Rating: 
Summary: it sort-of worked for us
Review: Our pediatrician recommended this book to help our reluctant 3 1/2 year old boy learn to use the potty. I did what the book suggests -- have your child train a doll to use the potty. For the cost of a case of diapers, I bought a special doll ("Potty Dotty" -- she even tells you when she needs to go.) The next part of the training is to give your child lots of fluids and thus opportunities to urinate in the potty. Well, you can lead a 3 1/2 year old to juice, but you can only make him drink so much! What's more, my son did something very unexpected that is not discussed in the book. He held his pee in for many hours at a time! After drinking at least 16 oz or more of juice, he could stay dry for more than 18 hours, including overnight! I ended up sacrificing two entire weekends to stay in the bathroom with him waiting for him to pee. (Needless to say, it took more than a day.) And it took another two months (and MANY pairs of dirty underwear) for him to use the potty for BMs.Overall, I think the book has some useful suggestions, like using the doll and giving treats, but I think that perhaps the stubbornest of children will come up with novel ways to subvert the training process that the clever child psychologists who wrote the book never anticipated. However, if you are compelled to buy a book like this in the first place, you probably have the motivation necessary to out-stubborn your child!
Rating:
Summary: know your child first
Review: I've tried this twice, with mixed results. It worked fairly well with my first child (now 10), although it's unrealistic to expect to be actually 'done' in a day. I decided not to use it with my daughter because I didn't think it would suit her. Then I just tried it again with my 30 mo. old son and this did not go over well. Everything was going along just fine until he just decided he wasn't going to do something and just said 'no'. No amount of (reasonable) bribing, cajoling, etc. would convince him to sit on the can. I finally gave up. The book is very unrealistic in its advice for handling failures and stumbling blocks. By the way, some parents I noticed said their children were extremely upset by the whole thing - I think you really need to pay attention to the kid and stop if it looks like things are going that way. The book implies you're a wimpy parent if you do this, but the bottom line is no one method works universally. I think they should completely revise this book and include more 'real life' stories, and then retitle it. Even the book admits it takes more than a day (read between the lines in the 'post training' chapter) to be done.
Rating: 
Summary: Believe it
Review: The book is based on sound psychological principles of learning, as explained in the introductory section. I was skeptical, but it worked beautifully for our 26 month old son (it took a weekend). My wife was glad that I did the training as she felt that she would not have been able to enforce the specified number of practice runs (ten) on the poor little fellow after each mistake. I unreservedly recommend this book, particularly for parents without a lot of free time to waste on potty-training.
Rating:
Summary: From an educator
Review: As an educator, I found this book very compelling. It is complete in that it addresses all the learning styles of children. Toileting oneself is a skill and the book teaches you how to be a skills trainer for your child. My own 2 1/2 year old son was successful in being completely trained over a weekend. He had no urination accidents at all after the first 3 hours of training, and was successful with the rest over the course of the next few days. I will begin training my daughter when she is ready, based on the readiness assessment check list in the book. It seems to me that the negative reviews of this book have not come from people who have read the entire book, nor from people who have employed this method. To use the book you MUST follow the instructions carefully, adjusting to your child's personality, of course, and you MUST have some persistence yourself. The first hour or two can be challenging but when your child is successful the first time, you'll know it was worth it. The book recommends potty training in the kitchen, using a potty-training doll, providing many opportunities for practice with the use of salty snacks to promote fluid consumption, positive and negative reinforcement, recognition and reward, and more. Again, from an educator's standpoint, it is a terrific book in terms of addressing basic learning cycle models. As an added benefit, there is basic parenting information about disciplining a small child to obey his/her parents, as part of the readiness assessment. My own observation as I see other children misbehaving everywhere I go is that that information is sorely needed. I have bought and given this book away to friends 7 times. I am about to buy it one more time to prepare to train my 21-month old daughter.
Rating: 
Summary: It gave me a vocabulary and an outline for teaching
Review: The general plan of this book worked for us, but not in a day. It took about three days for general use and he improved steadily over the next few weeks. My first son was three years old, and I was facing the potty-training deadline of nursery school. I had no idea how to potty train him, and this book gave me a vocabulary to use and a plan for teaching him. It did not work in a day, but the basic program did work. As the book suggests, I set aside a day to teach my son. I showed him the steps and used a stuffed animal to model the behavior. The book told me how to talk about using the potty and how to teach the steps. Using the toy as a model and teaching tool worked well. The toy had accidents and was corrected, rather than focusing on my son, and my son talked to the toy and "taught" it. The book also told me how and where to use rewards, which worked great. I used candy and treats the first two days, and then gave my son toy cars as rewards in the next days. In the following weeks, I rewarded him less frequently, for example, for telling me he needed to go to the potty when we were out or for staying dry all day. I used Pull-Up pants because being wet didn't bother him. I used the cars to reward being dry. When accidents happened, during training and later, I repeated the lessons, so thanks to this book I didn't have to figure out how to react to accidents, and I didn't overreact to them. DO: Use the book to teach the steps to using the potty, for a way to talk about potty training, for the reward system, and for how to use a toy to teach. Set aside the whole day to teach the potty and to monitor your child. You have to be focused that day, not him. It will be your main focus the next two days after that, too. DON'T: Don't feed your child a lot of salty snacks if you don't want to, kids drink juice anyway. Don't lose patience, just repeat the lessons when accidents happen. Don't be any more stern than you normally are or you are comfortable being. I was not stern, just persistent and serious. Don't use any gimmick that you are not comfortable with or which seems "mean" to you. I didn't use the friends and family list. We praised him to friends and family later, when they were actually around.
