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Comment by MikePlacid | Hacker News Reader

When we presented our pediatrician with our third child who could urinate in a sink on verbal command at just six months old, she remarked, "We should write an article for a medical journal!" We explained that such an article would never get published because it's not new information; most of Europe begins potty-training at around six months. Delaying this valuable skill until the age of 3-4 years is an enormous waste of resources - but still the whole country was insisting on doing it, don’t know about now.

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> most of Europe begins potty-training at around six months

Not sure how this relates to the article, but this is news to me (European). We slowly began potty training somewhere between 1 and 2 years. I have never heard of anyone doing potty training at six months. Babies are just barely able to sit upright at that age.

> most of Europe begins potty-training at around six months

Where did you hear that? Admittedly here in the UK we've been doing our level best to extricate ourselves from the continent, but I've only ever heard of one mum even thinking about it before 18 months. Ours is just over a year and we haven't thought about it at all yet, same with our ante-natal group and friends with slightly older babies.

I googled around a bit and this reddit thread has a lot of Europeans with similar experience to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mommit/comments/tdb1f2/what_are_non...

The German term is "Abhalten" (from "halten = to carry") or ("windelfrei = diaper free") and you'll find quite a lot:

https://www.google.com/search?q=baby+abhalten+*.de

Our baby was born potty-trained (which actually means the term is misleading in our case) and a relative started at their childrens' birth.

This sounds different to potty-training, which is where the child knows that they need to wee or poo and tells you or goes straight to the potty to do it. "Abhalten" sounds like the parent training to know rather than the child.

In English this is called "elimination communication" or EC. The parent subconsciously figures out when the baby needs to go based on schedule, observation of milk/water intake, and subtle behavioral cues (facial expression change, posture, etc).

It's a system that works quite well if the baby is exclusively cared for by a stay-at-home parent or a long-term nanny (and no other babies or toddlers in the house to distract the parent/nanny). But try to leave the baby with a new sitter or at a daycare - they have no idea what your baby's cues are and cannot be bothered to learn them; so back in diapers the baby goes.

We have 1 year of paid parental leave (although only ~60% of your salary) in Germany, so almost everyone can do it.

What happens after a year when the parents go back to work? The baby goes to the potty by themselves at that point?

> most of Europe begins potty-training at around six months.

Hailing from Poland; first I hear of this. I know of total of two people who said something like this before - one person is saying a lot of other borderline insane things about parenting, and the other has a business selling webinars around the idea of potty-training kids less than a year old.

>We explained that such an article would never get published because it's not new information; most of Europe begins potty-training at around six months.

Funny. I am European and we have this myth about Asia.

>>urinate [on] command

Wait, what do you think potty training is?

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