I want to view each day as an adventure with my RAD kiddo. I don’t want to wake up depressed anymore dreading the day ahead. I want the challenge of helping this child become successful in coping with life in a healthy manner be what motivates me. So why can’t I? Oh, there is another person in this equation.

And right now this one does not want to participate. She so boldly stated to her daddy and I that it is her life and she will do what she wants. Never mind the consequences, she will take them! While this is okay for a 10-year old (usually!), when you are a middle teen (with an emotional age of 10) the stakes get immeasurably higher for this attitude.

Living her life her way, right now looks like lying about everything. She does it so frequently that I believe that it is more natural than telling the truth. Why do I say this? Because she even now is lying to her friends about things that no one even cares about. “I will only have a small piece of meat because I really don’t eat meat”. Yes she does and who cares?! Certainly not the friend who was not only unimpressed but that statement didn’t even register on their “care to know meter”.

Of course, what goes with the lying but sneaking. Wanting control of her life, there is nothing she won’t sneak to do. And most of the time, if she asked (or I’d be happy with even telling us at first), we’d be okay with it. However, telling us makes us in charge of her life.

So the trust in our relationship with her is gone. So much so that I can’t believe anything that comes out of her mouth. Even when she gets caught and goes through her honeymoon period to manipulate us back to sleep (so she thinks), I don’t believe her. And my fear level for a phone call from the police or a positive pregnancy test is off the charts. And by the way, she says that this is our problem, too.

I have spent all of her life knowing and working with this child with abandonment issues. And intensely so the last 2 years. We have had her (and still do) in counseling. Read, listened and watched everything that we can lay our hands on. Formed support groups and starting counseling for us. Implemented, reworked, backed up and tried again over and over again. And she will not budge.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day?

Do you have a RADish? It’s not easy, but there is hope! Two resources we’ve used are When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas and Total Transformation by James Lehman. Both offer tons of help in dealing with your Reactive Attachment Disorder kiddo.

You might be wondering if I’m making money by promoting this program, and the answer is yes! If you buy it after visiting my website, I will earn a commission.  The truth is, I tried it and liked it so much, that I decided it would be something I would feel proud to support and promote, and as a bonus, I get a commission if you buy it.

One thing I find very interesting as a parent is how kids deal with things that they feel are unfair. I found that when they don’t believe the situation is fair, all rules go out the window. The fairness becomes the focus not the unacceptable behavior.

Let me give you an example. I have firm rules about the time and the length of time the kids can play video games.  Sometimes the length of time gets bumped due to the time they must be finished. My 11-year old cannot abide this hierarchy.  “But Mom, Sean got to play for an hour.  Why do I have to get off at 5? I only started at 4:30.” This conversation is, of course, happening  about 5:15 too! So now the focus is redirected from playing past the stop time to getting his full hour. And if I let him, away we would go down this rabbit trail with me trying to defend why the stop time has first preference over the length of time, again!

And guess what isn’t getting addressed? That’s right…the stop time infraction. It takes concerted effort on my part to recognize “the unfair” distraction and stay focused. Don’t misunderstand me here, I explained the hierarchy when I established these rules so this is not a surprise to him.

Ok so what do I do? I listen for the fair word to come up so I am not sideswiped and find myself down the road. I continue to stay focused on the infraction at hand.  Just as a great side note, I have noticed that when I do this right, my child feels safe. My guess it is because I am in control and as I’ve said before, every kid wants to know who is in charge here and am I loved.

James Lehman talks about this “fairness” issue in the Total Transformation Program, saying that “Injustice” is one of the characteristics and practice of children with disrespectful, obnoxious, abusive behavior. Some of the others that he talks about are One-Way Boundaries, Casing, False Apologies, and Pride in Negativity. In all, he describes 16 characteristics that parents of this type of child should be aware of. You need to find out more about Total Transformation today if you’ve got these kind of problems with your child.

You might be wondering if I’m making money by promoting this program, and the answer is yes! If you buy it after visiting my website, I will earn a commission.  The truth is, I tried it and liked it so much, that I decided it would be something I would feel proud to support and promote, and as a bonus, I get a commission if you buy it.

