More about Lesson 2 of the Total Transformation Program

In Lesson 2 of the Total Transformation CD's James Lehman talks about parents who over negotiate. Which really means parents who renegotiate. Mr. Lehman thinks it's a bad idea. So do I. Renegotiating is a bad pattern to get into. It's like a merry-go-round. Let's say you tell your son, Mark, he's to wash the dog, then he can go out and play. He agrees. But Rover never gets a bath that day. You renegotiate and say before Mark can go out to play the next day Rover needs to first get his bath. Mark agrees. He might even mean to "sometime get to it" but he never seems to remember. But he remembers to play his video games and climb a tree. You give him more time, thus not making it important that he remembers to wash the dog. I've seen parents renegotiate countless times. It doesn’t help behavior. Case in point. When I was a library volunteer a little boy was talking loudly in the library. His mother kept telling him to stop or they would go home. His reply was, "Okay." But he kept on talking loudly. So what did his mother do? She continued saying if he kept talking loudly they would go home. But they never went home! Finally, I went up to the mother and the little boy and said he needed to be quieter. Since he knew I was serous, unlike his mother, he quieted down. The mother thanked me and said she had problems with her son. But her son wasn't the problem. The problem was she didn't keep to her word. So why should he.