Potty talk
In the past week I have stumbled across a few blogs about EC, Elimination Communication, or Infant Potty Training. Hmmm, I have read about this before and thought it was a little weird. Basically it is trying to go no diapers from the beginning, teaching your baby to hold it until the parent holds the baby over the desired location. Then I was at the library looking for a book about health and you know how the non-fiction section is - random. Anyway, I saw a book on early potty training. I checked it out. It is really interesting.
Did you know that until the 1940’s most kids were trained to “go” on cue by about 4 months. Then the automatic washing machine came out meaning that parents no longer had to hand wash cloth diapers. Dr. Spock wrote his child rearing book and was criticized for his recommendation to delay potty training until a child was older and more ready - 7 to 9 months. That seems absurd to us now. In 1961 the disposable diaper was introduced. Another pediatric heavy weight, Terry Brazelton, was brought on board to promote pampers and he now recommended that parents wait until the kid is ready and they initiate potty training. That means that now the average age of potty training is 33 months for girls and 39 months for boys. Pampers got a great deal out of that. 70 years ago kids used only a few diapers a day and were out of them really early and now they are in them for a long time.
I could go on about all the things I have learned in only the first three chapters of this book. Very fascinating bedtime reading.
Well, I had been thinking for awhile that I needed to buy a toddler toilet for Katherine’s bathroom just so she would get used to it. I thought she might sit there for fun. I did my research and bought the Baby Bjorn Potty Chair. Last night I put her on it, fully clothed and she was not crazy about it. Today, when she woke up from her nap, she was dry (a sign of toilet training readiness) and so I put her on it clothed and she was curious. She climbed on and off, on and off. When I took off her diaper, she hopped off and immediately peed on the carpet of the bathroom. Luckily, we are having the carpet removed and installing tile tomorrow anyway so I did not worry too much. I continued to let her go without a diaper for awhile, closed up in the bathroom with me and a few books. Then I could tell she needed to go #2 so I put her on the potty and she was successful. I could barely believe it. Then before bed she went #1 in the potty.
When I told Sam, he said he was astonished that we were already at that phase. I know that two successful times is no where near being potty trained. That is quite a ways off. But, it does show me that I am not silly for trying and with some effort I may actually get a break in doing cloth diaper laundy before I start over with another kiddo some day.
I thought I would share a picture, but I have to be tasteful so the only picture that was taken was of her playing while still fully clothed.
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