Oh Crap! Potty Training: What the Method Gets Right (and Where Families Struggle)

Jamie Glowacki is an American social worker who spent years helping families potty train before turning that experience into Oh Crap! Potty Training, published in 2015. It has since become one of the most influential potty training books in the world, and it crosses the Atlantic well: UK parents pass it around WhatsApp groups the way an earlier generation passed around Gina Ford. The voice is blunt, funny, and confident, and for a lot of tired parents that confidence is half the appeal.

The book rests on a few central claims. Most children are capable of learning between roughly 20 and 30 months. Learning happens in an ordered sequence she calls blocks. Nappies go completely on day one. And rewards are out.

This review tries to do two things at once: describe the method accurately enough that you can decide whether the book is for you, and be honest about where we see UK families get stuck with it. Glowacki has earned the fair version of both. Everything below about her method is our summary of her book, and where we disagree, we will say so plainly and say why.

Glowacki's biggest structural idea is that potty training is a sequence of learning stages, and that knowing which stage you are in stops you panicking at normal wobbles. In summary, her blocks:

• Block one: naked, at home. Nappies gone, child bare from the waist down, an adult watching. She describes the learning arc as moving from no awareness at all, to "I weed", to "I'm weeing", to "I need a wee". You help them to the potty mid-stream at first, and they catch it earlier and earlier.
• Block two: clothed, commando. Loose trousers with nothing underneath, plus small trips out of the house timed just after a wee.
• Block three: commando in the bigger world. Longer outings, different settings, learning to wee somewhere unfamiliar.
• Block four: pants at last. Underwear returns weeks in, once the skill is solid.
• Block five: self-initiation. The child takes themselves, with fewer and fewer prompts.
• Block six: nights and naps. Glowacki treats night dryness as trainable, with a plan built around limiting evening drinks and lifting the child for a late-evening wee.

Progress through the blocks is measured in days and weeks, and the book is clear that "trained" is a gradual arrival. That nuance gets lost in how the method is summarised online, which matters later in this review.

The naked phase logic. A bare-bottomed child gets immediate feedback from their own body, and a watching adult sees every cue and every miss. Cause and effect become visible to both of you at once. As learning design, this is sound, and it is why the first block works so well for so many children.

The commando insight. One of the sharpest observations in the book: snug pants feel like a nappy against the skin, and many children who are dry while naked wet themselves the moment underwear goes back on. Delaying pants for weeks looks eccentric until you have watched that exact pattern happen. This single idea explains a classic failure that baffles parents everywhere.

The map of normal. The blocks give parents a way to say "we are in block two, and this wobble is normal for block two". A great deal of potty training panic is a parent with no map, and the book hands them a good one.

Poo taken seriously. The book gives poo its own chapter, treats fear and privacy as real forces, and tells parents to keep poos soft and the pressure low. All sensible.

Calm as part of the method. Glowacki is direct that hovering, over-prompting, and all-day potty commentary raise the pressure and stall progress. We agree, and we wish more methods said it as bluntly.

Glowacki's rule against rewards draws more argument than anything else in the book, so it deserves an accurate summary before any opinion of ours.

Her case runs like this. Weeing and pooing are body functions, and a child should own them the way they own walking. A treat moves the point of the exercise from "I did it" to "I got a chocolate button". Some children then start negotiating for bigger prizes, and the whole arrangement wobbles the day the treats stop. She wants the child's motivation to come from mastery from the very beginning, and she argues that children are capable of that pride without a sweetener.

That is a coherent position, drawn from a lot of real cases, and for plenty of children it works as written. Many toddlers need nothing beyond your delight and their own. Our view is a little different, and we will get to it below, but the stance is a considered one and the book explains its reasoning well.

Poo, despite the chapter. Poo trouble is the top reason families stall with any method, and Oh Crap! is no exception. The book handles ordinary reluctance well. Where it cannot help is when reluctance has hardened into holding: a child crossing their legs, going days between poos, or pooing only in a nappy while straining to hold on. That is constipation territory, and it needs a GP before it needs any method, because behavioural pressure on a withholding child makes things worse.

