Dr. Patricia Quinn is a developmental pediatrician in the Washington, D.C. area and the Director of the National Center for Girls and Women with ADHD. A graduate of the Georgetown University Medical School, she specializes in child development and psychopharmacology.

In “A Critical Analysis of The Total Transformation® Program for Helping Behavior Disordered Children and Teens,” written recently by Dr. Quinn, she applauds the program for offering parents, “a concrete plan that they can actualize in the home.”

In her review, Dr. Quinn notes that The Total Transformation® can provide doctors, therapists and other clinicians with a way to teach parents to deal with their children: “The Total Transformation® Program can be used by parents and professionals to decode a child’s behavior and understand why a child or teen is acting in a dysfunctional way. The main focus of this non-judgmental, structured program is on teaching parents exactly how to react to and better understand their children or teens with behavior disorders such as ODD/CD and then effectively empower them to change.”

Dr. Quinn gave high marks to the presentation of the material in The Total Transformation® Program. “The Total Transformation® Program is extremely well organized and structured. Materials are presented using a step-by-step approach. Once the child’s behavior is understood, scripts are provided to empower the parent’s response. The Parent Workbook is very well done and provides checklists to help the parent determine what skills need to be worked on at that time (target behaviors) and provides excellent explanations of why a child acts in a certain way. The Total Transformation® was also found to have several features not found in other programs. This includes Parenting Style Self-Assessments that allow parents to look at their role in the interactive process. I especially liked the Age-Appropriate Consequences and Rewards charts, as I find this a particularly difficult concept for many parents. In addition to providing tools for acute behavior management, The Total Transformation® Program also focuses on teaching parents exactly how to have a problem-solving discussion with their child utilizing an interview format, thus placing the parent in a coaching role.”

The pediatrician notes that “Programs that teach parents acute, simple behavior management strategies (Parent Training) and those that help build and reinforce cognitive, problem-solving skills (Collaborative Problem-Solving) have both been shown to be effective. In my opinion, The Total Transformation® incorporates both aspects of these psychosocial treatments and does it in a way that educates and supports parents as they learn to understand and deal with their child’s behaviors. The materials are also reinforcing and available for parents to review as necessary, as opposed to a session that may provide few written materials and concrete examples for the parent.”

I found out about The Total Transformation® Program in a magazine ad.  And something in the ad just got my attention immediately.  Maybe it was the, you know, addressing the acting out, obnoxious child.  And I liked how direct it was, and so I called the number just to learn a little bit more about the program and talked to someone there who gave me just enough information to say, “yeah, I’ll I’ll try that.”

As soon as I popped in the first CD, I knew right away that I was going to get, that we were going to get the help that we needed because James Lehman really understands the needs of these children.  And I was very excited, and I could hardly wait to listen to all of them.  I had to really hold back not to rush ahead.  And I still did at times you know.  I  carried them with me in my car.  I listened to them while I was washing the dishes and they were very grounding because they gave me information that I needed and I knew that I had a place to start with.  To start gaining back the control of my son.  And it was very direct, very concrete and simple and gettable and real and I was astounded at how well James seems to understand. I mean it was as if he knew my son intimately.  I thought, “Are there other kids out there just like my son?” I mean, it was just amazing.

I rarely buy anything through the mail or even call to learn about it. I’m one of those people who likes to touch, feel, see it, experience it. And so it’s not very often that I’m willing to even get something in the mail that I might have to return.  And so but I suppose that I could tell immediately that what the program had to offer was what I needed and I needed it right away.  

Michael is a good kid. I don’t have any real problems with him other than the fact that he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it.  He does not listen to the normal, “Michael, I need you to do this or this is your job and it’s your responsibility.” He just does what he wants. He doesn’t care.  He’s lacks the motivation.  He doesn’t see the real purpose of things other than what Michael wants to do, and he wasn’t listening to normal requests.  And it often got to the point where there was a lot of yelling going on thinking that yelling is going to make him listen more.  And it wasn’t. 

And when I saw the ad in the newspaper for The Total Transformation® Program, I saw lots of different specifics that Michael related to, and I called and spent a good forty five minutes on the phone with the person on the other end and told him everything about what I was experiencing and how out of control I felt.  I realized this is something that I need to try. 

