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Diaper Free Babies, Early Toilet Training

By Harlan Weikle, Editor, Greener Magazine

Savvy Veg Comments: Having raised three children, and helping to raise grandchildren, I'm all too familiar with the phrase, "diaper-trained", which is what a child who wears a diaper past the age of about nine months becomes. The diaper is the safe place, and they resist toilet training until their mothers, in desperation, take away the diapers, and make the little addicts go "cold turkey" - traumatic for all concerned.

I'm not so sure that DFB's point of view jibes with the realities of modern life, where there is no village community, Mom's mostly work, and kids are in child care, but I have known families who made this work, and from the environmental, financial, time-and-effort points of view, DFB deserves serious consideration.

Diaper Free Babies

Not to put too fine a point on it, but ever since Jeff Strasburg's report on the Green Diaper, we have had a mess of inquiries about this new dynamic spilling into the age old question of toilet training and the modern baby. One of our readers sent us this link to Diaper Free Babies and we thought we should get to the bottom of it. Here's our report on babies without diapers.

Diaper Free Babies was started by 2 Moms, Melinda and Rachel, in December 2003 and has quickly grown to include chapters in 35 states and 11 countries. The organizers maintain that DF Babies is a natural solution to rearing stress free, well socialized human beings who take an active role in their own toilet training from a very early age.

The group uses a technique they call 'Elimination Communication' or EC for short, which basically asserts that from birth, baby feels what she feels and knows when he goes so why not make the most of those early-on pportunities to establish a parent/baby line of communication and get to know your inner baby. Those little squirmy movements and odd facial expressions or baby talk that are so cute are also babies' sign that something is going on down there. To the observant parent this should be a recognizable sign that it's time to spring into action.

When baby and parent learn to communicate in this matter it is a simple step, according to EC theory, to turn the process into an early learning opportunity and get baby to a safe place where he or she can toilet in comfort, secure in the knowledge that Mom or Dad is right along side approving every step of the way. Baby, mom and dad feel a sense of togetherness unencumbered by diaper checks and before long your little genius is accomplished beyond his or her months in this most vital of all human practices, toileting.

The DFB organization claims that baby is naturally meant to learn in this manner and in fact most societies, until recently, practiced close parental, communal supervision of the child's toilet training. In villages and small towns adults and toddlers mixed routinely in open communities where diaper free bottoms were the rule rather than the exception, whenever a little one signalled readiness, an adult was always there to take the baby to the toilet. Besides, says the group, bare bottoms are much more likely to produce a happy baby and at the same time all but eliminate that scourge of Western Civilization, 'diaper rash.'

Diaper Free Babies offers mentoring, training support, community resources and some cute pictures, but we like it simply because it means more family togetherness and instantly reduces pressure on our land fills by a factor of oh, probably 100.

We'd love to hear feedback from any parent or baby who has first hand knowledge of EC training:

Harlan Weikle at Greener Magazine