Toilet Training, Or, I've Heard of Attachment Parenting, But I Think This Takes It a Wee Bit Too Far!

I know this isn't a subject of interest to all. But think of it this way-- compared to politics, toilet training is a nice clean subject.

Though come to think about it, it's probably just as controversial...................

One of my favorite cartoons from the early days of "For Better or For Worse" involved Elly noticing that her next door neighbor's habits with her baby. With her first son it had been all homemade foods and cloth diapers. With her second it was Pampers and jar food.

When Elly marveled at this, Annie's terse response was one many mothers can identify with:

"He's my second"

My own sister-in-law practiced "attachment parenting" with my first nephew to a fare thee well. Co-sleeping, baby sling and 24/7 breastfeeding--she never, ever, pumped.

Oddly enough, this literal attachment at the hip stopped abruptly around the age of 18 months when my nephew suddenly entered preschool 3 mornings a week. This despite the fact that my s-in-law didn't work, go to school, or even do her own housework.

Circumstances around the birth of my second nephew kept her from going the attachment route again, but my guess is that she was relieved to have a legitimate reason to alter her parenting style.

Let's face it. Attachment parenting, no matter how heartfelt, is hard to practice, even when you're a well to do SAHM with someone doing the cooking and the cleaning.

Mind you, I wouldn't know. I'm a mom with a daytime job and I always have been...

I bring all this up because of an article in the NY Times about mothers who toilet train their infants.

What it really amounts to is holding the baby over a pot at intervals  and watching at other times for signs that the baby needs to pee or poop, then "catching" the stuff in the pot. Eventually, it's said, parents will learn to read their babies signals and a pattern will develop. Soon baby will be using the potty, eliminating (if I can use the word) the need for diapers, wipes and that cute little changing table.

This isn't something fresh and new. It was common practice for many years of the last century to do much the same thing with babies. In many other parts of the world, where such luxuries as disposable diapers can only be dreamed of, it's still a common practice, and apparently from the article, many European babies are "trained" by this method. And there have been books like "Toilet Train Your Baby" around for years.

It sounds great. Just like attachment parenting sounds great. But I'm with Dr T Berry Brazelton, one of the great common sense child rearing experts of our time, as quoted in the same article:

"I'm all for it, except I don't think many people can do it," he said of elimination communication. "The thing that bothers me about it is today, probably 80 percent of women don't have that kind of availability."

And well as it may work,  I'm just not sure it's worth it. I mean, do you want to spend your bonding time with your baby watching their every little movement for signs of excretion, or do you want to play "Peek a Boo" and "Patty Cake" and "This Little Piggy"? Do you want your major memories of your child's incredibly short infancy to be holding them over a pot every hour on the hour?

Oh, I do expect moms to try it. But unless, like my sister-in-law, they have the time and the money (not to mention the energy) to do this non-stop, I fully expect they'll end up going through the potty training fun, just like the rest of us  And I'd bet if they have a second child they'll go the Pampers way--or at least do cloth diapers!

More on toilet training here later this week, because after 20 years of handing out "potty books" (not to mention dealing with my own darlings) I've heard a lot of war stories and I've learned a thing or two.....

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