Parenting Allies – A Parenting Forum and Social Network site

We were thinking it would be cool to have a social site similar to Facebook just for parents – then we found out a way to create your own social network, so we went ahead and did it! We decided to call it Parenting Allies, because in today’s world parenting is a tough job, and we need all the friends or allies we can get!

So what is Parenting Allies?

Parenting Allies is simply a place for you to go and share with other parents. There are many areas you can participate in, or you can just go there to look around and see what others are doing. Like Facebook, you can have friends and be notified when they do something. There are many other neat areas to discover, too, for example:

Parenting Forum

There is a parenting forum that is devoted to conversation with other parents in a forum type of setting. With topics such as Teenagers, ADD and ADHD, Adoption and Foster Care, Parenting Products, and Helpful Hints there is a section for everyone.

Blogs

You can create your own that’s just visible to you, you and your friends, or everyone. Of course, you can read others there as well.

Videos, Pictures, and Music

Post your favorite videos, photos, and music for all the parents to see or listen to.

These are just a few examples of what you’ll find at Parenting Allies. Best of all – it’s free to join. Take a look today!

One of the questions that quite often gets asked when people come to this website is does Total Transformation work? They want to know people’s opinion on the program when they don’t have anything to gain or lose from reviewing it, in other words, they’re not making any money off the product.

I’ve tried to be as honest and straightforward with my review as possible, but I also thought it might be useful to give some unbiased opinions from others when they were asked “Does Total Transformation work?”

So what I did was search around the web and find as many unbiased opinions as I could as to whether Total Transformation Works or not. By unbiased, I mean that as far as I could tell, the people giving the opinion had nothing to gain from the answer, since there was no link to a sales page or anything like that. So here you go! (I’ve tried to keep them as original as possible, just adding the name of the commenter. In some instances I may have fixed some spelling or grammar, but nothing that would affect the meaning of the comment).

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 ot work, but just watching the first DVD gave me hope, which I didn’t have much of before that.

Tenn Gal says:

It’s a wonderful program

You’ll learn the exact techniques to help children take responsibility for their behavior and help parents get back in control of their homes.

Fishman says:

I was reluctant about purchasing this program but decided to purchase it after reading numerous reviews. It changed me and my family. i thought my son had problems, but realized that many of our issues spawned from my parenting style. I learned my parenting style and the style my son needed. Once I adjusted my thinking we immediately began to see changes and improvements. We are not out of the water yet, but we are swimming along the shoreline. Thank you.

Wendy K says:

YES! BUY IT. I started using it this week and my child’s behavior started changing immediately. The two techniques I’m using are:

1. Don’t talk to me that way, try again.

2. What are you supposed to be doing? DO IT

(no conversation or negotiation) Just repeat DO IT

until the child does the behavior they have been instructed to do.

3. Where are you supposed to be? GO THERE. It’s amazing. Hope this helps.

Mrs Crissy says:

I have bought and tried the total transformation and would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Some people say that they have all heard these things before but have you ever had someone actually tell you what to try. I HAVEN’T!!! Yes, this is very hard to follow but it’s for your kids!! Yes, it’s expensive but it’s for your kids!! How much has anyone spent on therapy lately! I really like how it teaches that there is no bad parenting (unless abusive of course) but ineffective parenting in other words if it’s not working it’s ineffective you can also go to their website www.empoweringparents.com and find the one minute suggestions they advertise on the radio. Bottom line if you’re not willing to put the money and time into your kids then what are you gonna put it into. I am not judging anyone I completely understand. If I had not met my husband when I did I would not have been able to afford this program but I could and I can say it works!!!!

Michael says:

Like many, we have a wonderful child that is defiant, manipulative and subject to tantrums. We checked into therapy in the DC area, and the going rate for a GOOD therapist, that doesn’t even accept insurance, was $135 hour. Good luck on finding a seasoned therapist thru an HMO in any reasonable time or if at all. Therapy sessions would be 50 minutes, and 15 of that would be spent in chit chat about how things are going, so the REAL cost is closer to $250 per hour. Yikes!

At about $300 +/-, Total Transformation is a Godsend. As they state, you will (alright, “can”) see results almost immediately. The author’s basic approach is that one MUST make the child accept responsibility for his actions and that the parents MUST not allow the child to abuse them. He of course goes into much more depth and provides copious examples, and ways to achieve this. Author has a good sense of humor and is easy to listen to.