Rating:
Summary: It works, but keep in mind...
Review: I was a skeptic. But, as I work full time outside the home, I thought I would give this a try - it allowed me (and not our nanny) to potty train our 21 month old daughter in a few days. The trick is two fold - you MUST follow the readiness instructions, this is key. Then, you MUST follow the directions explicitly - this is key to ensuring your child learns the lessons to be taught. The trick is in HOW you follow the directions - for instance, my daughter is a little more sensitive than some and takes things to heart. When she had her first accident, I was firm with her, but not as firm as the book might lead you to be. She got the message quickly. Now, the thing I did wrong that you can learn from - she wasn't able to pull her pants down successfully EVERY time before I moved to the next step. This set us back a lot as some of her accidents were caused because tho she got to the potty, she couldn't get them down in time. Lesson learned - don't move on until the steps are done completely and repetitively as the book suggests. On the + side, she is *wonderfully* proud of herself each and every time she goes and empties her potty chair and "gets to flush" like a big girl, as the book predicted she would be. We are out of diapers (except for nights and naps) and she went on a really toilet at a restaurant the other day - no problems. One more tip, I would recommend training as soon as your child exhibits readiness (note, not before, but AS SOON AS) because I really think the kids become more set in the diaper and resistance to changing the older they get. Best of luck!
Rating:
Summary: Mixed Results
Review: I ordered this book and after reading it prepared to train my son (28 months at the time) in March. The first day he went to the potty 7 times and had 3 accidents. The second day he refused to go, was crying hysterically for a diaper and going to a corner to pee. I become upset and yelled at him and then thought this is riduculous and put him back in diapers. I may have chosen a bad time to train him also. I found out three days later that he had a bad ear infection in both ears. It might have just been too much at that time for him to handle. Now, I am going to tell you why I liked the book. It seemed logical to me. Every other thing I had read on potty training just seemed to tell me 'you'll know when they are ready' with no real help on how to help the child learn. I didn't find it humilating and neither did my son. I truly think he wasn't ready. Last week I started training again, using some of the book's techniques. Since May 31st, he is using the bathroom now on his own. I still have him in diapers for naps and bedtime, but I plan to stop that next week. He is very proud of himself. I am giving him treats and lots of praise when he goes. He even went outside our home for the first time today. This is what he did learn from the book: *how to take off his pants and pull them up. Unlike most toddlers, my son has no interest in having his clothes off and had not initiated dressing and undressing. *how to listen to me and follow-through on a request I make. He is really so much better at this than before we used this book. * how to dump his own potty chair and clean up messes he makes. He's not perfect at this, but he thinks it is part of using the potty. If I would have known about this book, I would have used it when he was 20 months old and first started showing a bit of interest. He wasn't as stubborn as he is now. The one thing I didn't like about this book is that it lead you to believe that the next day the child would have it down perfectly. Now I know that is not true. I should have before. It is a learning process. He pushed us all weekend for diapers and had frequent accidents. Monday he quit asking for diapers and even had 2 BMs in the potty without me pressing him to go. No accidents yesterday or so far today either. Hope this helps. If you would like a training guide, it's a very useful book. And as a former school teacher, I will say, that people do learn some things much the way you train a dog: with awards, praise and reminders. The book does not advocate punishment, nor does it advocate you yell or humilate your child. I made a big mistake loosing my temper and I think if I would have pressed on the second day he would have gotten it in March.
Rating: 
Summary: just awful
Review: I picked this up out of curiosity. It is dreadful. The "plan" here is to fill your poor toddler full of liquids (offering salty snacks if he/she isn't guzzling enough) so he/she will have to "go" frequently. Then you make the poor kid spend a whole day, or longer, just focusing on using the toilet, and cleaning up his/her own "accidents". I have a four year old and a two and a half year old who are both exclusively using the toilet (even through naps and night) and I never used a method like this one! Gentle encouragement, and they'll do it when they're ready. The advice in this book borders on child abuse!
Rating:
Summary: The author should be jailed
Review: POSSIBLY THE WORST BOOK ON CHILD CARE EVER WRITTEN - I AGREE 100% WITH THE READER IN SEATTLE REGARDING THE TRAINING TECHNIQUES. CHILDREN ARE CHILDREN NOT PAVLOV'S DOGS - THEY RESPOND TO KINDNESS AND NURTURING, NOT THREATS AND HUMILIATION. IF YOU VALUE YOUR CHILD'S SANITY, SELF-RESPECT AND TRUST - DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. WHAT A PITY THEY DON'T HAVE NEGATIVE STAR RATINGS.
Rating:
Summary: It worked
Review: What a great method! My three-year-old felt empowered because she was 'teaching' the dolly how to use the toilet. We also had a lot of fun during the process. I used it again with my second child. Expect a few more accidents after the day of the lesson, but it really works!
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