Below was my original review from training my first child in 2018; today I’m adding another review after potty training my second child in 2021.
I tried potty-training my 2018 when he was 18 months and 30 months. He was not cooperating and mainly I felt like he wasn’t socioemotionally or linguistically ready. To use this book’s method, you have to get the child to pay attention and communicate using words or gesture. My little one (like his big brother) is pretty wild and just wouldn’t calm down enough to really listen, so I aborted both attempts. The book says to minimize unsuccessful toilet training attempts as that tends to build up resistance. Finally, after he turned 36 months I felt like he was ready (he was possibly ready a few months earlier, but I was so overwhelmed with the pandemic and work that I put it off). Like his big brother, he was initially resistant to taking off his pants or diaper, or then putting on the underwear, but I persisted and then we got ready with the potty training.
Day 1: he peed in the potty successfully four times, had 3 pee accidents, and 1 BM accidents. Toward the end of the day, he looked sad/contrite when he had an accident. I felt that he understood he needed to keep it all in the potty but he just somehow couldn’t tell he needed to go until it was too late. He also needed to sit on the potty a long time to pee in there. He did stay dry through a short nap. We kept him inside the house almost the whole day. I didn’t feel he was potty-trained sufficiently to trust him to stay dry at night, so we put him in a diaper (even though the book says you should never let them see a diaper again if they’re older than 2.5).
Day 2: I left with the older child and let his dad take over potty training. The first two times were accidents; then I came home and supervised, and he was succeeded every single time, although sometimes he still needed to sit 20-30 minutes. He stayed dry through his nap, and in fact through the rest of the day. We kept him indoors almost the whole day. No BM in the evening. We put him to sleep at night with just underwear and crossed our fingers — he wet his bed at night. Considering our older one wet his bed 3 nights in a row before miraculously being night-trained, we steeled ourselves for a similar possibility.
Day 3: It was Monday and I had to work, so I left a sheet of instructions with our nanny. First pee was an accident, but then he stayed dry the rest of the day and stayed dry for his nap. He got to play in the yard, and ran back inside once or twice to pee on his own. Still no BM in the evening. But he managed to stay dry all night and had a big pee in the morning in the pee, and was very proud of himself. We are cautiously optimistic that maybe he’s going to be night trained faster than his big brother, who wet his bed 3 nights!
Day 4: No accidents so far (it’s almost noon as I’m typing this). He’s very fast at peeing in the potty now. I asked the nanny to take him to the park with his potty — it’s his first time venturing that far from home. I’m hopeful he will pee/poop in the park today, so that tomorrow the nanny can restart picking up the older one from school and shuttling him to after-school activities, with the younger one in tow. Still no BM since Saturday night. We’ve gotten him prune juice and miralax, hoping it will ease his first BM in the potty.
Summary:
Well, potty training is not quite complete (still working on BM and going potty outside the house), but I would say overall it has gone really well. He’s made so much progress and I don’t see us going back to diapers or training underwear — I had thick training underwear for the older child but avoided them this time. The older one would pee a few drops in these training underwear before making it to the toilet; it hasn’t happened with the younger one. Either we’re lucky this time or maybe the training underwear actually makes it harder to tell that it’s wet. Unlike with the older child, I omitted the “positive practice trials” for both the doll and my child when they had an accident. I was upset by how upset it made my older child; I think it probably did slow down the training a little this time, but a lot less crying. It basically took two full days (just a normal weekend) to get the younger one to be able to spontaneously go potty by himself. I feel like taking two days instead of a few hours, in order to avoid the crying/trauma part, was worth it for me. I also tried to stick to healthier snacks & drinks, which probably also lengthened the training a bit too, but I just couldn’t quite stomach giving him very salty snacks, or really sugary drinks; I stuck to veggie chips and real fruit juice (or milk). It means he was less thirsty and probably got fewer opportunities to practice pottying per hour than he would have otherwise, but I felt ok with that. A three-day weekend would’ve been nice to consolidate everything, but we found a normal 2-day weekend was just enough to get through most of it and make sure he’s on a good path. It seemed that every time I let him be introduced to a new situation (being supervised by dad, or by the nanny), he had an accident. It made me nervous, but then each time he was able to adapt and improve. Given that I’m a full-time working mom and we couldn’t wait until a long weekend to potty train (the preschool we want to send him wouldn’t let him register until he’s already potty trained), I thought it worked out efficiently enough. Overall, I am very pleased with the method in this book.
