Customer Rating:  
Summary: obnoxious elitist advice from a spoiled rich mother with a nanny
Comment: I was excited to get this book until I realized it was tyrannical in the other direction. You have the extremists on both sides and she is the early training extremist. I love how she pretends to be eco conscious and laments the diaper company profits (I guess her book is being given away for free! diaper companies are hardly forcing anyone to buy diapers) even as she recognizes how nonenvironmentally conscious it is to keep washing soiled clothing. In any case, Im not thrilled about taking advice from someone who had a full time nanny when her child was only six months old, the person she credits this with, I wish the old country nanny had written the book, she doesnt even have her name mentioned. In the end, the advice of the entire book is information that can easily be found online with the position that you should start earlier. what i dont get is this- she seems to agree it will take around a year, so Im wondering what the real benefit is. Its going to take that long if you do it later and the kids coordination (although attitude may not be) is improved. I think potty training should be a combination of whats good for parents and child, not one or the other, and not that anyone really knows what is ideal.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must read
Comment: The author's explanations make so much sense, and so far, I think are working! I've been sitting my 6 month old baby on the potty (I started when she was able to sit on her own), and she now knows what to do on it. Of course, she still wears a diaper, and still uses the diaper, but I think it's helpful to get her acquainted with the potty while she is still open to learning new things. My hope is that she'll be toilet trained early, and so far, we're off to a good start.
The book is well written, easy to read, with suggestions for different age groups.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Highly Reccommended
Comment: Whether you are potty training "early" or late, this is an excellent book with lots of great information and tips for successful potty training. Don't buy into the "signs of readiness" myth!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Diapers Matter
Comment: We live in a world of convenience and it has all kinds of implications in how we raise our children from how we feed them to how we toilet train. This author challenges the status quo and questions whether our means of toilet training is for the best of our children or whether it is merely for our convenience as parents.
I don't agree with her presentation of cloth diapers. I have found cloth to be a viable option both financially and logistically.
I think her timeline for toilet training is very helpful, especially in a culture where other options for toiletting our children are not readily understood.
A great read!
Customer Rating:
Summary: An introduction to "Traditional" Potty Training
Comment: I have read several books about early toilet learning, and I have to say that this was definitely not my favorite. The author does give a lot of evidence that supports early potty training, but does not give a lot of practical advice for implementation.
I would give Chapter 2 a 5 star rating, and without this chapter the whole book probably would have gotten only 1-2 stars from me. In Chapter 2, she gives a really great, detailed history of how traditional potty training progressed to "readiness training" in the US, and how nobody has ever given sufficient evidence that there are any benefits to waiting until the child shows interest in learning to use the toilet. This section is a great resource for anyone who is scared that by exposing a child to the potty early you are psychologically damaging him or her.
I liked that the author recommended taking the leap to underwear fairly early. I think that this is important and it is a hard step for parents to take because it can be messy, but it really is the best way to help your child to be more aware of his or her body, and super-absorbent disposable diapers just don't do that.
The advice that the author gives regarding the potty training process implies that there is only one way to do it - starting at 6-12 mos, which actually is actually LATE when you compare cross-culturally. There are positions that you can use to hold a tiny infant to help cue them before they are able to sit unsupported. Some people believe that babies lose some of their awareness of their elimination by 6 mos. If you plan to use this method and you have a child on the way or who is younger than 6 months, I highly recommend that you read Ingrid Bauer's Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene and any of Laurie Boucke's books, such as Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living, and Christine Gross Loh's book The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative. These books also contain some useful information about how to start this process for younger and older children and are more flexible in terms of when to start and how.
Something that I found disturbing, yet fascinating, about this book is that it is written from a perspective that overlooks and/or dismisses other parenting practices that seem to go naturally with this process: She gives a "lecture" that there are certain inconveniences that a parent should be willing to do for the well-being of their child, yet (1) she spends several pages in the book discussing details of bottle feeding and barely glosses over breastfeeding which is so much healthier for babies in so many ways including digestive system health. Although she does not discuss her personal reasons for not breastfeeding, it was apparent to me that she did not really think that it was important and I am frustrated to see that attitude from a pediatrician who is advising parents of young children. (2) She discourages cloth diapering because she finds that inconvenient. As a mother who has used cloth diapers AND early potty awareness with my child, I found this quite ridiculous. It is SO much more effort to take a child to the potty several times a day than to wash cloth diapers every couple of days (UNLESS you don't have a washing machine or you have a shortage of water), plus, if your child is using the toilet successfully you will have much less diaper laundry. I guess we all have our priorities, but I found this contradictory.
One small pet peeve of mine is that, in the section where she talks about nutrition, constipation, and avoiding juices, she reiterates the old "8 glasses of water a day" myth, which is just not true (how could children and adults of all different sizes have exactly the same requirement, anyways?). In fact, we get most of our water from the food that we eat and only need to drink water when we are thirsty. For more information, do a search at Snopes or type in "8 glasses water" on your favorite search engine.
There were definitely some interesting things in this book other than what I have listed, but overall I think that most of the useful information can be found elsewhere. This book is not one that I would recommend to people who are considering early potty training.
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