I’ve always been a lover of juices.  Orange juice has long been my favorite, and I’m a huge fan of grape juice, apple juice, pineapple juice, etc.  When I was a kid I’d guzzle the stuff by the large glassful, and as a teenager and adult I never thought it was “bad”.  I knew it was a bad idea to drink soda, or “fruit drink”, which is fake juice, but I did not think that 100% natural fruit juice could be bad.

It turns out I was wrong.  Not because fruit juice is bad, but because drinking too much of it is bad. Even though the sugar in fruit juice is “natural”, it’s still sugar.  Too much sugar leads to obesity in children.

I’d like to offer you a few simple suggestions to reduce the amount of juice that your kids drink.

1. Keep lots of fresh fruit in the house, and eat fruit instead of drinking juice.  You’ll get more of the natural ingredients from the fruit and less total sugar.  An orange is refreshing.  A glass of orange juice is made from several oranges! Less is more here.
2. When your kids absolutely insist on juice and you can’t seem to talk them down, dilute it with water.  We often dilute our kids’ juice so it’s a 50/50 blend of water and juice.
3. Try this amazing and delicious replacement for juice.  I made this one day for myself and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to share.  Take a large glass and drop in a few ice cubes.  Then add orange juice so the glass is 1/4 full.  Now, squeeze in a good teaspoon of lemon juice.  This jazzes up the flavor a bit.  Finally, fill up the remaining space (3/4 of the glass) with water. Stir and enjoy. Tell your kids you are making them a special treat. You’ll be keeping the sugar away, and they will love it.

I’m not telling you that fruit juice is bad.  Instead, I’m simply saying too much of it is unhealthy.  We limit our kids to one glass of juice per day now, and they can eat an unlimited amount of fruit, drink as much water as they want, and I’ll offer up my own recipe of highly diluted juice (shared above).

That’s all I wanted to say for now.  Reducing sugar consumption is an important part of your family’s health.  Take it seriously.

Enjoy your children!

Hey, I'm Chris Thompson. I help stressed-out parents deal with toddlers. Grab the free lesson I've prepared for you. You'll love it. Email:

The Total Transformation Program by James Lehman is designed for parents dealing with difficult children from about the age of 6 through the teens.  I recommend it to my readers since it complements my audio course.

Wow – it’s hard to believe I’ve already reviewed lessons 1 through 6.    Lesson 7 will help you to stop the bad behavior dead in its tracks and hopefully provide a conclusion to all of the techniques you have gained throughout this audio course.

James Lehman refers to this chapter as the “Trigger Management Process”.  What causes our thoughts to trigger the feelings we feel, like fear, anger, and hurt?  These feelings are what ultimately cause your child to act abusively or disrespectfully.

You are probably wondering how the heck you are going to identify what triggers your child’s bad behavior.  Fear not – the first thing you will want to do is to “diminish the potential”.  Keep your children away from things that are going to get them heated.

You will need to “manage the situation”.  The parent is responsible to teach their child how to get out of tough situations should they get into one.  Lehman recommends taking a time out or chilling out by listening to music and so on.

You will learn to teach your child how to evaluate on their own whether they want to react negatively to a situation.  A child will be able to decide for his or herself if behaving badly is worth it.

Always remember to have an open dialogue at home and at school.  Authoritative figures should be made aware that the child is learning new coping strategies to avoid negative outbursts.

This lesson gives you the tools necessary to identify the nature of the “triggers” and help your child to learn to manage them.   Now it is your responsibility to take these techniques and implement them.  Good luck!

Continue reading my review of the Total Transformation Program.

Listen to audio samples of the Total Transformation Program.

This morning I was reading an article about customer service.  The author was saying how sick he was of crappy customer service from companies that send out a bunch of form letters (cut & paste type replies) that don’t match his problem.  I know how annoying this is.  That’s why I reply personally, with a real reply, when customers email me with any kind of technical problem, etc.

Say I get an email from a customer.  The email says, “Hi Chris – I just purchased the audio course yesterday and I didn’t have time to download it.  Now my link has expired.  What can I do?”.

When I get that email I will write back to make sure the customer knows these things:

1) I tell them that I understand the problem.  I explain that the links automatically expire after 24 hours. This helps prevent digital theft.

2) I tell them I am going to reset their link immediately.

