Potty Training: Time For A Change?

[Momma Rosie]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/li...-home-lifestyle

Potty training: Time for a change?

Ditching tradition, some parents teach babies a few months old to use the toilet.

Tina Kelley

The New York Times

October 15, 2005

Hannah Rothstein, 7 months old, has a dimpled bottom but very svelte German underwear. She can still fit into her birth-to-3-month-old clothes because she lacks her peers' familiar bulge in the rear. She can sleep all night without a diaper. And during the day, every so often, after her mother, Melinda, of Newton, Mass., places her on a plastic potty and makes a little ''pss-wss-wss" sound, Hannah uses the toilet.

For many parents in the United States, the idea of potty training before a baby is able to walk, or even before age 2, is not just horrifying but reprehensible -- a direct route from the crib to the psychiatrist's couch.

But more parents are experimenting with infant potty training, seeing it as more sanitary, ecologically correct and likely to strengthen bonds between parent and child.

About 2,000 people across the country have joined Internet groups and e-mail lists to learn more about the techniques of encouraging a baby -- too young to walk or talk -- to go in a toilet, a sink or a pot. Through a nonprofit group, Diaper Free Baby (diaper freebaby.org), 77 groups have formed in 35 states to encourage the practice. One author's how-to books on the subject have sold about 50,000 copies.

''It's just so simple," says Lamelle Ryman, mother of 7-month-old Neshama. ''I feel like it's been such a gift in our relationship.''

Joining the rest of the world

To be sure, adoption of the approach in the West is in its infant stage, so to speak. Moreover, the philosophy behind it flies in the face of Spock-influenced child-rearing. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the last word in child-rearing for many American families through much of the 20th century, recommended against any training in the first year, thinking that it could lead to rebellion later through bedwetting.

But there is a broad body of knowledge and experience to draw on with early toilet training. At least 75 countries, including India, Kenya and Greenland, embrace the practice.

More than 50 percent of the world's children are toilet trained by the time they turn 1, according to Contemporary Pediatrics magazine.

From birth, the reasoning goes, infants are aware of their needs to eliminate, and although their muscles are not developed, they can soon learn to go on cue. Conversely, by relying on disposable diapers, parents are teaching babies to ignore the signs that they have to go, making potty training at a later age more difficult.

Ingrid Bauer, author of Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene (Natural Wisdom Press, 2001), says it's easiest to begin toilet training in the first six months.

To start, parents are taught to hold the baby by the thighs in a seated position against their stomachs and to make an encouraging hiss or grunt.

With practice, parents learn their child's rhythms.

For families who practice the technique, the advantages are many: savings on the cost of diapers, which can reach $3,000 a child; less guilt about contributing to the 22 billion disposable diapers that end up in landfills every year; no diaper rash; and a nursery that doesn't reek of diaper pail.

They also note that age 2, a common age for toilet training, is a time of notorious willfulness and a terrible age to start teaching any child anything.

Most important, they say, is an increased emotional bond with the baby, forged by the need for the parent to pick up on subtle signs and act on them quickly. Proponents of the practice use the phrase ''elimination communication."

Finding the time

Unquestionably, in a child-rearing culture that thrives on sanitation and parental convenience, the prospect of supervising 20 deposits a day in the first busy months of infancy is daunting.

''It doesn't sound like anything I would ever even attempt to try,'' says Erinn Marchetti, who has two preschool-age children. ''It's hard enough when they're 2 and 3."

Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a renowned child-rearing expert, says parents need not worry about psychologically damaging their child. Brazelton has always advocated a child-centered approach to training: Do it when a child is ready, without too much pushing or even encouraging.

''I'm all for it, except I don't think many people can do it," he says of elimination communication. ''The thing that bothers me about it is today, probably 80 percent of women don't have that kind of availability."

He says he does wonder if children trained as infants would rebel against it later.

As with breastfeeding, a turn toward infant potty training would represent a leap into the past. Before the 1800s, babies in Western societies were swaddled, which restrained them and contained their wastes, Laurie Boucke says in Infant Potty Training (White-Boucke Publishing, 2002).

When cleanliness became a virtue in the 19th century, Boucke writes, infants were regularly held over a chamber pot until they learned the habit of using it. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in its current ''Toilet Training" pamphlet, says children have no control over bladder or bowel movements when they are younger than a year and little control for six months afterward.

''Even if you're getting them to go in a pot as a young infant, I don't know if it will have any long-term impact for all the effort you have to go through," says Dr. Mark Wolraich, author of the academy's Guide to Toilet Training (Bantam Books, 2003). ''The risk is, if it's not working and the parents are frustrated, they're creating more negative interactions with their child.''

But parents of diaper-free babies says working with a child's signals is a rewarding and worthwhile experience.

A mother in Medford, Mass., Sarabeth Matilsky, says elimination communication helped strengthen her bond with her son, Ben, who began using a potty when he was about 10 weeks old and who was colicky as an infant.

''When I started doing this, I got to start seeing him as a little person with abilities," says Matilsky, noting that her son became much happier after she learned to read his cues.

Copyright © 2005, Orlando Sentinel

[mogumbo]

This isn't potty training a kid... it's potty training the parents.

Mo

[DollyDiaper]

And it will just be another thing for parents to feel bad about if it doesn't work for them and their baby.

I wonder how divisive that will be. I can just imagine the competitive overtones at the 6-week post-natal check up. There's bound to be a baby there whose parents claim was potty-trained an hour after birth

And how many would emerge from that exchange feeling like failures?

Dolly

[Morv]

There's a similar topic in general talk. here's a link:

http://www.dailydiapers.com/board/index.php?showtopic=1625

[Guest VladYvhv]

Somehow, I see too much of this happening... I think this's among the things that'll be laughed at later on down the road... Too impractical to become widespread as our lives become more and more hectic and rushed... Perhaps some day the toilet will be phased out in favor of self-cleaning nanotech diapers...

[Rhezz]

ridicilous, its not just for the development, it will have psychological implications in the future.

If it didnt, people would be potty training from 6 months.

Also when i have kids, if i ever do, i would for sure not to do anything to interfere with their development physically and psychologically.

[guitar_a_goo_goo_ga]

me thinks that this will lead to more AB/DLs

[udontneed2knw]

me thinks that this will lead to more AB/DLs

wow their absoulte no way this can turn wrong (wonders out loud why he's almost 21 and wants to pee and poop in a diaper)