I've read MDLM and used some of his ideas with my son, but I can't say MDLM's methods are the best.
They aren't intended for kids. Kids have no difficulty acquiring patterns. The purpose of the method is for people --adults-- who can see a pattern hundreds of times and not get them into their automatic pattern recognition recall. The kids I train, including the one deemed "learning disabled," can find patterns they've been introduced to once, even if they weren't isolated patterns in a puzzle book.
If you've applied it to your kid, I feel sorry for kid, considering that they are hard and most adults would prefer to make spurious claims about the method's ineffectiveness to justify their avoiding them. To apply MDLM's method to a kid is to have completely missed the purpose and rationale behind the training. If anything, the method will likely be counter productive for a kid, since there is a strong correlation between a child's happiness and ability to learn. Boring a kid to death with the method will likely have a deleterious effect.
As I said, we've used some of MDLM's ideas, but tailored for a kid. We didn't try 7 circles, but more like 4 or 5, and we did them in batches of 50-100 puzzles not 1000. Also, none of the long hours that MDLM recommends. My son does puzzles for 30 minutes to an hour at a time. This routine was what was recommended by his first coach. We also started with Susan Polgar's tactics book rather than CT-ART, though we eventually moved onto CT-ART.
This regimen was very effective for my son as well as many other kids we know.
i have the CRT course, i'm gonna try the method you did with your son, thanks for sharing
What has not been explicitly stated is the fact that there was a person who in Truth when up 400 rating over the board points in 400 days. And he wrote a book detailing what he claims is how he did it. The author.