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Really funny article for folks with kids. With our kid we ruthlessly followed Jamie Glowacki's "Oh Crap!" potty training book. The tl;dr is let the kid run aro

Really funny article for folks with kids. With our kid we ruthlessly followed Jamie Glowacki's "Oh Crap!" potty training book. The tl;dr is let the kid run around without pants and figure out, through immediate feedback, if they wet themselves and for the parents to, like a hawk, identify "tells" that the child is in need of a toilet before the event. It essentially sucked up 2 weeks of our life being focused on the process of getting our child to notice when they need to toilet (and cleaning when they don't) but by 18 months old our kid was mostly potty trained. Interestingly in relation to the article's point about rewards: the only reward we introduced was parent/child dancing after using the toilet successfully. And it continues 6 months later which is sort of adorable. Also, we followed the advice of "dream pee's" where a parent wakes up 1-2 times a night to get a groggy toddler to pee while sleeping. It was successful in removing all negotiations around diapers and eliminating them completely from the conversation day or night. I feel eliminating potential sources of misincentives or negotiation is something the author struggles with quite a bit. Oh, and although the process of the book above worked well for us. The tone of the book can be a bit overbearing and annoyingly dismissive of fathers. But, that seems to be the state of many parenting books so I have learned to ignore it. Finally, I believe the article is right that the super absorbent 4 hour disposable diaper creates a issues when tackling all of this. Our kid was in cloth diapers and was sort of ready to get rid of the diapers as well due to the obvious discomfort. It is one of those pain now vs pain later sorts of things it seems.

dd36 7y ago
i didn’t even know parents tried potty training that early.
- philips 7y ago
  In many places, where disposable diapers aren't used, the reinforcement learning happens a bit earlier and more gradually. We used cloth diapers and I believe it helped in the training process. Also, changing diapers is not fun and I had a personal goal to not do it longer than two years. :)
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    We cloth diapered as well. I don’t know if it really helped my son, but it definitely incentivized me to stick with it through those pretty stressful first few days and weeks.
  - crooy 7y ago
    With respect to potty training, I can really recommend cloth diapers for 3 reasons (in order of importance): cost: We estimated the total costs before we started with our first child, and they would end up costing about the same as disposable diapers, however we have used them for 2 kids now :-) potty training: Both our kids were potty trained at the age of 2, with little extraordinary effort, meaning the effort was constantly more since we have to clean the diapers. Indeed scraping poop from cloth is a good incentive for yourself to get them trained, so we combined the diapers with (but not very strict) the use "elimination communication" ("baby zindelijkheids communicatie" in Dutch). Simply put, we tried to keep diapers clean by holding the baby over the potty when we thought they were going to do nr 1 or nr 2. My thoughts on why cloth diapers are better is this: the kids feel discomfort very clearly and immediately after the action, while the technologically superior disposable diapers are simply too comfortable to get this immediate action-response they need to learn by themselves, and indeed the first signs they were ready for full time potty training was that they started telling us the diaper was freshly made dirty. environment: While honestly this is mostly based on my personal logic and not so much on science, but I cannot imagine cloth diapers being as bad for the environment as disposable diapers made from plastic and chemicals, event taking into consideration they need to be washed.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      I can almost guarantee you're wrong about the environmental benefits, depending on what diapers you use, where you live and how you wash. Using LCA, it's usually an energy factor of 4x worse for cloth, 10x worse for water and air emissions, and 6x worse for water use. And most of that is from the washing, so prolonged use doesn't make it better. It's literally one if the textbook examples taught in sustainability Engineering to get students to stop "feeling" about the better option and start thinking & documenting. First Google result for "diaper LCA" : https://www.appropedia.org/Cloth_versus_disposable_diapers https://www.appropedia.org/Cloth_versus_disposable_diapers That said, I have no problem with people picking what works for them. But environmental justification and smugness... especially when it's downright false. Own up to your preference and accept the fact that it's environmentally worse.
- pacaro 7y ago
  I think that this is a change that is due to modern diapers. IIRC Dr Spock, writing in the 40's, advised that if they are left to their own devices most children will potty train themselves by age 2
- eru 7y ago
  And I thought one year old is pretty late to potty train.. Different customs in different parts of the world.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  In Vietnam potty training starts at birth, and is usually done at ~9mo: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.h...
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Glad to find another person who uses this book/method! We used it on our son (22 months). I’m just really glad we decided to go diaperless cold turkey, because I’ve heard from other parents that it’s really hard to transition from night-diapers/pull-ups. We also used cloth diapers which I hear helps. We plan on starting earlier with our other one. Honestly I think we start potty training way too late here in this country. It wasn’t perfect at 22 months but that investment is far better than wiping poop off his 3-year old butt now, or changing his pull-ups on the mornings.

