Disclaimer: If you are a guy, don't have little kids, find bathroom talk to be TMI, or pretty much just don't care about potty training, I suggest you go ahead and read something else. I have had my mind in the potty chair for the last couple of days and I have discoveries.
So.
This is kind of a book review of a couple of books--one is called Diaper-Free Before 3, a crummy title but an interesting book. The other is Diaper-Free, the Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene. They sort of come at an idea I've been playing with, from different angles: What if waiting and waiting and waiting to start potty training is a bad idea?
It began because Miss Boo has a hard time telling me when she needs to potty, and Buddy has been majorly interested in the potty chair. I let him sit on it a few times, but was hesitant to actually try to get him to use it because, after all, he isn't even two years old, and our doctor had told us over and over "if you train them too early, you're the one who's getting trained."
Meanwhile Pullups are expensive and giving Miss Boo a wicked rash, and Mama is getting very, very, very tired of washing load after load of wet pants, and Miss Boo is getting very, very, very frustrated at being wet all the time.
So I got the Gentle Wisdom book on my Kindle and started reading about people who were taking teeny, tiny little babies--like 2 months and younger--to potty. ("Taking them potty" means watching for signals that they have to go and popping a little chamber pot under their butts while you hold them in your lap--not sitting the baby on a big toilet.) I was intrigued and decided to spend a day watching Miss Boo and Buddy for "cues", because after all if people can do it with tiny babies I should be able to do it with mobile, speaking toddlers. (Buddy speaks his own language most of the time, not quite English yet unless he can't make us understand otherwise. I think he finds English limiting.)
Bam! It worked. If I pay attention, they signal me literally every time they need to go, whether by a posture change, a facial expression, dancing around, or staring off into the distance. For a while Buddy was signalling directly after he'd gone, but by afternoon I was catching it. Miss Boo had only one accident all day, and that was my fault--I ignored a cue.
I got the Diaper-Free Before 3 book in the mail yesterday about noon and read it all before bed--it's a little book and fast to read. In it, the author (an MD) argues from research that kids are capable and, indeed, most want to begin potty learning long before their second birthday--even before their first, in some cases. She advocates not so much cue-watching as sitting the kid on the potty at routine times, like before and after naps, trips out into the world, meals, etc. (Note: this doesn't mean that you're being pushy, mean, or stern, you're just having a happy time with the kid reading books and sitting on the potty.) She also points out that by keeping babies in super-absorbant disposable diapers for several years, we remove a natural feedback loop that helps them master pottying-- the cause-and-effect of "I pee, and then I'm wet and uncomfortable". She advocates using disposables for the first year of life and then cotton training pants; I advocate using cloth diapers and never letting the baby sit in wet pants (much easier with cloth, because you can feel when they're wet.)
I figured I could combine the best of both methods, the super-crunchy and the slightly-regimented. I've been watching cues AND taking the kids potty at regular times. So far we've had great success.
Buddy, who is 19 months old, pottied 4 times on the potty chair the first afternoon I decided to try it with him, and pooped there too. I had what was either a brilliant or a stupid idea and went ahead with the cotton training underwear for him. Now he won't let me put a diaper back on and mostly keeps his pants dry, if I pay attention--he comes over and starts tugging at my knees when he needs to go.
Miss Boo clued me in on something vital I had been missing. As I sat her brother on the potty, she came up and put an arm around him and said, "Come on, Buddy, pssss." He peed instantly. So when it was next time for her to try, on a hunch I said "Come on, psssss" instead of "come on, potty". She peed instantly. It occured to me that "potty" to Miss Boo means sitting on the potty chair, and "psssss" means actually getting down to business, and I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.
I've discovered that lot of what I thought was being squiggly, or resisting naps and bedtime, might have just been that the poor kids needed to pee.
While there are things I disagree with in each book, I am thankful to both authors for suggesting to me that I could just quit diapering my kids altogether and watch them. I need to get some waterproof pads for their beds before I will be comfortable with stopping nighttime (cloth) diapers--and being a nurse I want the good, hospital-quality ones I know are out there, not the flimsy cruddy ones from the baby aisle at Walmart--but for daytime it has been so, so, nice. They even wake up dry from naps.
As to "at this age you're the one being trained", it occured to me that this knee-jerk statement is about on par with the knee-jerk statement I heard when people discovered I was exclusively breastfeeding Miss Boo: "But then you're the only one who can feed the baby!"
Well, duh.
There are lots of things for which I take responsibility until my children are mature enough to do it themselves--from getting them dressed in appropriate clothing to making sure they eat proper food at proper times. If I have to potty them for a while until they can do it themselves, why is that a bad thing? Except, of course, that it doesn't leave me as free to do my own stuff as I would be if I left them sitting in a soggy disposable.
It seems like it's pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later. I can put in the time to watch them now, and hopefully they'll learn quick that it's more comfy to stay dry and go on the potty chair, just like they can climb to their own seats at the table when they're hungry. Or I can leave them diapered, and then have to put in the time when they're 4 years old, convincing them to interrupt their activities to go potty. (After all, wasn't my excuse that I didn't want to interrupt my activities to take them potty? Why should they, if the grownup doesn't?)
That's what I think after a couple days of reading and experimenting. I have another book coming, about pottying tiny babies again, and I may be sharing more ideas from that later. As it is, I am still so excited at being able to see light at the end of the tunnel. I'll probably be posting some practical tips as we get further into this business. Right now the best advice I have is to make sure, if you're potty-training two kids, to have two IDENTICAL potty chairs. We had one highly-favored and one scorned potty chair, and it created enough havoc that today I demoted the scorned potty chair to be the Emergency Car Backup, and went and purchased another favored potty chair. (The blue Baby Bjorn potty, in case you wonder. It does seem more comfy--has arms and a back.)
Cheers,
Breanna
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