Toilet Training Without Tears (ISBN 0451192125)

Informative, but not very helpful.:
The book provided some interesting information about toilet training, but none of the techniques were helpful for me. My daughter is showing signs of readiness to train, but the techniques are not for her. We can not use the "Readiness approach" because her bowel movement are not at the same time every day, she is too old for the "Early approach" though she is under 2 years old, and there is not enough information on the "Rapid approach", instead you are advised to buy another book to explain it in more detail. The first two approaches may be helpful to other parents if your child has regular bowel movements or is 3 to 15 months old.

Helped us succeed quickly!:
We found this book extremely helpful in getting our 3 and a half year old daughter to finally use the toilet for her bowel movements. After less than one week of practicing the "desensitization" method our daughter was successful. We also found the suggestions for bedwetting very informative and have relied on the appendix to further guide our research on this topic and to help us find retailers from which to purchase equipment to aid us in eliminating bedwetting. The book provides an excellent overview for different methods of toilet training and addresses age specific problems and offers age appropriate solutions.

Faster isn't Necessarily Better for the Child:
I ordered this book because I was told the techniques result in toilet training quickly. I was unprepared for methods which I consider primitive (i.e. giving children suppositories to loosen their stool (which my pediatrician says is invasive and unhealthy); or having young children change their own soiled sheets AND waking them every few minutes for extended periods throughout the night). Gee whiz, I wouldn't want this done to me. It sounds a bit more like brain-washing than toilet training. Just because something works, does not make it civil. This book does not treat children with respect but rather like pets to be trained in order not to inconvenience the owners.

Very helpful!!!:
My son was having a very very hard time potty training at nearly 4... I was at wits end when I bought this book.. and thank goodness I did! It gave very practical, real-life advice, and more importantly OPTIONS! This book gives several different methods and you can decide which is most appropriate for your child! I found that having my son clean up after himself (he had gotten to where he was pooping in his pull-ups and demanding to be changed immediately) and took him out of pull-ups and put him in undies all the time. We stopped giving rewards and started treating it as something totally natural as one of the methods recommends, and it worked!!! Very informative. I believe a different method will work with my younger son and plan to use a different technique in this book.