dd36 7y ago

i didn’t even know parents tried potty training that early.

philips 7y ago
In many places, where disposable diapers aren't used, the reinforcement learning happens a bit earlier and more gradually. We used cloth diapers and I believe it helped in the training process. Also, changing diapers is not fun and I had a personal goal to not do it longer than two years. :)
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  We cloth diapered as well. I don’t know if it really helped my son, but it definitely incentivized me to stick with it through those pretty stressful first few days and weeks.
- crooy 7y ago
  With respect to potty training, I can really recommend cloth diapers for 3 reasons (in order of importance): cost: We estimated the total costs before we started with our first child, and they would end up costing about the same as disposable diapers, however we have used them for 2 kids now :-) potty training: Both our kids were potty trained at the age of 2, with little extraordinary effort, meaning the effort was constantly more since we have to clean the diapers. Indeed scraping poop from cloth is a good incentive for yourself to get them trained, so we combined the diapers with (but not very strict) the use "elimination communication" ("baby zindelijkheids communicatie" in Dutch). Simply put, we tried to keep diapers clean by holding the baby over the potty when we thought they were going to do nr 1 or nr 2. My thoughts on why cloth diapers are better is this: the kids feel discomfort very clearly and immediately after the action, while the technologically superior disposable diapers are simply too comfortable to get this immediate action-response they need to learn by themselves, and indeed the first signs they were ready for full time potty training was that they started telling us the diaper was freshly made dirty. environment: While honestly this is mostly based on my personal logic and not so much on science, but I cannot imagine cloth diapers being as bad for the environment as disposable diapers made from plastic and chemicals, event taking into consideration they need to be washed.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    I can almost guarantee you're wrong about the environmental benefits, depending on what diapers you use, where you live and how you wash. Using LCA, it's usually an energy factor of 4x worse for cloth, 10x worse for water and air emissions, and 6x worse for water use. And most of that is from the washing, so prolonged use doesn't make it better. It's literally one if the textbook examples taught in sustainability Engineering to get students to stop "feeling" about the better option and start thinking & documenting. First Google result for "diaper LCA" : https://www.appropedia.org/Cloth_versus_disposable_diapers https://www.appropedia.org/Cloth_versus_disposable_diapers That said, I have no problem with people picking what works for them. But environmental justification and smugness... especially when it's downright false. Own up to your preference and accept the fact that it's environmentally worse.
pacaro 7y ago
I think that this is a change that is due to modern diapers. IIRC Dr Spock, writing in the 40's, advised that if they are left to their own devices most children will potty train themselves by age 2
eru 7y ago
And I thought one year old is pretty late to potty train.. Different customs in different parts of the world.
jordanbeiber 7y ago
In Vietnam potty training starts at birth, and is usually done at ~9mo: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.h...

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

Glad to find another person who uses this book/method! We used it on our son (22 months). I’m just really glad we decided to go diaperless cold turkey, because I’ve heard from other parents that it’s really hard to transition from night-diapers/pull-ups. We also used cloth diapers which I hear helps. We plan on starting earlier with our other one. Honestly I think we start potty training way too late here in this country. It wasn’t perfect at 22 months but that investment is far better than wiping poop off his 3-year old butt now, or changing his pull-ups on the mornings.