. Mr. Lehman goes over each of these roles and cures for them in the Total Transformation, and I’m going to touch on most if not all of them in my reviews of the program.

Here’s the truth – you probably need to change your behavior. You can’t expect to fix your child if you’re not willing to learn and grow yourself. If that sounds like something you won’t mind doing, then Total Transformation might be for you.

Next up – The Total Transformation Workbook.

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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