3) I tell the customer that I’m there to help, and that I’m not going to leave them hanging.

This kind of personal treatment makes customers feel good about doing business with me.  I know this because of how many replies I get thanking me for the quick and helpful replies.

So how is this connected with parenting?

Imagine if your toddler or young child tells you they are hungry.  The “stock answer” that many parents will give is, “Oh, I’ll feed you lunch when we get home”.  Then you get a tantrum, or fussy behavior, etc.

What if you took on a “customer service” role instead.  You might enter your child’s world (as I teach in the free audio lesson).  You might say, “I understand you are hungry, and I’m going to help you”.  You might then explain the facts if your child is old enough to understand.  You can say, “We don’t have any food here.  But I know we have food at home.  Would you like to eat a snack as soon as we get home?  I can take you there very soon if you are really hungry”.

My audio course has plenty of techniques to help with this type of situation.  But if you were to just avoid using “stock answers”,which are a parent’s lazy solution to a problem, then you’ll get better results more often.  Try it and you’ll see.  When your child sees that you are there to help, they behave differently.

Click here to get more information about how to deal with toddlers

Do you ever deal with kids that won’t eat well?  The story I’m about to share with you is not conventional.  It might alarm you, and it might not be something that you’re going to want to do.  But it will still teach you something.  I’m not advocating this nor am I saying that I think it’s cruel.  I think it’s best that you decide for yourself.

I recently visited my sister in Vancouver.  Her kids are 6 and 8 years old and they have always been fussy eaters.  The way she describes it, they would constantly complain and pick at their food.  After years of this, it got on her nerves enough to make her take drastic action.

What did my sister do to make her kids eat?  Simply put, she created a world where the alternative was very unappealing to her kids.  One day at dinner time the kids were complaining as usual.  She said to them, “Look – if I hear one more complaint out of either of you, then what I’m going to do is feed you nothing but bread and cheese as your meal for the next 3 days”.

Well, it wasn’t more than a moment before she got another complaint.  She took away the kids’ meals and grabbed a couple of slices of bread and some cheese from the fridge.  The kids ate it.  For breakfast the next morning she brought out the bread and cheese again.  Then for lunch, then for dinner that night, etc.

She did this for three straight days.  She told me that her kids really lost their fondness of bread and cheese quite quickly (no kidding!).  But at the end of this ordeal she was amazed at the transition.  The kids have not complained about any of their meals.  They know that if they are out of line they’ll go back to eating bread and cheese.

Part of me thought this was funny, and part of me thought this was pretty harsh punishment.   But at the end of the day here are the facts:

• There are plenty of people on this planet that would give up a lot just to get 3 square meals of bread and cheese per day.
• Although devoid of many essential nutrients, this is not really unhealthy and it is only for 3 days.
• It most definitely makes your kids appreciate some variety
• It certainly teaches them the cause-effect link between their complaining and the “punishment” of being served only bread and cheese
• It works.

If you think of doing this let me tell you that you must be very consistent.  My sister did not break from the pattern for 3 full days.  Even a single break from the pattern shows your kids that you can be pushed and that you’ll cave.  If you do this for 2 days I bet it will still work, but then say “it is for 2 days”.  Don’t say it is for 3 days and give up after 2 days thinking they’ve had enough.  You have to follow through.  Again – I’m not saying I would do this (I have other tools to use), but it is something that works.

If you have gone through my audio course “Talking to Toddlers”, then you have learned about something called “anchors”.  An anchor is something that triggers a certain state within someone.  In this case, my sister created a very powerful anchor where a food complaint would be strongly connected, in her kids’ minds, to being punished with a boring food menu for 3 days.  There are much faster ways to create anchors using the techniques I teach.

Anchors can be very useful to draw out certain states when you need them.  For example, you might want to anchor a calm state of mind so you can trigger it at bed time.

If you’d like to learn more about using these techniques and how to deal with toddlers, please check out my audio course, Talking to Toddlers.

The Total Transformation Program by James Lehman is an amazing system to help parents deal with troubled kids.  Those of you who follow my blog know that I offer an audio program for dealing with toddlers.  The Total Transformation Program is a great program for parents dealing with older kids.

Have you ever caught yourself assuming things without knowing all of the facts?  Maybe you expect the worst from your kids all the time or feel like nothing will ever change for your family.