Once we started applying it, my son actually stopped in his tracks and looked at me. He’s like, “Well, this is different.  She’s never done this before.”  So it actually got the ball rolling or the wheels turning in my son’s head. But he responded very well to it, and we’ve just been having lots of little successes in a short period of time.  In one month, after doing this program, I saw huge changes in my son and even the teacher noticed. The teacher awarded him with a certificate of excellence saying that he was the most improved student in the classroom.  The kids in the class have noticed a difference.  They’re more responsive to him.  He’s a happier person because of this program. 

It’s a very complete program, and I can’t speak good enough about it, really.  Any parent I meet that says, “Oh you know, how’s Michael doing,” cause we knew, they knew that we might’ve been having some problems.  “Great!  I’ve been doing this program!” And then they can’t shut me up.  So, but I’m very excited about it.  It’s just very complete and precise and black and white and easy to use. 

It started when he was about twelve months old and it was just, kind of a slow progression, but it started out with some temper tantrums.  We just thought, well it’s typical, you know, he’s fixing to be two but it’s starting early and we just noticed that things would set him off.  Like we could tell him no for something that maybe another child would be okay with you know if you told them no you can’t do that or you can’t have that.  But then he would get very upset, he would lay on the floor and scream and cry and kick and we’d be like what’s wrong? And of course as new parents, we never had any other kids and, we would sit there and think, well maybe it’s because he didn’t get his nap.  Or maybe it was whatever it could be, you know, he didn’t get something else or, he doesn’t feel well. We’d come up with all these reasons why and try to reason our way through it and then just kind of he’d get over it after a while and then we’d just move on.  Well, as he got older, it got worse.  And they would last a lot longer.  Some of them could be a couple hours long.

And then it got to a point where she said, well maybe it’s time he should see a psychologist.  And I said, well, we’ll try that.  So when right after he turned five, we took him in to see a psychologist thinking okay, this is really going to help, this is just going to be the answer…She gave us some things that she thought might help us with him, so we would try those things and  kind of meet back with her every couple weeks and we just weren’t really noticing anything.  You know, we’re like, this is still not working.  You know, what do we need to do?  She said, well, you know, let’s just keep going and finally I told my husband, I said, we can’t do this anymore.  You know it’s very expensive to see a psychologist and we’re not seeing the results we need to see.  We’re doing everything that they’re telling us to do and it’s just not working.  So that’s when I got online and found the Total Transformation®.

It was very easy to understand and what I loved was that  when we got it, we started using it immediately.  And we actually started seeing things change.  Immediately.  I was like, I can’t believe this.  My husband was like, wow, this is great.  

Now when he does something, he will come back later you know like we’ll say, “Okay, we’re done.  When you’re calm then we can talk.”  He will go on to his room or he’ll go to his area where he stays to, cool down and he will come back and he’ll say, “You know, I was wrong for pushing Makenna.  Next time I’m going to count.  Next time I’m going to think about this and I’m going to think about what’s going to happen.  He a big thinker.  So he has to visualize in his head what’s happening so he can think about it for the next time.  It really has worked with him and I actually started using it with other children in school and things, and I noticed that it worked very well. 

Before the Total Transformation® life was very hard.  It was you go to bed at night and you wake up in the morning and think, “Oh I just wonder how many fits are we going to have to go through today”… And then after we found the Total Transformation® and started using it, it was this change that we started feeling more confident about ourselves as parents and that we just weren’t parenting Noah the way he needed to be parented.  We were falling back on things that didn’t work.  And we noticed that he was a happier kid.  He didn’t always walk around with a scowl on his face and just grumbling all the time. He actually wanted to do things with us, and  he wanted to go outside and play. And he would actually sit down, he wants to eat dinner at the dinner table every night now because it’s fun.  He wants to be at dinner with everybody whereas before, he, we just never sat at the table.  Because we couldn’t all be together.  Something would happen.  But we have fun together.  We laugh. 

The Total Transformation® is exactly what it says.  It completely transformed how we reacted to our son, how we parented him and how he became a problem solver.  And without it we would still be struggling, and we would be going towards that teenager that was going to be in a lot of trouble.  And I would say that this is perfect for any parent that is struggling and that feels like you know there’s nothing else they can do.  I just feel very blessed that we found it when we did.  And that we were able to use it and that it works immediately.  You can start seeing results immediately.

