Ask an East German about the GDR, especially those who are not exactly adapting to capitalist life so well, and s/he will most likely get defensive about how much better everything is "in former times."
Do you know that when four month old babies were shipped off to day care during the GDR, they were potty trained at the tender age of eight months? No, I am not kidding. After recess, they were all made to sit on a communal potty trench, very much like the communal outhouse huts in China I remember reading about. They were not allowed to go until they were done with business.
I have nothing against this method. Whatever floats your boat, I say. I was shocked when I was told of this, when I read about it, since I am pretty sure my parents started us off at the two year mark, if I remember my brother's potty training correctly. I've read that while kids can be trained to take a crap at such a young age, it is more a matter of "catching the right moment" and conditioning them to move the poop when they feel the toilet seat under them than free will. Of course avoiding diaper rash and washing all those dirty diapers is a good thing, but I would like to wait until my baby says he is ready.
Anyhow, MIL is trying to convince me that Antonio is ready for potty training. "I trained my kids to go to the potty as soon as they can stand." she says. Yesterday, I let Antonio hang in the breeze while I was running his bath. The pedia says that a baby should hang diaperless for a few hours a day to avoid diaper rash. He managed to shit on the carpet in these two diaperless minutes after marinating in his pee for four hours! MIL says that this is Antonio's way of signaling that he likes doing his business WITHOUT his diapers on. I think this is a one-time freak occurence. Parents of the world, when did you start potty training your kids, and why did you decide to do it when you did it?
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4 comments:
i'm no parent but a friend of mine in manila potty trained her baby not to poop in her diaper at 3 months and at 9 months the baby was using potty trainer every morning.
Yikes! That's way too early for me!
lara is more likely on a potty training at the moment,since its summer she can ran around the garden diaperless..whenever we hang around and swim,we started it because recently she says "uuah" everytime she does her thing,so i guess its a signal that she can recognize it or feels it when it comes..she is 18mos =P
2 years. Anything before 18 months is really just following the child's signals or training their body to respond to certain sounds or actions (kind of like Pavlov's dog). They don't have the muscle control when they are that young to consciously control when to go or not to go.
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