Byline: JODI DUCKETT, The Morning Call

Parenting guru John Rosemond is nursing a sore throat at home in Gastonia, N.C., but he's eager to talk for a long time with a reporter, even if it means giving up a chunk of the precious free time he has carved out between days on the road.

Rosemond, whose conservative, no-nonsense approach to child-rearing has earned him as many foes as fans, is feeling a little bit beaten up after some less than positive press.

"After this New York Times thing, I want to get it right with the media," said Rosemond recently, referring to a Feb. 14 article in the New York Times Magazine that seemed to attempt to devalue his parenting theories by debunking Rosemond's version of his personal life.

"She told me the story was not about me in the first place. She told me she was doing a story on parenting trends," he complained, upset that the reporter interviewed his mother, who Rosemond has not spoken to in a decade, and questioned the veracity of his son, Eric, who claims to be tight with his dad.

(Rosemond called his mother "brilliant but confused" and said she doesn't talk to anyone in his family. He didn't want to talk about their estrangement, which The New York Times reported to be over a piece of furniture, but said, "it's not of my choosing and there is nothing I can do about it.")

At the time of this interview, Rosemond had yet to feel the sting of last Sunday's letters in the magazine.

"I wouldn't train a dog the way John Rosemond advocates rearing children," wrote a Brooklyn psychologist to The New York Times. "Unless, of course, my goal were to have the dog avoid me as Rosemond avoids his own mother."

All this after Rosemond turned potty training into front page news by challenging revered child development expert Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, who says a child should be weaned from diapers whenever he's ready. Rosemond believes strongly that potty training after age 2-1/2 or 3 encourages children to remain emotional toddlers, an unpopular position among many of today's parents.

Still, Rosemond's popularity appears to be growing, as parents frustrated with their children's bad behavior consider his very old-fashioned ideas.

They are devouring his eight books, "Parent Power!" and "Because I Said So!" among them. Rosemond's syndicated column appears in more than 175...