An Economist’s Guide to Potty Training
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Speaking from our experience..
Keys:
-Sign language, learn the 10 most basic needs (food, potty, more, thanks, water, etc). They can use their hands before speaking
-Sit them on the toilet when they are young, they have to have some sense of what it is. Don’t wait until they can talk about it. While they are sitting, use signing and words and point to explain what is going on. Read to them while sitting (sometimes up to 30 min), if they start going, cheer/sign/talk and give them a treat! Start making the connection that this is a great thing.
-Have them walk around with no pants, as much as it is annoying to clean up, they have to get some feedback as to what is happening to them.
-Don’t use super absorbing diapers, we use reusable diapers for cost savings, and because the children can then feel wetness down there and start building a feedback loop of cause and effect. (we use disposables overnight to reduce rashes)
From experience in our friend group, if you wait until 3 y.o., they can start using potty as a tantrum/power play (not good).
3y.o: ‘I don’t have to go!’ me: ‘sit down’ 3y.o: ‘noooooo’ me: ‘sit’ 3y.o: ‘ohhh....’
This is the same throughout the day, you don’t listen to them, you just make them sit down at regular intervals esp. if going out somewhere.
We let her run naked. She basically has no idea when she's going to pee, and yes we have to clean that up. But by this point, in the couple hours of diaper-free time she has in the morning, she heads to the toilet for number two every time. It doesn't always all get in there, there are accidents, but she's already got the idea, and it seems natural to her. I understand that the author of the article is an economist and so is bound to think in terms of incentives, but (as the article illustrates) that can easily backfire, and turn into a game for its own sake. Just make sure the whole thing is fun.
It was an excellently written article, btw.
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.
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. :)
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.
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
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.
Many cloth diapers now have two parts, a shell and an insert. Typically you can use the shell multiple times, only washing the insert, which is made out of absorbent bamboo fabric.
Also parents who cloth diaper are generally more environmentally conscious in other ways. We have solar panels, a high efficiency washer/dryer, and can dry the diapers on a laundry line for most of the year (pro tip: this really helps remove most poop stains, especially from newborns!). In California I don’t think any PGE power comes from coal.
We’re already on our 3rd child with the same set of cloth diapers, blowing past this articles assumptions. Really, once you realize how much landfill waste you’re saving you won’t go back. It does take extra work but so does a lot of things about being a parent.
>We’re already on our 3rd child
It's mostly in the washing, extended use gains you almost nothing.
Even the most generous LCA (not using hot water or a dryer, and only washing once per week) makes the impact almost equal.
>coal
Regardless of the energy source, 4x energy is 4x energy. If the grid is using wind power, the factory likely is as well.
Feel free to find an LCA that reflects your use case, but don't assume it's environmentally friendlier just because it's popular with a certain crowd.
Efficiencies of industrial scale can be hard to beat at home.
People throw away a lot of diapers.
Also, people don't realize it, but whatever gets flushed ends up in a landfill as well, in the form of wastewater sludge. In what ends up being a volume not all that less than a wrapped up diaper. So you're not avoiding landfill use.
>almost everyone would say that the former is the better option.
Who? Not environmental or sustainability engineers.
Again, if cloth works for you, use it. There are plenty of good reasons to. It's just the environment isn't one of them.
Different customs in different parts of the world.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.h...
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.
For every anecdote you hear of "we did x, it took two days and worked great" you can find another where that method didn't even remotely work or backfired in zany ways, like the article gets into.
Your kid is also still doing a crazy amount of developing at that age, so what you think might work based on what you think their personality is may not, and conversely something you think they'd never go for might just click.
We are still struggling with our youngest one who is four. We have tried the incentives, which worked until he figured out that he just didn’t care about staying dry. Misaligned incentives, indeed.
