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Monday, April 22, 2013

Going Diaperless

This past weekend we received a mini potty for our son from his grandparents.   While he is still running around in his diapers, he has been showing more interest in the bathroom and the toilet in general.  There have been a couple times over the past few weeks where he has shown a desire to go into the bathroom and inspect the toilet, lift the toilet seat up, put it down, lift it up, put it down, repetitive as almost anything goes with a child at his age.  I obviously didn't let him lift and lower the toilet seat by himself because inevitably, his hands will end up back in his mouth, but I did lift and lower it for him.  I have a feeling he knows what to do there as I have taken him with me on occasion to go number 1 in the bathroom.  I don't know how comfortable I am having him seated in my lap while I go number 2, so I have refrained from doing that thus far.  In any case, we have read that there are quite a few indicators which signal that it might be ready for a child to start potty training.  Our son has son of them, but not all.  One is obviously recognizing when they need a diaper change and getting that taken care of as soon as possible.  Another, which he is sometimes able to do, is sit in one place for a short period of time.  He is moving slowly towards that, but our goal, since my wife will be off from work for the summer, is to get him potty trained by the time he is two.  It will take a little effort, but I think it is doable.  The main thing that we will need to focus on is paying more attention to his signals and take notice of when he is having bowel movements.  It used to be easy when he was going number 2 as he would get this incredibly funny face, turn all red as he pushed, and then giggle when he was done.  Now, he doesn't do that as much as it has become easier for him to eradicate any excrement in his bowels.  Occasionally, we can still notice when he is taking care of business, it just isn't as easy anymore, especially since he has become more independent and doesn't always need us to be playing with him and his limited amount of toys.  In any case, on the topic of going diaperless and potty training, I read an article about a seemingly new trend amongst a select cadre of parents in which they go relatively diaperless from the start and begin the potty training almost immediately after birth. 

I understand the concept of what these parents are doing and according to the article, some have been successful at getting their child potty trained by the time they are 18 months, however, I don't know if I would have been able to do that.  The whole process involves setting up little toilets all around the house so that whenever the need arises, there is a toilet available to go in, or at least hold the child over so that they can go.  I guess one of the methods involves listening for the sounds that a child makes when they are about to have a bowel movement, either number 1 or 2 and anticipating to a certain extent when they will need to go again.  When they do, a parent will hold them over the toilet and try to mimic the sound to get them to go to the bathroom.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  But in the end, I guess, it gets them conditioned to use the toilet when they need to go to the bathroom.  Some scientists are skeptical about whether this actually works or not because they don't feel that child can learn something like that until they are at least 1 year old.  However, for this small group of parents, it is obviously working.  A good part of the reasoning behind going diaperless from day one is to keep diapers out of the land fill and to avoid doing excessive amounts of laundry to keep up with cloth diapers.  The reasoning makes sense, however, my wife and I will still stick with our cloth diapers, even when it comes to a second child at some point.  This isn't to say that these parents don't use any diapers, they still do, its just that the diapers are only used for the overnight and for trips to restaurants or other places where potty training in this method would be unacceptable.  Interesting concept, but obviously not for everyone as there are some parents who couldn't even imagine using cloth diapers.  Oh well, we will concern ourselves at this point with working with our son to potty train him on his new little toilet. 

I have a feeling that it shouldn't be too hard to get him potty trained as he picks things up extremely quickly.  It seems that all he needs to do is watch us do something once before figuring out the basic concept of how to do something.  He is observant, curious, and when it comes to trying to figure something out, persistent in his efforts to get it right.  There seems to be a deep desire to understand everything about the world around him.  I am sure that almost every child has this desire, I just notice it more in our son because that is who I am around the most when it comes to children.  His latest thing that he is trying to figure out is how to twist things on and off.  When it comes to bottle caps, or hoses, or anything that twists, he tries to turn it to get it off.  I don't think he fully understands how something needs to be twisted a number of times before it is either tightened completely or loosened, but he will get there in about a week I am sure.  For now, we will simply start the potty training process and hope that he learns quickly so we can eliminate the daytime diaper changes, or at least some of them.  Only time will tell, but for now, it is time to get the day rolling.  Till tomorrow, carpe diem!

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