These are just a few examples of faulty thinking which is very common in today’s world.   Faulty thinking involves errors in the way we think about situations and/or people, which don’t help us to solve any problems.  Lesson 5 explores the importance in understanding faulty thinking and gives parents the tools needed to correct it.

“All or nothing thinking” is a perfect example of faulty thinking.  This is often referred to as “black or white thinking.”  This kind of thinking is very closed, it leaves no room for a discussion.  Teens are especially susceptible to this way of thinking.  They need to be taught the value of different perspectives.

“Mind Reading” happens when you project or anticipate your kids thoughts and feelings about a situation.  For instance, you tell your son you are going to visit his aunt.  You say you know he has no interest in going with you because it is boring, but you want him to come anyway.  This leaves the child feeling negative towards you and sets the situation up for conflict.  Instead try to give your child the opportunity to respond positively to the situation.

Parents often fall in the trap of the “Blame Game”.  We have all been guilty at one time or another of turning an issue around and putting people on the defensive.  This proves to be a real waste of time.  Too much energy is spent on blaming yourself or someone else for a real or imagined problem.

I hope that I have peaked your interest.  In lesson 5 you will learn to recognize when you or your kids are resorting to faulty thinking.  You will learn to appreciate the reasons why faulty thinking is an ineffective parenting approach.  Most importantly, you will learn how to make the changes in your thinking that promotes healthy problem solving skills in your kids.

Continue reading my review of the Total Transformation Program.

Listen to audio samples of the Total Transformation Program.

The Total Transformation Program is an amazing system to help parents deal with kids who exhibit destructive, obnoxious or abusive behavior.  Those of you reading my blog already know that I offer an audio program for dealing with toddlers.  The Total Transformation Program by James Lehman is best suited for parents dealing with troubled kids and teens.

In the first few lessons of this program, we learned what causes our kids to misbehave and act disrespectfully.  I covered some examples of ineffective parenting styles and how to overcome them.  Parents play an important role in leading kids to accept accountability for their actions.

Lesson 4 outlines 27 transformation tools to change your child’s behavior immediately.   The first and most important statement to master is,  “There is no excuse for abuse.”  Always state this clearly and firmly with your children when they try an offer up an excuse for their wrong doings.  It is a powerful 6-word phrase that can stop the bad behavior in its tracks.

James Lehman says that you, as the parent, must “stop the show”.  If your kids are acting up in a car when you are heading out, you need to pull over safely, tell them they need to re-group otherwise you will be going home.  If they choose not to listen, you must follow through and go home.

Family values need to be clear and consistent.  Children need to know their boundaries and understand what is accepted in the home.

Harmless Humor is a perfect way to lighten up the mood and re-direct conflict.  Remember to keep the humor helpful and away from any sarcasm or cynicism.

If all else fails and you are left with a parenting style that is no longer working be honest about it.  Tell your kids that things have changed and explain the new way of dealing with certain behaviors.

I have only mentioned a few of the tools needed to change your kids behavior.  After listening to the complete lesson and following the homework, you will walk away feeling capable of implementing these 27 tools in your everyday parenting life.

Continue reading my review of the Total Transformation Program.

Listen to audio samples of the Total Transformation Program.

The Total Transformation Program is ideal for parents dealing with problem kids. Those of you who follow this blog know that I offer an audio program for dealing with toddlers.  The Total Transformation Program by James Lehman is a fantastic system to help you deal with troubled kids beyond the toddler years.

My blog entry on lesson 2 taught you a little bit about what it means to have an ineffective parenting approach.  In lesson 3, you will learn what constitutes effective parenting roles and how to use them to help your child change his behavior.

It is the job of the parent to act as a leader and teach their kids how to problem solve, take responsibility and develop social skills.  It is important for the parent to be clear, willing and have respect for a child’s potential.

The Training and Coaching Role is about teaching kids by example.  Parents can model behavior they want to see their child learn.  Think of the parent as the “trainer” for the skills the child needs to learn to become accountable.

The Problem Solving Role helps kids identify goals and obstacles.  It is important for the parent to make sure the goal is specific, tangible and achievable.  Parents can help their kids develop strategies to overcome any obstacles.

