Staying Dry: 99 Tips to Bring You Back from the End of Your Rope (Last Straw Strategies)

Here is a healthy perspective on that most challenging child-raising problem: toilet training. Author Michelle Kennedy advises parents to ask themselves: What's the big hurry? But when that time finally does arrive, she suggests a commonsense training procedure that will work when it's combined with patience and good humor. The book also deals with questions such as to bribe or not to bribe, getting Dad to help boys achieve good aim, coping with occasional accidents, and bed-wetting. Underlying all questions, the author advises: Don't push, and toilet training will come naturally.

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Teaching your child to stay dry isn’t one of the worst challenges of parenting, but it can be one of the most exasperating—and the common “one step forward, two steps back” cycle has been known to drive even the most patient parent to tears of exhaustion.



Here are 99 tips from parents who’ve been there—and who have lived to tell the tale (and to launder far, far fewer crib sheets afterward). These strategies worked for them and they will work for you. As a bonus, they’re presented with real-life accounts of experiences that will help you laugh along the way.





Other Last Straw Strategies


Crying * Eating * Jealousy * Letting Go * Manners * Sleeping * Tantrums



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When your child just won’t play by the rules, turn to Last Straw Strategies. Each book in the series concentrates on one problem area, and offers 99 ideas to bring you back from the end of your rope. Hints, tips, and suggestions compiled by a hands-on mother of four—garnered from parents, grandparents, and friends—have been successfully road-tested on children to create this practical series. It covers the major bases of conflict with energy, wit, and compassion, something friendly to clutch at when all else has failed.



Michelle Kennedy, author and humor columnist, lives with her husband and four children on a farm in Chelsea, Vermont, where she is desperately trying to turn her black thumb into a green one.