I picked up Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki on a Tuesday afternoon. My toddler was running around in a diaper that seemed to have a magical, never-ending capacity. I was tired. Not the good kind of tired, either. The desperate kind. The kind where you start googling “how to potty train a stubborn three-year-old” at 2 a.m. and end up here.
This book promises a six-step, proven process. The core idea is simple: ditch the diapers, go naked, and let your kid figure it out. Glowacki is a potty-training expert who has helped half a million families. She writes like a friend who’s had too much coffee. It’s conversational. It’s direct. She tells you to stop overthinking. She says your kid is ready earlier than you think. She has a point.
What struck me most was her central argument. She believes the biggest obstacle to potty training isn’t the child. It’s the parent. We overcomplicate it. We use rewards. We negotiate. We post about it on Facebook. She tells you to stop all that. Just do it. The method itself is almost brutally simple. You go through phases: naked, commando, underpants. You give extra fluids. You watch for the “puzzled” face. You move the kid to the potty mid-stream. It sounds chaotic because it is.
A Firm, Almost Military Approach
Glowacki’s method is about taking control of the situation. She tells you not to ask “Do you have to pee?” but to say “Come, it’s time to pee.” She warns against overprompting. Twice per hour is enough. No begging. No bargaining. No pull-ups, which she calls “plastic pants of shame.” It’s a firm, almost military approach. The kind you need when your three-year-old is holding a poop in for four days and you’re this close to losing your mind.
But here’s the thing. The book itself is a mess. And honestly, I think that’s intentional. It reflects the chaos it’s trying to solve. Glowacki rambles. She goes on tangents about the “poop problem” in modern society without ever saying what the problem is. She has a chapter called “Daycare and Other Caregivers” that only talks about daycare. Her editor should have cut half of it. The writing is blog-post quality. It’s repetitive. She uses sentences like “Our 24 hour system dictates that we move on to the next day” that made me stop and reread three times. What does that even mean?
The Gold Buried in the Mess
I’ll be honest. I almost put the book down. But I didn’t. Because buried in the rambling is real, practical advice. The language she suggests is gold. Instead of “Good job,” she says “You peed in the potty.” Simple. Direct. No judgment. It removes the performance from the act. She tells you to let your child dump their own poop into the big toilet. She says small immediate consequences work. You take the toy they were holding. You don’t lecture.
The book taught me something unexpected. Potty training is not about the kid learning a skill. It’s about the parent learning to let go of control. You can’t force a child to pee. You can only create the conditions. It’s the same with reading this book. You can’t make Glowacki be a better writer. You just have to extract the useful parts and ignore the rest.
So what’s the verdict? The method works. I’ve seen it. My son is doing better after three weeks. But the book is frustrating. It’s for parents who are desperate enough to wade through the noise. It’s not for people who want a clean, well-organized manual. It’s for people like me, who need someone to yell “Stop overthinking! Just do it!” even if that yelling comes with a lot of tangents.
Would I recommend it? Yes, if you’re struggling. No, if you have a chill kid who just gets it. This book is for the parents in the trenches, the ones who are ready to throw away diapers and never look back. It won’t make the process easy. But it might make it possible.
What it gave me: permission to be firm. A script to follow. The realization that my anxiety was the real problem. What it left me with: a slightly messy house, a proud toddler, and the knowledge that the worst part is already over.