He would become physical with me.  I had been thrown around the room and believe me, Brian is only about up to here on me.  And he would he’d broken blood vessels in my arms.  He totally destroyed my dining room, books would go flying, shoes, bike helmet, anything he could get his hands on would go flying and he didn’t care who was in the way.  He didn’t care who was hurt.  It was almost like, I remember one time taking his face in my hands and just holding him going, “Brian, you know, stop.”  And the rage and the anger that was inside of him was phenomenal.

One time he had really had a severe outbreak when he had friends over. He became extremely violent.  So it was at that CPAP meeting where they had brought in a couple of doctors and a couple of psychiatrists and a psychologist and they couldn’t get a hospital close enough here for me to put him in and I thought, “Oh great, what’s going to happen now?”  And we’re talking eight o’clock, nine o’clock at night and they say, “We found a hospital, it’s near New York City and it’s a good three hours from here, almost four.”  I had to follow them, wait till he gets settled and then come back home.  And I sat there and I said, no. I said, “You’re not taking him.  I said, there’s got to be something else.” 

The Total Transformation® Program came to me through a friend who had seen it in a magazine, made a copy of it, gave it to my son and he brought it home.  Well it sat on my counter, by the telephone, for probably, I would say, a good, probably three weeks to a month and every time there would be an outburst, I would go pick it up: “Total Transformation® Program, do I or don’t I, do I or don’t I, what do I do?”  I’d put it back down.  So just before Christmas I thought, you know something, I’m going to call.  And I did and I spoke to, I’m not sure who I spoke to but it was someone who was wonderful and I explained my whole situation.  A lot of what I’d been going through with Brian,  and the person at the other end was tremendous and I said, “Well, sounds like this is what you could use.” So I sent for it.  And I have to tell you, sending for The Total Transformation® Program is something I would not normally do.  I’m not a person to go out and order anything like that.  I don’t do that.  It’s just I go, “Ummmm, I don’t think so.”  When I received it and I just listened to the first, the Jump Start, I was like so excited.  I have to tell you, James was wonderful.  I’m thinking, “I don’t want to stop listening to this.” I didn’t even follow the directions.  In fact, at that time, I didn’t know, I just, I started listening to everything.  And I was just jumping way ahead of myself because I kept thinking, “this is what, this was going to help Brian.  This is what’s going to help him.”  And it has. It has.

I remember he came at me in the kitchen and I don’t remember exactly what it was about, time to do your homework and give mommy the play station.  So he came at me and he physically was going to come at me.  And I turned around and I looked at him and I said, “Brian, you will not abuse me.  There is no way you’re going to abuse me. The Play Station will be removed for two hours.” I said, “You will not be able to touch Play Station,” I said, “and you are not allowed to abuse me.”  I never used those words before, never—“abuse” to him.  And he just stopped and he looked at me and he had, was ready to hold my arms back and he just looked at me and he turned around and he walked away and he went down and he sat in the chair.  You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.  I’m like…wow…because that would not happen.  That would not happen.  It would usually be I was shoved into the counters and so I said, “Oh my goodness.  It worked!”

Before I got The Total Transformation® Program, I would have people saying to me, “Oh you poor, you know, how are you doing this?”And I was like you know I don’t know, I don’t know what to do next and I was depressed. I was depressed because I kept saying, “Is Brian going to be channeled away? Is he going to be taken away?”  You know and actually at one point I was almost convinced that that would be the best thing.  So but now,  you know the old saying, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I hope it’s not a train.  Well it’s not a train.  There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  And it’s The Total Transformation® Program.

He is a very strong willed person. He’s ADHD and more lately has been diagnosed ODD. And he figured out how to work each one of us separately for the things that he thought he could get from each one of us. And so he’s manipulative and he learned at a very young age how to make that work for him to get what he wanted.

It’s the first time that I have actually gotten the verbiage that you use to turn children’s arguments around.  And their behavior. But especially the arguments because Hunter is extremely argumentative.  I mean more so than you can hardly believe.  And he just won’t stop the arguing.  He’s obsessive about it.  And we’ve learned verbiage from The Total Transformation® Program that you can say and it’s almost like magic.  If you say those words, they stop arguing.  And to see it actually working for the first time really in all these years, it’s just, it blows me away.  It’s just really amazing.

