Disposing the Diaper

Part 2: How my wife and I potty-trained pretty darn early. Our kids, I mean.

by Doug Collins

Sneaking a pee behind a tree. When nature calls, a young one can't wait long.

By the age of 16 months, my two kids were mostly dry. They could generally hold a poop or pee until we took them to the potty, and even sometimes sit on a small potty themselves. Certainly my wife and I would take special efforts to take them to the potty, particularly after they drank a lot or just finished a meal, and for the most part they complied fairly easily and obviously understood the basic purpose of the activity: to "do it" in an appropriate place.

While 16 months is surprisingly early by American standards, it would actually be considered late in traditional culture.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this article, before I ever had kids, I lived in China for two years in the 1980s. Diapers were never used there, even for small babies. (This-I have heard-has changed in recent years as China has adopted American-style commercial culture.) Kids there could usually go to the potty by the time they could walk. In fact, the kids there didn't even seem to need "training," as the mothers or other caregivers were able to observe the signs of an imminent pee or poop, even in a tiny infant. The kids just grew into going to the potty as a completely natural process.

My wife and I can't claim that we've done as well as the average Chinese parents of that time, and we did use diapers, but we have certainly found a way to move in the right direction: toward less wastefulness of resources and more use of kids' inborn instincts.

Here are some tips I've compiled on what my wife and I have learned in the process. I hope it'll help others discover the beauty and benefits of early toilet learning.

1. One of the easiest ways to start early potty training is what could be called the "wake up" technique: to consistently take the baby to pee immediately after the baby wakes up. Just as with adults, babies wake up because they have to pee. Pottying the baby routinely after waking establishes a habit and a message to the baby that the potty is the best place to pee. There is no inherent importance for babies to "sleep through the night" and you should resist the temptation to simply suss waking babies back to sleep. If you do so, you are probably reinforcing the habit of peeing in their pants, then you'll have the unpleasant task of un-training them from that habit when they are toddlers.

2. Start much earlier than most American parenting books say. For example, if you start the "wake up" technique before the age of one year (or better earlier), and make sure to take your tike to the potty at least every hour or two when he/she is awake, then you have a good head start on early potty training. If you wait much after one year, the pee-in-the-pants habit will likely already be set. People in traditional cultures start pottying from birth.

3. It's important that you be in close proximity to your baby at all times. I think it's probably impossible to do early potty training unless you sleep right next to the baby at night. Having the baby near means you have a much better chance of getting him/her to the potty in time. In traditional cultures, caregivers generally also hold their babies constantly, at least for the first few months, and thereby get a good feeling for the nudges and twists that signal a need. Although my wife and I did not meet that standard, we did try to carry our babies more often, and to use our stroller less often. There are now many commercially available straps and slings for baby-carrying, or you sew one yourself fairly easily.

4. Don't rule out telepathy. If the thought suddenly occurs to you that your little dear might need to "go," then you are very likely right. Also, it helps to consider common-sense normal rhythms. For example, there are pretty good odds for a poop right after breakfast or lunch.

5. Learn the "dangle hold" to take your baby to the toilet anywhere. After lowering or removing the diaper or pants, pick your tike up by the thighs, baby's back next to your tummy, and dangle the baby in the air in a squatted position over the toilet (or wherever you want him/her to do it). This hold is useful even into toddlerhood because most public toilets in the US are not equipped to accomodate toddlers.

6. Face your fears about poop and pee. We Americans tend to be hyper-sensitive about natural body byproducts. I think disposable diapers are subconsciously often sort of a delay tactic by parents, to "cover up" the mess until later. In fact, pee is sterile and is no sort of health risk. There should be no problem with letting a baby or toddler pee next to the sidewalk or in a parking lot. For goodness sake, dogs both poop and pee in American parking strips millions of times a day. But considering that many people in the US are nowadays not accustomed to little kids peeing in public, I think it's quite reasonable to duck between the nearest two cars or behind the nearest tree, and let your baby relieve itself. If an occasional poop happens this way, it's always handy to bring an extra plastic bag in your pack, but in my experience such a situation is extremely rare.

7. Early potty training is easier to accomplish with cloth diapers for perhaps two reasons. The often-stated reason is that a wet cloth diaper is more uncomfortable for the baby than a super-absorbent disposable, so the baby has more of an incentive to hold the pee for the potty. I think a more likely reason is that cloth diapers simply require more frequent attention from caregivers. This means that caregivers are more likely to be able to take the baby to the potty. Sadly, I think disposables are used in our culture often as an excuse to leave babies unattended for longer periods of time.

8. Disposables can be used with early training if you are careful to still potty the baby regularly, and not to let the disposables make you lazy. When we went on outings, my wife and I often re-used a single dry disposable diaper on many occasions, until the adhesive strap finally wore out, or until we were eventually too late in bringing the baby to pee. Overall, we used few disposables and rarely shopped for them. Because of research regarding disposable diapers and health concerns, I think it's better to minimize or avoid use of disposables as well as the use of waterproof diaper covers (see part 1).

9. Instead of buying new cloth diapers, my genius wife discovered that we could just use old all-cotton pillowcases. Pillowcases folded in half or in thirds are the same size as the store-bought diapers, they work great, and they often have attractive designs on them. All-cotton pillowcases can be bought from second-hand stores for maybe 50 cents a piece, cheap compared to new diapers, and not requiring any new use of resources.

10. While environmentally-savvy diaper services can be good, my wife and I found-after using such a service for a month-that we could fairly easily handle the diaper cleaning ourselves, and save money in the process. Cloth diapers can be easily cleaned in a much more ecological way than most people currently practice. Instead of bleaching diapers with toxic chlorine, you can use borax powder to pre-soak just the poop-stained ones in a small container. Borax powder is available in many big grocery stores, and is rated less toxic than common table salt (though I certainly wouldn't want to eat it). You need only a little of it at a time. It takes longer than chlorine bleach, but works fairly well. Another plus is that borax can be used on colors.

11. If you are concerned about excessive water bills with cloth diapers, fear not! One way to minimize water use with diapers is to fill a 5-gallon hardware-store bucket maybe halfway with water and mix some laundry detergent into it. As they occur, you then throw peepee diapers-as well as already rinsed-and-boraxed poopoo diapers-in the water. It's good to keep the lid on the bucket to keep the odor contained. When the bucket is full, just throw the whole contents of the bucket, including the water, into the washing machine. This will pre-fill the wash cycle with pre-soaked diapers and plenty of good soapy water. There is no need to waste the original water! The diapers will get rinsed with new water in the rinse cycle anyway. In fact, I've been amazed that the water consumption in our household raised very little after we had two kids (but that's probably a topic for another article).

    Beach pee" from the excellent book Infant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke. Boucke has written three books that describe in detail how to potty train even earlier than I have. See her website at www.timl.com/ipt. Photo: Julia Dibbern

    I wish parents and other caregivers good luck on using fewer diapers! I'd also like to point out that early potty training is far-and-away the best environmental choice, because it simply requires less use of any kind of diaper. That means less water and fewer chemicals for washing cloth diapers, and less disposables in the public landfill or incinerator.

    Readers are invited to send more tips related to environmentally-friendly diapering and childcare. Please send as a letter to the editor (see page 2).