When is the best time to toilet-train your child? Between the ages of two and three? Whenever they’re ready?
How about when they’re born? According to two Los Angeles doctors, who used a potty with their third child from when it was born and have contributed an article on the method – known as elimination communication (EC) – to the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal, there are enormous benefits to going nappy-free.
Elimination communication, which sounds a bit like a Scientology procedure, is, in fact, the age-old technique of training a baby to use a toilet from birth. It relies on “the infant’s natural timing and cues to recognise when they need to defecate or urinate”, write pathologist Rosemary She, and her husband, paediatric infectious disease specialist Jeffrey Bender. “By identifying these cues, caregivers can coordinate elimination in the toilet rather than in a diaper.” The couple also recommend using a “soft whistle or hum” to create an association with the act of going to the toilet.
“When my first baby was five weeks old, she would writhe and grunt in the mornings,” recalls Amber Hatch, the author of Nappy Free Baby, a practical guide to baby-led potty training from birth, who has been running EC workshops for nine years. She has used the method with all three of her children and tells me she is “in the thick of it” with her seven-month-old. “I held her over an ice-cream tub so her pelvic floor was open. Straight away, she did a wee and a poo. I was absolutely amazed. From that moment, I was hooked.”
Practitioners of EC point to the fact that the method was used for centuries before the advent of disposable nappies in the 50s and continues to be the way babies urinate and defecate in the developing world. Benefits are said to include saving money on nappies, the avoidance of nappy rash, a reduction in the likelihood of urinary tract infections, and the environmental impact. It is estimated that, in the UK alone, 3bn nappies are thrown away every year.
“Also, it’s fun,” Hatch adds. “It’s really confidence-boosting to hold a squirming baby over a potty and see them do a wee or poo. You get this instant feedback. And cleaning them is much easier: just one quick wipe and you’re done. It’s not a big operation on a changing table using hundreds of wipes. It’s quite a pleasant way of dealing with your baby’s wee and poo.”
However, some paediatricians argue that a newborn isn’t developmentally ready for toilet training and that maturation of the bladder and brain typically comes between the ages of 24 to 36 months.
What about the social context? For working and single parents, EC probably isn’t an option. “But it’s not all-or-nothing,” Hatch bats back, adding that her seven-month-old wears a cloth nappy as a backup. “You don’t have to do it all the time. I know mothers who do a bit over evenings and weekends and others who have got into it and made arrangements with carers when they go back to work. There are no rules: do whatever is right for you and your baby.”
