I started putting my 6 month old son on a Baby Bjorn little potty. He started going #2 in the potty right away. When he was about 10 months old, a friend recommended this book. That is when I knew the goal was to have him out of diapers between 15-18 months.
He is 16 months old and we have not changed a #2 diaper in over a month. My parents take care of him two days a week and love not having to change messy diapers - that is not the case with my niece who is exactly one year older than him. My son was a very strong-willed infant so I knew the power struggle was going to be crazy if I waited for the readiness approach. He still screams and twists and turns when we change his wet diapers so we are VERY motivated to stick with this program.
Last week, I had him in his training pants and he ran out of the room. I found him trying to sit on the potty. I pulled off the pants and he sat down and peed. He felt good and I felt good. It was a win-win.
People will be negative and judgmental just like a lot of these posts - especially your own family. Surround yourself with positive people and this can be a great experience. I love to sit and read books to my son while he does his business. He puts bowls on his head and calls it a hat or plays with foam bath letters. We have a great time.
I am going to work with him when I am off work over the holiday (he will just have turned 17 months). I will update this post on our progress.
Update: I did work with my son over the holidays and now at 17 months he has gone eight nights in a row dry. We now do not have him in diapers at all even at night. We have an occasional "miss" during the day, but it is usually a little pee in his training pants, he pulls at them and says "wet". We then go to the potty and finish our business. We are very very happy and have no regrets with doing this program. It is also saving us about $1.50 a day in the cost of diapers.
Update2: My son just turned 22-months and he hasn't had a diaper on since he was 17 months, even at night. We cannot recommend this program enough. We are so thankful that we raised our son this way. Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner
Let me say first, if I'd come across this book when my daughter was a newborn, I'd probably rate it five stars. I'm rating from the perspective of a parent starting later.
As a parent who has a toddler-aged child, I found this book to be very long (extremely long!) on research and "why-to," but lacking in "how-to." I didn't particularly need the "why-to" sections -- that's why I bought the book in the first place! The "how-to" portions of this book are geared almost exclusively toward those starting training at a very (six to nine months) young age, and the rest of us have to figure out on our own how to apply Dr. Lekovic's methods with an older child (my daughter is 20 months old).
I wish I'd found this book when my daughter was younger. Since I didn't, I would love to see Dr. Lekovic write a book (or supplement/article even) about how to work with an child who's already past 18 months.
I have read several books about early toilet learning, and I have to say that this was definitely not my favorite. The author does give a lot of evidence that supports early potty training, but does not give a lot of practical advice for implementation.
I would give Chapter 2 a 5 star rating, and without this chapter the whole book probably would have gotten only 1-2 stars from me. In Chapter 2, she gives a really great, detailed history of how traditional potty training progressed to "readiness training" in the US, and how nobody has ever given sufficient evidence that there are any benefits to waiting until the child shows interest in learning to use the toilet. This section is a great resource for anyone who is scared that by exposing a child to the potty early you are psychologically damaging him or her.
I liked that the author recommended taking the leap to underwear fairly early. I think that this is important and it is a hard step for parents to take because it can be messy, but it really is the best way to help your child to be more aware of his or her body, and super-absorbent disposable diapers just don't do that.
The advice that the author gives regarding the potty training process implies that there is only one way to do it - starting at 6-12 mos, which actually is actually LATE when you compare cross-culturally. There are positions that you can use to hold a tiny infant to help cue them before they are able to sit unsupported. Some people believe that babies lose some of their awareness of their elimination by 6 mos. If you plan to use this method and you have a child on the way or who is younger than 6 months, I highly recommend that you read Ingrid Bauer's Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene and any of Laurie Boucke's books, such as Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living, and Christine Gross Loh's book The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative. These books also contain some useful information about how to start this process for younger and older children and are more flexible in terms of when to start and how.
Something that I found disturbing, yet fascinating, about this book is that it is written from a perspective that overlooks and/or dismisses other parenting practices that seem to go naturally with this process: She gives a "lecture" that there are certain inconveniences that a parent should be willing to do for the well-being of their child, yet (1) she spends several pages in the book discussing details of bottle feeding and barely glosses over breastfeeding which is so much healthier for babies in so many ways including digestive system health. Although she does not discuss her personal reasons for not breastfeeding, it was apparent to me that she did not really think that it was important and I am frustrated to see that attitude from a pediatrician who is advising parents of young children. (2) She discourages cloth diapering because she finds that inconvenient. As a mother who has used cloth diapers AND early potty awareness with my child, I found this quite ridiculous. It is SO much more effort to take a child to the potty several times a day than to wash cloth diapers every couple of days (UNLESS you don't have a washing machine or you have a shortage of water), plus, if your child is using the toilet successfully you will have much less diaper laundry. I guess we all have our priorities, but I found this contradictory.
One small pet peeve of mine is that, in the section where she talks about nutrition, constipation, and avoiding juices, she reiterates the old "8 glasses of water a day" myth, which is just not true (how could children and adults of all different sizes have exactly the same requirement, anyways?). In fact, we get most of our water from the food that we eat and only need to drink water when we are thirsty. For more information, do a search at Snopes or type in "8 glasses water" on your favorite search engine.
There were definitely some interesting things in this book other than what I have listed, but overall I think that most of the useful information can be found elsewhere. This book is not one that I would recommend to people who are considering early potty training. - Elimination Communication - Diaper Free - Potty - Toilet Training'
Detail Products
Detail Reviews
Click here for more information
