- When my kids were babies,
they peed and pooped in a potty instead of using diapers.
Let's talk more about that, but first, you know the drill,
hit the little bell icon, subscribe to my channel,
like it if you like it, share it,
let's get back to talking about children
who use potties.
In my house, we practice what many cultures practice.
It's called elimination communication.
You can also call it natural infant hygiene,
which sounds flowery and lovely, right?
Well, the cool kids call it E.C.
In all seriousness,
E.C. is about learning a baby's innate cues
for peeing and pooping, responding to those cues,
and eventually teaching them to use a potty
instead of a diaper.
I know, it sounds crazy.
They have innate cues?
They do.
How is this different than the way people normally do it?
Well, conventional thought about babies and diapers
and potty training essentially trains a child
to use their diaper as a bathroom.
Then, at the age when they are most likely
to hate you telling them to do anything,
you have to untrain them to not use their diaper
as a toilet.
Oh, and P.S., welcome to capitalism.
That whole way of thinking
actually perpetuates a multi-billion dollar industry
of diaper sales.
Now, when I had my first son 13 years ago,
I knew nothing of this diaper-free madness.
A good friend of mine, named Lorrie,
told me about this book called Diaper Free Baby
by Ingrid Bauer and I thought that it was totally nuts,
but then I read the book and something huge shifted for me.
It really made sense.
My husband at the time was not onboard.
He found the whole thing ridiculous, absurd.
He was certain that this would create a barrier
between him and our son
and he wouldn't be able to take care of him.
Sensing this was gonna escalate into a fight,
I decided to quietly, on my own, just start observing
what our son did when he went potty
and lo and behold, within a few weeks, a pattern emerged.
By the age of 10 months,
before my son could walk, talk, or even eat solid foods,
he could reliably sign for when he wanted to go potty.
Sometimes he would make a little arm flapping motion.
Sometimes he would scrunch up his face.
Every child's signals are different at first,
but it was my job to learn what my baby's signs were
and I know you're wondering what this potty looked like?
Well, for tiny babies,
a newborn potty looks like an upside-down, plastic top hat.
(sliding whistle)
You hold the baby onto the lid and then they poop in it
and you just dump it in the toilet.
As babies get older,
you can prop them up on what's called an older child potty
and eventually they get to graduate to a throne potty, ooh.
No, you can't carry a potty with you all the time
when you're out and about, so I used trees,
'cause you hold 'em up and they just pee on the tree.
You know, like you do.
If you're a boy.
By 12 months of age, on his first birthday,
my son had completely stopped using a diaper.
By 17 months, he was wearing adorable,
teeny, tiny underwear, which, no kidding,
we had to order from Japan
because that apparently is the country
where they make teeny, tiny underwear.
My son has no conscious memory of ever peeing
or pooping in a diaper.
My second son showed the exact same learning curve.
I started E.C. with him the first week he was born
and by 15 months, before he could walk or speak
or even eat solids, he was signing for the potty
and not wetting a diaper.
After this dramatic set of results,
you guessed it, my husband became a believer.
E.C. is not a system of reward and punishment.
We don't cheer when they use the potty.
We don't admonish them if they have misses.
That's right, we don't call them accidents.
They're just misses.
There are no gold stars.
There are no chocolate chips.
There's no sense of coercion.
E.C. is simply a peaceful and loving way
to communicate to a child that you can attend
to all of their needs.
Also, practicing E.C. is the ultimate green solution
to having a baby and dealing with potties.
There are no landfills to consider
and the washing is actually minimal
if you use cloth diapers as a backup.
I know it sounds unbelievable,
but elimination communication is fun
and it's actually not that difficult
once you get the hang of it.
Trust me, babies love not sitting
in their own urine and feces.
I promise.
Imagine never having a child with diaper rash.
That was my life.
Like a lot of the parenting that I practiced,
E.C. is not for everyone.
It is a big commitment in the first months,
but it's not this exquisitely specialized
or elitist practice.
E.C. is practiced by women all over the world
and before super-absorbent diapers were something
that diaper companies told you that you needed,
this is likely how your great-grandparents
and beyond practiced pottying.
What I found that E.C. did for me was it allowed me
to cultivate the deepest level of intimacy
with my children.
I was able to meet all of their needs
in a way that made sense to them and was comfortable
for both of us.
Especially for babies who are not verbal early on,
which both of mine were not,
this kind of communication was incredibly important.
It showed a level of understanding between us
and our children that nothing else
could replicate the same way.
I know this all sounds super weird,
but it was really, really powerful.
Thank goodness for my perseverance
and for my now ex-husband's incredible flexibility
and open-mindedness,
and thank goodness for hardwood floors
because in those first months, I had a lot of misses.
Thanks for watching.
Tell me what you think.
Am I crazy or am I brilliant
for practicing elimination communication?
For more on the unconventional ways that I parented,
make sure to go to groknation.com.