In my many years traveling throughout Asia I saw almost no babies with diapers. Yet I commonly saw infants who would seem to eliminate on command. Their moms would hold them over a gutter with their pants down, whistle a quiet hiss, or grunt, and then the baby would go. At one year! Two-year olds would find their own place to squat. The real story behind this magic is that the child communicates their elimination needs to the mom, who learns to understand their unique signals, and then she communicates back whether all is ready or not. The result is a baby toilet-trained long before anyone in developed countries believes is possible, or even healthy. And this diaper-less, yet mess-less, state is common in parts of Africa and Latin America as well.<\/p>\n
But I never imagined it would work in the modern world of carpeting, cars, and obsessive sterility. I’ve had my mind changed by this book and a growing movement meeting online, where pioneering parents have figured out how to translate this very natural approach into contemporary lives. They call it natural infant hygiene to emphasize that this is not about training, discipline, or being strict. Instead, its success depends on a very close bond between baby and parents. Indeed, most parents who adopt this style claim that the incredibly close communication with the baby is worth far more to them than no pampers, and being diaper free is simply a mere bonus.<\/p>\n
So does it really work? Yes. But what about….? Those are questions this book does a pretty good job at answering, or at least beginning to answer. Much of the modern version is still being sorted out. For instance for some families, diaper less mean less diapers rather than no diapers. But in all cases it requires a pretty big commitment of time (natural elimination does not work in full time day care), and a different way of thinking (pee is sterile, not dirty).<\/p>\n
The natural baby hygiene program reminds me a lot of the early breast-feeding movement, with which it shares many attributes. Both practices were common in developing countries, both demanded an intense bond with the mother, and both required a re-education of the modern public to accept. It’s going to be a long struggle to get folks used to carrying chamber pots around, or having their baby pee on your lawn, but I think it will happen in small numbers. Our family is long past the diaper age, but if we were doing it again, this way makes a whole lot of sense.<\/p>\n
For those so inclined, this is the best book to date. There’s a corresponding active website as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How to toilet-train before two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[50],"tags":[956],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11194,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/11194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}