Sally, agree with you, I only use them at te very early stage for the important things like recall, the other trick is learning the 'no' command or stop it or leave it or combination of them, and that comes from spotting that the pups going to do something it shouldn't just as they're thinking about doing it and then (well I clap and say command) to divert the behaviour, installing this early makes life easier IMO
The other thing plums is make sure that whatever your doing the rest of the family do, if you use come as recall, then everyone should use the same command, we have a list of commands that we gave to the kids when they where younger so there was consistency.
And need I say it, remember if you allow a puppy to jump up on you now, when its little, it'll jump up on you in 3years when it's big, and your visitors, and it'll be harder to stop, the other is if it chews your fingers and toes now and you don't stop it it'll do it when it's bigger, we have a No teeth on flesh policy, the exception I believe is gun dogs when you teaching soft mouths but I havNt got gun dogs (mores the pity - always, wanted an English pointer) so will defer to others