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Home › Articles › Guiding Baby's Development › Elimination Communication

Elimination Communication

Can Infants Really Be Potty Trained?

By Katherine Bontrager

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While infants can be taught to communicate when they need to use the bathroom as well as to eliminate accordingly, they won't be fully independent until they can walk, wipe, wash and dress themselves, Wheeler says. "But if the parent learns to recognize the signs – as the parent notices when the baby is hungry or sleepy – the parent can condition the baby to eliminate on cue, usually with a special sound like 'sheeee-sheeee,' 'shiiiis' or 'shuuus.'"

Wheeler says that infant potty training strengthens intimacy, bonding, understanding and communication between the mother and infant, saves mega-dollars, the environment from disposal diapers and sometimes years of frustration. "Both mother and child should naturally want the child to assume control of his bodily functions as soon as he is capable, which really is when he's an infant," she says.

Experts Weigh In

Jennifer Walker, a mother of three, pediatric nurse, co-founder of www.momsoncall.com and co-author of The Moms on Call Guide to Basic Care (Revell, 2007), first encountered this line of training while working as a pediatric nurse.

"I had an Asian couple who told me that their 4-month-old baby was potty trained," Walker says. "When I inquired, wide-eyed and skeptical, they explained that the grandmother would hold the baby over the toilet twice a day, and each time the baby would have a bowel movement."


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Re: Elimination Communication by ECing mom on 12/10/2008 11:17PM

Thank you for printing an informative article about EC. Most of the article is well written with good information, but some of Dr. Stavinoha's opinions about EC are simply that. Children in many other countries are fully toilet independant by the time they are a year old. My own daughter has been out of diapers, since she was about 9 months old, and since about 20 months she has been able to do all of the steps of toileting herself. She takes herself to the toilet, undresses, eliminates, wipes, flushes, washes hands and re-dresses herself. I often don't even know she is in the bathroom unless she tells me she has gone. This is certainly not a case of my child not knowing all of the steps involved in toileting.I would argue that all babies are aware of their elimination needs from birth, and can voluntarily go, or not go from infancy.

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