My daughter Frances is 13 months old and we've been practicing elimination communication, or EC, with her since she was born. Since the hope is that she'll be through with this potty learning adventure by this time next year or so (keeping our fingers crossed), unless we have or adopt another kid, this blog already has a stamped on expiration date.
But it's important to me to share our experiences anyway, since I have wanted to find others' experiences in this area and found the internet only moderately helpful. The truth is, I believe, that not a lot of people go for EC. I'm not going to try to convince anybody that this is the "right" way to get your kid out of diapers. But for people who are a little bit interested in EC, or people who do EC full-time with your kids, I hope this will be entertaining for you.
Documenting Frances' every poop and pee is going to be so thrilling, I know. Welcome.
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Well, this is interesting. I followed your trail of breadcrumbs from Rex Parker's blog, looking for a contact. (I was glad to see you have a Granny--so there, Rex--AND are Quite Young--young enough to be having a baby, in any case.)
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of EC, but then it's been quite a while since I needed to 'toilet train' anyone--I'm retired, and our kids are 26 and 29. I am guessing that EC involves drawing your child's attention to elimination, giving her the vocabulary, and ?maybe more?
For what it's worth, our daughter was out of diapers by the time she was 2. One reason for this: we slightly jumped the gun and Baby #2 was on the way, and I thought one baby's-worth of diapers was plenty, given that I used cloth and washed/folded my own.
I was a special education teacher, and by the time I had my own children (in my thirties) I had trained dozens of children and adults with retardation and autism; I figured a smart 18 month-old wouldn't be much more difficult.
I used Azrin and Foxx's _Toilet Training in Less Than a Day_, though I did modify the approach to suit my hyperactive daughter's temperament; I took more than a day, too. The approach is quite sound, and I assume the book is still around. It has a very good checklist for readiness, even if you don't use other parts of the book (though I will mention there are some excellent tips, such as 'how to pull up one's pants.') I'm not a born-again behaviorist, since humans are rather more subtle than simple conditioning assumes, but I think it's very valuable to look at the specific steps involved in performing any task and then help a child practice these elements. (I also taught both our children to tie their own shoes by age 3; it's not at all difficult, really, and I never had to learn some bunny song to do it, Lord be thanked.)
Well, enough of that. Welcome to the xword blog, and I hope to see more of your comments. BTW, your baby picture is exquisite.
Elaine in Arkansas