Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Book 12 of 15: The No-Cry Potty Training Solution by Elizabeth Pantley

Well, sometimes you just need to be practical. Yesterday was one of those days. I have two-year old twins, and potty-training has never been what I was good at as a mom, so I read this for encouragement. To gird up my loins before I teach the Twinkies to, well, gird up their loins (um, sort of).

I picked this one out because I remembered thinking that Pantley's "No-Cry Sleep Solution" was gentle and practical, and figured her potty-training book might be too. It was. She has lots of "try this ideas", but the overall thing she keeps emphasizing is that potty-training is a matter of the parent keeping her cool and being consistent and patient, and I know I've found that to be true in the past. 

This was a helpful read, and I really appreciated her emphasizing the part you can control (i.e., your own attitude) instead of the part you can't (i.e., whether or not your children actually produce anything in the desired location).

More on the 15/15 project here.

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

2 comments:

Girl Detective said...

I wish you luck, and am so glad I'm through that stage with my boys, who are 4 and 6. Both waited until the last possible moment before they had to start preschool till they were consistently using the toilet and out of diapers, so one was 4, the other 3.5. The good news was, for them, it was all or nothing. There was no pull-up stage at night.

I tried Pantley's No Cry sleep book, and it didn't work for us. Ferber is often demonized, but I found his approach, also recommended by Jodi Mindell, a good compromise with periodic checking and reassurance.

Jessica Snell said...

Pantley's sleep book was, I think, the most realistic of the gentle approaches. She was honest about how much time it takes, which I appreciated. I think you can modify Ferber so that it's reasonable (sounds like you did); the big problem with it is that some people use it so strictly that they sometimes do harm. But any parenting technique can be harmful if people adopt it and then turn off their thinking!