Also, the regular poops are actually a thing among many babies. There's an app for that: lots of apps allow you to track diapering. You'll see patterns, and you can start putting your baby on the potty more frequently then. It requires involvement and patience, but you didn't just get a baby because you wanted to plop them in front of the TV until they're ready to move out, no?
The further advantage is that the baby does not experience potties as a novelty, but as a fact of life as it grows into consciousness. This way, it has a lower chance of rejecting them outright.
Also, use cloth diapers, seriously. It's not that bad. And the cost you pay for plastic diapers, both monetary and environmental, but also developmental, is very high.
I remember a friend telling me all the reasons their first two kids turned out to be so relaxed and happy - until they had a 3rd an all the same tricks didn't work.
Our data set is always going to be small (and our reporting skewed) when it comes to our children. Doesn't mean it isn't worth trying to shape them, but don't be shocked when not everything works for every child. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better for my relaxed training of our kids ;)
I don't want to plop a baby in front of TV but likewise I wouldn't want their early months to be all about the potty.
When they're ready, if they've had a rounded start to life it's a just another simple transition.
I guess just different customs in different parts of the world.
Everyone is different. We're hoping our two year old is close, but we thought that six+ months ago too.
We tried again at two years old and it was like night and day. She was already running to the corner to go potty, so we understand she had developed physiologically enough that we could get her to hold it and go sit on the potty.
Also, like anything, physiological development and physical development is not intrinsically linked. A child can walk and run, but they may not understand exactly what would happen if they run -into- something.
Moral of the story? Having kids is hard, and nothing prepares you.
Once you understand though, and think you're ready for the next one... You're still not prepared because they're all different.
My oldest wasnt trained until about 4.5 years. It took around 6 months to a year for him to pick it up consistently. Hes still not trained for overnight though. It makes me feel like a failure as a father. We have always used disposable diapers with him.
My second (5) has been out of diapers during the day for nearly 2 years. She consistently uses the toilet for bowel movements but fails to urinate in the toilet every time, except when I take her on a timer/regular interval. We aren't sure why she has this problem or how to remediate it. We are very concerned as she begins kindergarten this year. We always used disposable diapers with her, and I feel like a failure as a father on this, too.
We just began potty training with my 2 year old. We are 3 or 4 days into it, and he is already independently going to the restroom and following all the rehearsed steps when he needs to urinate. We are having occasional accidents, and he is catching on to the idea that urinating on himself is undesirable. We offer him praise when he is successful, and no praise when he fails (we just walk him through the process of washing off, replacing his clothing, etc so he understands the outcome). He was cloth diapered exclusively until about 6 months ago when his younger brother started using up all the cloth diapers! He hasn't had enough encounters with BMs to catch on to going to the restroom at the appropriate time yet, but I'm confident we will get there soon.
My youngest is 8 months and we haven't started any such exercises yet, but it sounds like it may be a good idea.
To echo the article's suggestion, possibly one of the most frustrating things is potty training. Or maybe more frustrating, the lack of potty training. I still awake to change diapers for four children every morning, and on average theres at least one guaranteed BM for me to handle. (And let's be real, a 6 year old doesn't poop like a baby.) Although its nice not changing diapers of my 5 year old anymore during the day, it comes at the cost of regular urine cleanup / permanently stained furniture and HEAVY use of our washing machine.
If anyone knows any resources for training special needs children overnight (or in the case of my 5 year old...anytime!), I would be super grateful. We had a period of 2 years where both of my older children were in therapy sessions between 20-40 hours/week, and sadly potty training efforts even by trained therapists has been met with limited success. My current plan is to stay the course, just practicing and hoping it all sinks in, especially before my 5 year old starts school, as I don't want her to suffer this embarrassment (and I certainly worry about the way she will be treated/educated as its understandably difficult and even frustrating to deal with this particular kind of problem; for example, we enrolled my then-4 year old in a private kindergarten program last year, but after 2 days the school informed us that unfortunately they cannot manage her and she would not be allowed to attend).