Before I was always wondering when he came home from school what would it be like. Is he going to be angry about something? Is he going to just want to go off and go skateboarding and not do his homework? How am I going to get him to do that? It was just not good.  And so now, when Hunter comes in the door, I know exactly what words I’m going to say to him.  That is worth ten times the price of this program.  Knowing exactly what to say to him so that I don’t push his buttons and I don’t allow him to push mine.  It’s amazing what changing a few words can do. If I had had this program when Hunter was two, I think our lives would’ve been so much easier. 

The older one’s been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD, and so we were having a lot of problems in school with him not doing his work.  He would just sit and class and refuse to do anything.  He was stealing, lying, a lot of resistance to requests.  Temper tantrums when he didn’t get his own way. A lot of disrespect to us and to other adults.  We lost a couple babysitters because he wouldn’t listen and you know got into a little temper tantrum thing and was just really quite a intimidating child.  I mean they were calling me and asking me to come and pick him up from school, but they didn’t know what to do with him.

And now we’re down to the point where he pretty much has a good day everyday.  He does his work.  He gets full privileges at home.  Through the program, we were able to understand how to deal with him and what to do about it.  Because before I think we were just, as parents, we were you know fighting about what to do. Weren’t sure what kind of consequences to hand out or how to do it.  We weren’t very consistent. 

Within the first month we noticed a major change.  Like what happened with Terrence was, he realized, oh my gosh, they’re starting to get a handle on me.  Then all of a sudden there was this total transformation, like you say.  And he realized, oh, this behavior isn’t worth it anymore.  And he started actually trying to do better and I mean, he just went from like we had him on a rating system at school and he just went from like ones and twos to fours and fives within a matter of a couple of days when he finally decided that that’s what he was gonna do.  I mean I was actually pretty amazed. 

Alli, my little girl, she just would not do.  Would not mind anything. I didn’t want anybody coming in my house. I didn’t even want to go to church.  My kids were physically fist fighting in church and life was terrible.  I mean, I was dealing with more than behavior.  I was dealing with manic and just pure craziness.

About a year ago someone made a copy of our little Daily World newspaper that’s here and it was just an ad that said, “Is your child defiant?”  And I called that day and I said, “Oh yeah, this is what I need.  I need this program.” And so I lived it day and night for about, it took me a week and a half because I had to have something immediate because I was desperate.

I realized with this program that I’m not a bad parent, I just was a parent who was ineffective.  I have not just transformed my children’s behavior, but, I mean, I have been transformed. When mom says something, they know that mom means it.  And because immediately, it was so funny, the first day, my daughter’s like, “What is wrong with you?  You know, you don’t act like this.” It’s like I got my child back.  My beautiful daughter that I had loved but not liked for a long time.   And now I can say that I love to be with her, and Saturday we were together, my husband and my little boy went hunting and she said, “Mom, you’re the best.”  And that just made me feel so good.  So, my whole life has been transformed and it started with this program. 

We’ve learned to do laundry.  We’ve learned to bake. I mean, all these things that I have never had time to do with her because there’s always a problem. She even had a kid spend the night with her.  It’d been years since anybody could come to my house and spend the night.  They played games. I cannot tell you how wonderful; life is just incredibly one thousand percent better for me.

We were getting into arguments. She was not compliant with homework. She wasn’t compliant with respect. She was hitting me. She was yelling at me. And she was not listening to me when I would give her some direction. Or when I would ask something of her. She had issues with behavior in a lot of different ways, which wasn’t working for either of us at all. So a friend of mine knew that I was having trouble. And she kept the phone number from Total Transformation®, and on the same day that she gave me the phone number I called and I asked about it on the phone and I said, that sounds like something I could use.

I would say within a couple of weeks or even less I was seeing a difference in my daughter. It seemed like she was more compliant with some things. I just followed the instructions and wouldn’t budge and she stopped yelling at me. She started doing her homework. And she stopped hitting me immediately.

I without a doubt knew that I was going to lose her if I did not do something now. So I needed something that was different that worked that was going to give me a little bit more of an upper hand and I felt like I didn’t have any control between either of us.

My generation, we weren’t necessarily taught how to raise kids. And so this is a really great program for us to learn now to give our children a very safe and very comforting kind of environment through the techniques that James gives us to use in order for them to be able to make good choices and to feel good about it. And it really gave me a sense of, hey, I am in charge. This is going to give them some idea of the boundaries that they need that they’re not aware of. But they want those boundaries. And they look for you to give them, and when we can’t give them, children can’t depend on us and then they turn away from us.