Infant potty training / elimination communication / toilet timing

[ReallyTired]

Before you shout me down, I have a six year old son who potty trained easily the conventional way at 3 years and 3 months.

I found this page

www.timl.com/tt/

Anyway I have been reading strange webpages on the internet and I was wondering if anyone actually practises elimination communication and what it is like?

My feeling is that we probably do condtion our kids to poo in their nappies. Children probably could be trained soon. Certainly my son used to scream for his nappy when he was two years old and playing naked in the garden.

My son definately had both bowel and bladder control long before he was potty trained. He was just stubborn and prefered to mess his nappy.

If you do practice elimation communication how do you manage out and about? Do you work? Can elimination communication work in a modern fast moving country like the UK?

Hi all, I need a little help with EC.

We've started using a potty and a toilet seat (bumbo - really good for smaller bums) when DS was 6months.

He's now 9 months old and does a wee almost every time shortly after waking up. However, if I don't catch him in time, he just wees in the nappy. He doesn't wakes up very quietly now, and if I'm not there within a minute, we have a wet nappy. When he's playing, he just stops for a few seconds (I'm assuming he's doing a wee) and then continues playing. No advance warning!

With poos it's a little different - they are rather inconsistent in timing now that he's eating more solids (used to be like clockwork - in the morning, 5-10 min. after waking up). During the day, I can usually tell when he does a poo - very telltale sounds. However, this is when he's already in the process!

How can I get him to communicate that he needs to go before he does? Or am I just not 'listening' properly?

(we're in cloth nappies full-time)

Hey, I don't know if I can help elk4baby. The thing that I found helped a lot was leaving my girl with lots of nappy free time. Every time she would wee (if I didn't catch it) I would point at the potty and the wee and say, 'Wee goes in the potty'. Equally if I'd catch her mid-wee I'd say, 'Wee' and quickly sit her on the potty and wait till she relaxed and went.

With the poo it was harder, I'd have to pay more attention to when she started to trump and keep an eye on her as I knew she would be going soon.

The thing that worked best for me was using the potty first thing, the only thing I can think is to try putting your son on the potty even if he has gone, because he may go again.

Hope you've had more luck since you posted. I wasn't very good at picking up the subtle hints (I started when she was 8 months). But now at 15 months she's almost dry during the day.

I'm considering EC for my son i want to start it from 4weeks old if possible, then when he starts walking encourage him to go to the toilet by himself.

I guess it sounds a bit too optimistic but we'll see what happens...

I started ECing DD (six months) a few weeks ago - had been thinking about it for ages but didn't fancy holding her over the loo as she's such a wriggler!
I found the smallest potty I could (John Lewis are very good) and decided I'd see how it went. DD has hated being in a wet or dirty nappy from the word go and will shriek until she's changed. She took to the potty immediately and I try to use it as part of her routine. Initially I was a bit worried that it wouldn't work part-time (most people I speak to think I'm nuts, she'll regress etc etc etc) but so far so good. I've found 'The Diaper-Free Baby' by Christine Gross-Loh to be very good.
I'll be so glad when EC is seen as another valid option rather than being pressured to keep LOs in nappies for ages!

Yes i kind of did this with my son, put him on the toilet from about 6 months just whenever i changed his nappy, that was it. Didn´t really do much else. My mum looked after him part time from 6 months - 1 year and did the same. from 1 year he was in nursery 9am-3pm and they didn´t do anything special at all.

From 10 months he was consistently clean. He had great bladder control too and would only go through a few (cloth) nappies a day - and he was a very heavy wetter so that was quite something. At about 16 months i taught him a sign which he picked up really fast so that made him even drier but we still didn´t want to lose the nappies, he was happy in them and they were a good backup for misses to avoid wiping floors etc also didn´t want to put him off. He has always been a really ´clean´ baby and being wet upset him so we just went with the easy option.

At iirc about 20 months we got rid of the nappies and he was fine, maybe an accident a day for a week and then that was it. At 22 months he was out of nappies at night too.

It wasn´t exceptionally early by ec standards but we totally took the laziest route, I´m sure if you were more on it they´d be out of nappies sooner but this way worked for us especially with him at nursery and us working etc. And for us having him out of nappies early was never particularly the goal, we just wanted to slowly introduce the toilet as a normal daily habit. and that is what we acheived so we were really happy.

Will be have no. 2 in a few months and will probably take a similar approach.. not sure if I will attempt it earlier or not. good luck to anyone trying this, it gets some pretty heated views from anyone who doesn´t really know what it involves so can be hard getting support from likeminded people.

With my first son, I didn't know about EC so we were in diapers until about 2 years old ++ and when he turned 3, he went to potty by himself all the way. The "potty training" stage seemed to go smoothly for us (thankfully).

Fast forward to second baby. When you're on maternity leave, the Internet is your best friend and I stumbled across this site: www.ecsimplified.com and watching the videos and reading the newsletters opened my eyes to a new way to potty. And I caught it just in time when my baby was still 3 months old. We are just starting our EC journey. I'm still learning his signals, the grimaces, the wriggling and squirming. I have plenty of misses but I think we're on our way. I'm confident because I know I'm getting good and practical advice. And to see so many parents giving this "new" way a try makes me feel like there is a community out there who is with me on this one, and that alone is so empowering.

Firstly, apologies for awakening a zombie thread, but there's good info in here that might be useful to others rather than starting a fresh one...

I'm 32 weeks PG, just heard about EC and very interested to know the pro's and con's. Also, I'll return to work at 12 months ish - DD will be in nursery 8-6 ish - will that basically undo all the good work or are there nurseries good at dealing with EC?

Interested to hear the good/bad and ugly. TIA

I have to agree with momtowolfandbear.
I read the same guide book, EC Simplified, and it's been a life saver. Not only am I seeing great success with my 7 month old, but my sister and two friends both used the book for guidance, and now their little ones are totally EC graduated. They were able to potty train their guys before 18 mo. I hope the same goes for mine! I definitely would check it out. Great for those who are visual learners too.
www.ecsimplified.com