Read the book carefully, follow all the instructions (or skip minor ones like I did, but then be ready to deal with slightly longer training period). It should all work more or less like the book says it will. Don’t forget, stay positive! There were many moments when I felt discouraged, and then remembered the book said to stay positive, and that kept me from giving up or feeling miserable.
(Original Review)
I almost never write reviews, but the procedure in this book was so effective that I had to write one up.
It was a lot of work reading/internalizing this book and getting everything prepared, and then a super intense long weekend (exacerbated by my 3-year-old son’s intense personality and deep sense of resistance to pottying) devoted to potty training, but the method *really works*! Before the weekend, we had basically gotten nowhere with potty training, because we didn’t know how to start, and he always said no if we asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty or the toilet. When he turned 3, and now that we have a newborn, I decided it was time to train him for real.
Our procedure: I basically followed the procedure in the book faithfully the first morning (3 hours), except I had to let him train the doll naked waist-down, because he absolutely refused to wear underwear. Luckily he held his pee the whole time. After the whole doll procedure, and much coaxing/persuading, I finally persuaded him to put on underwear more than an hour after starting. Then it took another good 30 minutes to persuade him to take it off and sit on the potty. Note that this is a wild child who never does anything I say, but the book has some good tips for how to get such kids (any child, really) to follow instructions, and I practiced it a little bit beforehand, and used it over and over on the day. The second day, I went through the whole procedure (including the doll) again in a sped up fashion, just to make sure he really got it. I also let him wear training pants the whole long weekend as well as the first day at school, but by the second day at school he was happy to go in underwear. I bought 9 pairs of training pants, and he used them all during the training process, plus we had to do laundry every day as well! At the beginning he would have just a couple of drops of pee in his training pants before he made it to the potty, but he got over that after a few days.
After the first morning: he knew the whole sequence of pulling down pants, sitting down, peeing, pulling up pants, dump the potty content in the toilet, flush the toilet putting the potty seat back; but he didn’t always consistently go when he needed to pee, and he didn’t always completely empty his bladder when he did pee in the potty
By the first evening: he spontaneously had his first poop in the potty (I was surprsied BM did not need separate training, despite assurances from the book)
By the second day: he stayed dry through his nap
By the third day: he could spontaneously go to the potty by himself when he needed to go (we had stopped giving any food/drinks as rewards), and he added an extra hand-washing step by himself
By the fourth day: he stayed dry all night for the first time (this really surprised me, because I really expected him not to be able to hold it all night); he went back to preschool ready to pee/poop on their mini toilets, slept dry through the nap, and only had one poop accident on the playground
By the end of week 1: no more accidents, and he can easily pee/poop on adult-sized toilets in restaurants, parks, other people’s homes, etc. Basically, he was now a fully toilet trained child, and only needed some help to wipe himself after BM, or get onto an adult-sized toilet when we’re not home. We do occasionally ask him if he needs to go (sometimes he says yes, sometimes he says no). But he goes spontaneously when he needs to, and has not had any accident since.
He still occasionally blows out at night (once in the last week), but it’s getting rarer and rarer. He also finally accepted after about 3 weeks that if he wants any milk or other fluid in the evening, he must have it at dinner or shortly after, and not before bedtime.
Finally, I’m a psychologist myself, and I find this a scientifically grounded approach. It does not involve “brainwashing” or “shaming” the child. To the contrary, it made my child feel really proud of himself, and really helped with my parenting, because the book taught me how to get my child to be more cooperative in all kinds of situations. I am still using these techniques daily to deal with my very independent and stubborn 3-year-old. On a side note, it was also interesting to see that my very boyish boy (super excited about trains, fire trucks, and planes) to really get into role-playing with a girl doll (which I named Molly).
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone! I will definitely use this method to train my second child when he’s old enough (the book says many kids are ready by 18 months). I wish I had trained my older son a year ago, he was definitely ready!