The prompted-to-self-initiated gap. Many families sail to "wees on the potty when I take them" and then sit there for weeks. Block five is where the method's momentum drains, and it is the sticking point we hear about most. Glowacki's diagnosis is usually over-prompting, and she is often right. What we would add loudly: this gap is normal, it can last weeks, and dry pants during it still count as progress. Our guide to potty training accidents covers how to keep this stretch calm.

Timeline expectations. The book's own text expects weeks of gradual consolidation. The book's reputation promises days. Parents who arrive via the reputation read block one as "day one" and block five as "day five", then feel behind by Thursday. Reading the book beats reading the summary.

The 20-to-30-month window, if your child is older. Glowacki is candid that she finds training harder after three, and some parents of older twos and threes read her window as a door closing. We read the evidence differently, and we come to that next. If your child is past 30 months, nothing is broken.

Three honest differences, offered as our editorial view of a method we respect.

Rewards, used honestly. We are relaxed about small, immediate rewards: a sticker, a marble in a jar, loud delight. Given straight away, offered for effort as well as success, and faded once the skill is solid, they help some children over the hump without the bargaining Glowacki worries about. Her failure cases are real, and they mostly involve bigger and bigger treats promised in desperation mid-battle. A sticker given warmly on day two and a bribe invented during a stand-off on day nine are different things, and the second one is the problem.

Readiness weighs more than the calendar. As a description of when many children become capable, 20 to 30 months is reasonable. For your individual child, we would weight the readiness signs far above the age. A 34-month-old showing every sign is a better bet this month than a 22-month-old showing none, and waiting past 30 months for real signs is a decision we back without hesitation. Our guide to the signs of potty training readiness sets out what to look for.

Nights are developmental. Block six treats night dryness as trainable. UK guidance and our experience point the other way: staying dry asleep depends on a hormone shift that arrives on its own timetable, often years after dry days, and many children need a night nappy at four or five. That is normal, and a wet night nappy is no reflection on your training or on the method. We would leave nights alone until the morning nappy has been waking up dry on its own for a while. Our post on potty training and sleep covers the overnight side, and if the intensive style feels wrong for your family altogether, our gentle potty training method reaches the same destination at a slower pace.

A clear recommendation, because a review should end with one. Buy Oh Crap! if:

• Your child is somewhere around 20 to 34 months and starting to show readiness signs.
• You want one complete system in one voice, with the reasoning behind every step explained.
• You like a blunt, funny American voice that talks to you like a capable adult.
• This is your first time and you want your confidence held up through a wobbly first week.

Think twice if your child is already stuck in a poo battle or a holding pattern (GP first, then decide on a method), if a confident tone reads to you as pressure once things go off-script, or if your child has additional needs or is under assessment, where your child's own team and ERIC's additional-needs resources should shape the plan before any general book.

And a fairness note we mean: nothing in our critique makes this a bad book. It is one of the better ones, and most of what it teaches about the first two blocks we would teach the same way.

Some situations sit outside the reach of Oh Crap!, our approach, and every other method, and the kindest thing a review can do is name them:

• Pain, straining, or blood when weeing or pooing, or a fear of the potty that began after a painful poo. GP first, always.
• Poo held for days, or poo only in a nappy with signs of holding on. Constipation needs medical help before behavioural work, whatever chapter you are on.
• Regular soiled pants in a child of four or older. Usually overflow from constipation. It is a medical matter, never defiance, and telling off makes it worse. GP plus ERIC.
• Daytime wetting returning after six months or more reliably dry. A GP check comes first, to rule out a urine infection or constipation.
• Six months of real attempts with no progress. Ask your GP or health visitor for a review before trying the next method.

ERIC, the children's bowel and bladder charity, at eric.org.uk, has free guides on all of the above and a helpline for parents. For the ordinary setbacks that follow a decent start, our post on potty training regression walks through the usual causes and fixes.