Katherine Ryan reckons her eight month old is toilet trained

[WheelieBinPrincess]

Now, if I held my baby over the loo for a couple of hours for want of something better to do on a rainy Sunday, I reckon eventually he’d use it. I could then clap and proclaim I had started toilet training

AIBU to think she’s off her rocker? Apparently, putting your baby in a nappy means you are teaching them to always go in a nappy.

I know she has a nanny to deal with all this as well, who Im sure rolls her eyes at the proclamation that her baby is fully potty trained at 8mo.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who claimed her newborn learnt to use a hand signal for hunger from day 2 or 3 so she didn’t need to cry. She was apparently fluent in baby sign from two months old.

I can understand a 1 year old being potty trained in the sense I take it. Ie recognising the need, getting up and sitting on the toilet/potty.

An 8 month old cannot. So until then it is just the parent and nothing to do with the child’s training.

My DM did elimination communication several decades ago with DSis & I. She called it 'potty training'.
We were both born in the tropics so it was through necessity as much as anything. It worked, avoided a lot of skin issues but must have been very hard work for DM.

@Catsstillrock

I’ve heard of this and can see it can be done. I’ve always know when mine need to poo, and often (with young kids) when they need to wee.

My youngest is nearly four and often does the wee dance before they go (though now the less I mention it the better).

Agree at one they’re unlikely to take themselves there pull their own clothes down / up etc. But clearly using less nappies less leaks is a good thing and I can totally imagine that if they’re going on a potty at one the transition to going completely independently is easier / earlier.

I’ve often thought disposable nappies have delayed potty training as they don’t feel wet / uncomfortable.

Agree plenty on this thread are showing their own narrow mindedness, about other cultures and mothering / parenting practices.

I’d sat extended breast feeding is a similar thing. I breast fed all our kids u tol they wanted to stop, which they all did by three. They never had formula or cows milk. It was easy and great for us. But wow is it judged as something ‘weird’ bit it was the ONLY way until less than 100 years ago.

And thank goodness there are now other options available so it’s not the only way, because many women aren’t able to. Or don’t want to, and now they have choices.

it’s a long time before they are mobile enough to wee or poo anywhere other than where they are laying/sitting.

Yeah but it's easily achievable around age 1/when they walk. There are lots of studies showing babies in Africa tend to walk earlier than in the west too, so maybe if you have a 9mo walking that makes a big difference.

I was potty trained at 11 months, but it wasn't that unusual back in the 70s

This is true, disposable nappies were not commonly used before the 80s and due to that babies were potty trained much earlier than they are now. 18 months was very common. I had my Dds in the 90s. Dd1 was 2 and Dd2 was 18 months when fully toilet trained during the day. I remember at the time, nurseries often wouldn’t accept a toddler who wasn’t potty trained by 3.

We did this with our first DC as it was just passed down from my mum as something that was done (she couldn’t afford nappies). It’s fine if you are mostly around the house and garden doing chores and cooking and cleaning etc (as my mum was). But it doesn’t fit in with the modern western lifestyle of long day trips to soft play and baby sensory and all that stuff. It’s totally possible but just not very practical which is why we didn’t do it with our 2nd.

I'm not a massive KR fan she has some shitty views around vaccinations and autism. But yes theoretically if you have all day free you can train a baby to use a potty. It's not so much about bladder/bowel control as a routine that preempts needing the toilet.

No, it’s not rubbish. It’s totally do able and it’s what many people used to do before washing machines and disposable nappies.
My own grandmother held my mother over a potty from a few days old after every breast feed.
It meant far far fewer poo cloth nappies.

What did people do 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 4000 years ago?

Humans have been wondering the planet for 1000s of years before Pampers turned up and gave us an easy ride.

Of course it's possible. Just be grateful you have a choice!

Let people get on with their lives and be at peace. I was potty trained at 9 months out of choice and walking by then too. I had very sensitive skin and I see that kid is a redhead. Probably has sensitive skin too. I hate even now sitting in a wet swimsuit when we're in holiday and it makes my skin go red and itchy.

What did people do 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 4000 years ago?

Ah the golden days before we had functioning and effective sewage systems and weren't fully aware of the issues around having poor sanitation- yes what were babies doing whilst adults as well were shitting in the streets or in buckets and throwing it out of the window.

Christ you can't win on here sometimes...

Sneered at for responding to subtle communication from early on to avoid using nappies and then sneered at if you're toddler is "shitting itself at 4" or accused of being "lazy in this country" if your child isn't fully trained by 18 months.

When are people going to accept that parenting methods vary as do the children's needs/abilities?!

Who actually gives a shit (pun not intended) where someone else's kid empties their bladder/bowels

It is not impossible to potty train babies that young. Back in the olden days, when there was no such thing as disposable nappies or washing machines and you'd probably be having a baby every year or so due to a lack of reliable contraception, babies were toilet trained pretty early on. Although I don't know why some people feel the need to broadcast how quickly their kids have mastered something.