The Limit Setting Role establishes and maintains parental authority.  This is done by establishing limits.  These limits help kids to understand how they are expected to behave.

Learning and using these effective parenting techniques with your kids will ensure that your home is filled with accountability. Be patient with yourself and your kids – transformation takes practice.  It is the responsibility of the parent to support, direct and understand their child as they develop a new sense of independence.

Continue reading my review of the Total Transformation Program.

Listen to audio samples of the Total Transformation Program.

I read a story dealing with the terrible twos this morning.  A study released back in 1996 apparently concluded that the terrible twos are caused by parents.  The article suggested that different “asset and liabilities” such as personality traits, economic status, social support and work-related stress were the biggest factors in determining if kids would go through the “terrible twos”.

In some ways I agree, but in other ways I disagree.  Let me explain.  First of all, I think that all kids go through a period of ‘testing the waters’.  They push boundaries.  They ask for things that they know they can’t have.  No matter *what* you do as a parent you are not going to stop a child from pushing the boundaries.  It is part of growth.  It is expected and healthy.  Yes, it is healthy.

But – how you *deal* with it as  a parent is totally within your control.  Unfortunately kids do not come with instruction manuals.  What I’ve discovered is that using language strategies can solve most of the daily problems that parents run into.  If you easily get frustrated with your child, or if you constantly tell your child “no” to things then you are literally asking for tantrums and other so-called “bad behavior”. On the other hand, if you learn how to apply distraction techniques, create the illusion of choice, manage your child’s emotional state, or reframe situations by changing their definition (among many other tools I teach), then you’ll end up avoiding these problems.  Your kids (and you) will smile more often and you’ll have less parenting stress.

Click on the link here to get a free audio lesson where I’ll teach you 3 simple techniques you can start using right now.

I highly recommend the Total Transformation system for parents dealing with older, troubled kids.  Those of you who follow my blog already know that I offer an audio program for dealing with toddlers.  The Total Transformation Program by James Lehman is an amazing product to help you deal with problem kids and teens (ages 6 and up).

Ever wonder what causes a child to act out negatively towards their parents?  Lesson 1 of the Total Transformation explains what triggers kids to act abusive, disrespectful or obnoxious.

As parents we tend to get easily frustrated with our kids when we don’t understand why they are behaving a certain way. Instead of understanding why they are misbehaving, we should be asking ourselves what do they need to do to make changes to resolve the situation.

These behaviors are not caused by low self-esteem or mental illness. They occur when the child is not able to understand their perceptions, thoughts and feelings.

Think about your child.  Does he or she take the victim-stance with you, never taking responsibility for his or her actions? Perhaps, your child lies either by vagueness or pretending to misunderstand you? Or maybe you have a kid who completes only part of a task but wants to reap all of the rewards and then acts angrily when he doesn’t get them? These are just a few examples of a kid’s defiant behavior.

Believe it or not, this negative behavior is learned and is often rewarded. The next time your kid starts to use negative behavior to deal with a situation, tell them that it won’t help solve the problem. Say to the child “When you said that you were sorry for swearing at me, while blaming me for making you angry, I didn’t buy the apology.”

It is important to recognize that kids need to be accountable for their actions. Please stop blaming yourself. The negative behavior is not caused by the parent. This lesson will give you the tools you need to help your kids develop good problem solving skills.

Continue reading my review of the Total Transformation Program.

Listen to audio samples of the Total Transformation Program.

I would like readers to know that I have published a review of a parenting program called “The Total Transformation” by James Lehman.

My parenting course, “Talking To Toddlers” is highly effective for the day to day problems that most parents face when dealing with young kids – typically ages 2 through 6 (even though the techniques remain effective well beyond those years, and I often get emails from customers telling me they used the techniques on adults with success).

That said – I fully acknowledge that when it comes to kids who are older than 6 and who are abusive and  obnoxious then you need to equip yourself with more than the language tools that I teach.  Essentially, what I teach parents to do is to use language as a tool to deal with what I’ll call *ordinary* problems that stress out parents.  When it comes to older children who are troubled, and are out of control, then I would not rely on my course alone.  You need a program that teaches you how to get your kids to solve their own problems.  James Lehman is an expert at this.

James Lehman has put together a tremendous program calld The Total Transformation.  I have gone through the entire program and I share my thoughts on it in my review.  Check it out here.