Yes, that seems SO simple and like “duh!” But, if it WERE that simple, you wouldn’t be reading this review…. We started to implement the concepts right away in that the program is easy to grasp and get started. And YES, we DID notice results right away and things are improving each and every day.

Of course, some will say this didn’t work for them. Like any self help concept, the effectiveness is based on the person using it. And like anything else, if you are expecting miracles, you may be disappointed; but if you are realistic, this program is of great value. Certainly much cheaper than weekly therapy sessions.

AND, if you purchase the program from the publisher (either new or reburished, meaning is was returned), you have (30) days to return it for a full refund. Given this, how can one possibly lose giving this a try?! Get hold of your life and your childs, just DO it.

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!

John K says:

As a parenting alone father of 2 teenagers – this program really helped me get things under control – I used to have troubled teens – Now I have teens that understand what is expected of them and that I am the PARENT first and their friend next – this program works – If you are looking for it – then I am sure it is going to work better than whatever you are currently doing – take back control of your home – no more screaming or yelling…

There you go! Just a little more information on your quest for whether or not to buy The Total Transformation.

You might be wondering if I’m making money by promoting this program, and the answer is yes! If you buy it after visiting my website, I will earn a commission.  The truth is, I tried it and liked it so much, that I decided it would be something I would feel proud to support and promote, and as a bonus, I get a commission if you buy it.

I wrote in an earlier post that I’d been having major trouble around our house concerning 3 of our kids and the inability (or unwillingness is more like it) to be ready to leave for school on time. I started thinking about the problem, and wondered if this was my fault (Heaven forbid!) or theirs. Well, the conclusion I came to was “a little of both”. Let me explain.

I started looking through my Total Transformation workbook for some answers, and I happened upon a section called “Ineffective Parenting Roles”. Uh oh, this doesn’t sound good. Better take a look, though.

James Lehman describes seven different parenting roles, that he terms “well-meaning but ineffective”, because they fail to promote responsibility, accountability, or change. In looking through these roles, I could see myself playing 6 of the 7 at one time or another. Ouch! For being able to play that many roles, I ought to get an academy award!

The role I play in this instance is the Martyr. Here’s a short description.

The Martyr:

• Takes on the child’s responsibilities, for example, wakes their child up repeatedly.
• Constantly lowers expectations, giving unconditional acceptance.
• Fears that the child will experience unhappiness or distress.

And here’s what the child learns:

• Learned helplessness is effective. The less ability the child demonstrates, the less is asked of him.
• Unconditional approval can be demanded – you don’t have to earn approval, you simply demand it and threaten to misbehave if you don’t get it.
• His parent has no confidence in him. The child learns that he is not competent to achieve tasks, earn approval, or manage his own behavior.

Lovely, huh? And I thought I was doing them a favor!

The other six permissive parenting styles

See if you can relate to any of these. I’m just going to give you a brief explanation of each – James Lehman describes them in much greater detail in the Total Transformation (and tells you what to do to fix them!)

1. Bottomless Pockets – Buys the child things to stop the child’s constant demands or to “prevent” behavior problems. Child learns a false sense of entitlement.
2. Over-Negotiator – Negotiates already established rules, commitments, and standards. Child learns that boundaries aren’t solid.
3. Screamer – Gets drawn into screaming matches and name-calling. Child learns that no one is in control.
4. Ticket Puncher – Over indulges the child emotionally. The parent takes any and all opportunities to shower their child with “love and attention”. The child learns there is no objective right or wrong.
5. The Savior – Sides with the child in spite of the facts. Child learns that he can be insulated from authority.
6. The Perfectionist – Sets impossibly high standards. Child learns to expect failure.

There you go – do you see yourself in any of those? I hope you don’t, but I know I’ve been guilty of most of them at one time or another. If you do feel like you need some help, or just want to learn more about these ineffective permissive parenting styles, get your hands on a copy of the The Total Transformation and check it out for yourself.

You might be wondering if I’m making money by promoting this program, and the answer is yes! If you buy it after visiting my website, I will earn a commission.  The truth is, I tried it and liked it so much, that I decided it would be something I would feel proud to support and promote, and as a bonus, I get a commission if you buy it.