The Truth About Infant Potty Training

Infant potty training is something that is widely misunderstood in America.

For the next four posts, we’re going to explore many of the misconceptions and misinformation surrounding the subject.

Welcome to part two of The Truth About Infant Potty Training. Click here for part one.

In the first part of our four part series, we discussed the inherent difficulties in waiting to start potty training.

Getting your child to see things your way becomes exponentially harder as they grow older.

Why wait?
Why make it harder for yourself or your child?
Why continue to change diapers day after day, year upon unnecessary year?
Why continue flushing money down the toilet with the expense of diapers, when you could be flushing your child’s pee and poo?

Potty training infants could be the answer.

The United States is now witnessing a growing trend to embrace the infant potty training principles already displayed by much of the world. Thousands of people across the nation are currently joining or have already joined Internet news groups and e-mail lists that allow them to discover all they can about infant potty training. Together these parents are learning a multiplicity of invaluable elimination communication techniques that allow them to encourage their infants to eliminate inside a toilet, sink or otherwise appropriate receptacle.

Their babies may be too young to walk or talk, but they are certainly old enough to observe and respond. Potty training infants might just be the future in America too.

One of the primary roadblocks to the widespread adoption of this early potty training method, at least within this country, is that it lies in direct opposition to the strategies articulated by the most famous child development expert of all time, Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Dr. Spock spoke the gospel for many American families throughout much of the last century, not just about potty training infants, but all manner of child rearing. His final advice on potty training said it was best to hold off until the child had demonstrated readiness on his own. Something that certainly never happens in the first year. Failure to heed this advice, according to Dr. Spock, would only lead to eventual rebellion, digression and bed wetting.

A fan of infant potty training he was not, but Dr. Spock’s theories no longer hold water after decades of distance.

Humans have potty trained their infants for thousands of years. For 99.9% of that time it was in a tribe’s best interest to get their child trained efficiently, a practice that has continued across most of the globe without the slightest bit of damage to worldwide psyche.

Relatively speaking, Dr. Spock’s school of thought itself has shown itself faulty and is perhaps an infant that needs to be trained. With infant toilet training, there is rich tradition and a wide body of knowledge, experience, and recorded data to articulate direction.

Parents in over seventy-five countries, including India and China (sharing the largest proportions of world population), wholly embrace the practice of potty training their infants. Chinese babies, for example,  are most often found in split bottom pants that allow for simple squatting and easy elimination.

These countries not only believe it is best to potty train infants early, they believe that early toilet training helps contribute to early cognition. By stoking the skill set of their children at the earliest possible age, they are adding fuel to a fire they want to burn in perpetuity.

Many parents who bring home children adopted from other countries are flabbergasted to find their “babies” welcomed into their new home fully capable, ready, and eager to use the toilet.

For those who know, this isn’t surprising. Potty training infants is little different than teaching them to nurse.

We’ll find out more in part three of The Truth About Infant Potty Training.

Potty Training Power…AWAY!!!