If you were to see a mother of a nine-week-old infant pop her child on a potty and say “Pssssss” as the gurgling, baffled baby did its business, would you take the poor woman aside, give her a hug — and a Huggie — and tell her that we all get a bit confused in those sleep-deprived early weeks, or would you say: “Ah, elimination communication! Early potty training. I’ve heard that it’s the best thing for babies since organic rice cakes.”
Extreme potty training (my phrase, not theirs) is a movement that is catching on in a big way in the US, with 35 support groups up and running — advocates argue that the earlier you get naked bums on seats with pots, the better, because the sooner the bottom will fall out of the environmentally unsound disposable nappy market. A new book by an American psychologist, Dr Linda Sonna, Early-Start Potty Training, includes a sizeable section on toilet training from zero to six months. Another, Diaper-Free Before 3, contains advice on how to establish your baby’s elimination cues from a few weeks old. Both pay homage to Laurie Boucke’s big fat book from 2000, Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living. All say that it is better to catch wee and poo in a pot than to have your child do it in a nappy, but if you must use nappies, have a proper go at potty training once they can sit up unaided, at around six months of age.
While you cannot fault the environmental argument, the image of a new parent watching for a subtle sign that elimination is imminent and rushing to place the tiny tot on a potty to catch the mess is comedic in its awkwardness — very Hugh Grant. But Maggie Howell, a Hampshire-based hypnotherapist and mother of three boys, has practised “elimination communication” with all her sons, as an extension of attachment parenting. This means that as infants they were constantly in a sling, nappiless. Braver still, she had them in the bed with her, says she has never been pooed on but, yes, there have been a few showering episodes. Why, Maggie, with a busy life, are you doing this? “Building a level of communication with my child was the biggest driving force: we save a huge amount of money and are not destroying the environment, though we do use cloth nappies sometimes,” she says.
This level of communication is pretty labour intensive, meaning that Howell — who works from home, and has two supportive grandmothers and a husband — would take her baby to the potty on average every half hour. This came after spending lots of time watching the baby. She says that when they were in the sling they would kick, and that was the sign. “The first few times I caught it were wonderful,” she says. “Once they had made the connection, we used baby sign language. Then they started to crawl to the toilet when they needed to go.”
You are kidding, I splutter. “No, just as you know when your baby is hungry or when tired, he gives clear signs when he wants to wee or poo. But we have rubbed that communication out in our society. We have trained children to wee in their own clothes. which is not good hygiene practice.”
Point taken, but is the baby training the parent, or the parent training the baby? Dr Sonna says: “Every culture seems to have a particular age at which they expect children to be trained, and that is when they get trained. But it is better for children to be worked with from a younger age so that they are not left to languish in their own waste. It is much cleaner for the baby, and they develop a sensory awareness. So much unexplained crying has to do with the baby trying to signal that he is trying to relieve himself. It leads to a much deeper understanding of the baby.” Dr Sonna thinks that by keeping our babies in nappies for so long, up to 3 or even 4, children don’t develop that innate aversion to waste.
One woman started potty training her baby at three days, but to give her her due, Dr Sonna thinks that moderation is fine. “Even if you can do it only in the morning and at night, the baby will learn to associate and the parent will tune in to the cues. The baby will soon look for the potty when he needs to go or gesture towards it, the way a hungry baby would gesture or reach out for a bottle. But most modern parents still need to use nappies sometimes. It isn’t all or nothing.” It isn’t such a new-fangled idea, either. Before the advent of disposable nappies, most babies were trained by 18 months, and in China and many countries in Africa and South America nappies aren’t the done thing. When the child has to go you hold him away from you.
But health visitors always tell us not to rush potty training, and doctors say that children have no awareness of muscle control until they are approaching 2. Cheryll Adams, who was a health visitor for 20 years and is now a professional officer with the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association, says: “Children do develop awareness at different ages but few before 18 months, and you can’t train them until they make that elimination connection. In my experience very early training would be counter-productive and unlikely to be successful. It focuses too much on only that part of looking after your baby. It is better to focus on the other end and stimulate your baby with laughing, singing, playing.”
Dr Pat Spungin, a psychologist and the founder of the UK-based parenting website www.raisingkids.co.uk, will not dismiss very early potty training outright. Rather, he looks at it as a lifestyle choice. “However, it is not a choice that most mums can make. What I wouldn’t like is if it became the gold standard, and mothers who did it thought that they had a greater connection or bond with their babies.”
But a community paediatrician, Dr Tom Hutchinson, of the Bath & North East Somerset Primary Care Trust, thinks that parents who believe their infants can be trained are kidding themselves: “The parents are being trained to catch it at the right time, but until children have the cognitive skills to know what the rest of it is about, they will just go. Let’s get real. Most people can’t do this. It’s daft.”
I ring my friend Maria, who has just had a baby, and read her this: “Infants often pass urine and stool while nursing or shortly after. If you are cradling your baby in your arms, remove the diaper. Hold the bowl between your thighs and lay the diaper over it. When you see your infant is about to relieve herself pull the diaper away.” Silence. Then: “Why would I want to do that?”
Early-Start Potty Training, by Dr Linda Sonna, McGraw Hill, £7.50.