@WheelieBinPrincess

You’d have to always be in reach of a toilet or potty I presume which just sounds totally impractical for most people, unless her baby never really leaves the house.

Exactly - it's efficient but hard work for the first year. I read an article by an American woman who was a first generation immigrant and she went home to China to have her first baby and had mother and grandmothers to help with this method. Including making a specific type of whistle as they baby pees. She said it was amazing and the baby was never in diapers and was basically 'potty trained' before their 1st birthday.

Then she ended up back in America and had another baby but had to do everything on her own and gave up within a week and used diapers for the second one and followed a more American version of potty training.

She said it was basically impossible to do if you were managing work etc and didn't have a lot of family help etc.

Good luck to her . Potty training a reluctant toddler was the worst thing about parenting so far !

Nothing to add but the baby sign thing did make me chuckle.

We use Terry nappies and DD is 2 in April, she’s full day trained but at nighttime she still wears a nappy. We did EC and it really does work.

@Bideshi

I've seen this in Nepal where babies co-sleep and (up until ten years ago anyway) nobody used nappies. My Nepali godson was also dry at night at 2 years 2 months.

2 years 2 months isn't really that early and what was happening every night up until then, if he wasn't in nappies?

How does this work for night time dryness, which is down to hormones?

DS was quite happy lying in his own poo after soiling his nappy when he was bed, he certainly didn’t have a problem of soiling his own bed.

Think modern disposable nappies do delay potty training, because many babies probably hate having a wet bum, and they don’t get that sensation with disposables.

We didn’t rush into potty training with DS, partly because we had a reasonably long commute to his nursery, so wanted him to be able to be able to hold on and not immediately go for a wee once he needed the loo. I assume EC isn’t much use when you are driving at 70mph with nowhere to pull over!

@DoucheCanoe

Christ you can't win on here sometimes...

Sneered at for responding to subtle communication from early on to avoid using nappies and then sneered at if you're toddler is "shitting itself at 4" or accused of being "lazy in this country" if your child isn't fully trained by 18 months.

When are people going to accept that parenting methods vary as do the children's needs/abilities?!

Who actually gives a shit (pun not intended) where someone else's kid empties their bladder/bowels

Ideally everyone should care where kids go to the toilet because of the resources involved & consequences, like water used in washing disposables, disposables filling up landfill & water used in the manufacturing of both, & not just in this country.

I am a fellow (part time) EC person, nice to see so many others here! Likewise it's made real sense for us with cloth nappies to reduce the washing, and therefore how many we need as well as how often we wash. It's so easy to start with poos, and the gravity of taking a nappy off and putting them on a potty or toilet helps them too. My first was then fully trained just after her second birthday (it would've been sooner but her sister was due and i gave her a couple of weeks for adjustment) with no problems as she already knew all about potties and where wee and poo goes. Her younger sister is now one and a half and says when she needs a wee or a poo and starts to take herself at home and nursery. She doesn't say when out and about, though she's 50/50 if we were spending time at a relative's house for example. She isn't quite ready with getting her things down and up again. She knows what has to happen but wouldn't be able to get a nappy off on her own (thankfully!).

I've only met one other EC parent, her son was dry, clean and out of nappies at 18 months. She had a carry potty she used to take everywhere so it continued outside the home too.

For anyone interested I also recommend the Nappy Free Baby, this covers starting EC/potty training any time before 18 months. With the cost of energy as it is I'm hoping to "finish" secondborn off and see if she can be reliable not to wee on the sofa this side of her second birthday, so I can ditch the nappy wash.

The only thing I thought was that the poor kid won't appreciate the headline and the discussions and comments it will inevitable lead to in the years to come.

This thread is so interesting ! Definitely something I’ll try when I have kids and eye rolls to the sneery people who don’t understand things outside of their own limited experience……

We were both born in the tropics so it was through necessity as much as anything. It worked, avoided a lot of skin issues but must have been very hard work for DM.

I think it must be a bit different in the tropics where children can be without clothes most of the time.

@Talk4000

What did people do 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 4000 years ago?

Humans have been wondering the planet for 1000s of years before Pampers turned up and gave us an easy ride.

Of course it's possible. Just be grateful you have a choice!

Let people get on with their lives and be at peace. I was potty trained at 9 months out of choice and walking by then too. I had very sensitive skin and I see that kid is a redhead. Probably has sensitive skin too. I hate even now sitting in a wet swimsuit when we're in holiday and it makes my skin go red and itchy.

They pooed and weed in the streets...

My mother used to be amazed at how late children were potty trained nowadays. She had five (I'm the last) and by age 1 we would be able to sit on the potty. I was walking at 9 months, and she said it was comical to watch me teeter over to the potty.
Incidentally she maintained that if modern parents had to contend with the sheer hell of terry nappies, soaking in buckets, washing and drying them, they would get their children trained much sooner. The convenience of the disposable nappy means it's not such a hardship. Plus of course there's the multi-million pound disposable nappy industry and their constant adverts to contend with. As others have said, parents in poorer countries where they can't afford the luxury of disposable nappies, certainly have their children trained at a much earlier age.