Early Beginnings – 2/6

Posted by Shea on May 19, 2013

Spoke to Auntie Barbara who had her children toilet trained by a young age
This new information was quite a lot to take in so I decided to contact my Auntie Barbara who had her babies in the 1950’s and asked her about toilet training.

Turns out all her babies were using the potty right from just months old. In fact they were on the potty as she was breast feeding them!!!
I have discovered keeping cloth nappies clean was a huge driving force for Mothers pre 1960’s. Each cloth nappy that got soiled was more work for the already time poor Mother, so toilet training your babies ASAP was high on their agenda. Disposable nappies relieved the extra washing load for the week and took the urgency out of beginning toilet training. Over time the disposable nappy industry has boomed, millions of dollars have been spent on successful marketing strategies which have changed the course of society. It is now widely accepted that babies have no control and will give US the sign when they are ready to start toilet training.

In modern society this recognition of the capability of babies to have bowel and bladder control at a young age, has been lost. Not so in other cultures where toilet training babies is as common to them as putting a baby in a cot to sleep is for us. Parents bringing their children up in remote and or poor communities don’t have access to boxes of disposable nappies so they rely on their instincts and ‘elimination communication’ signals shared and passed onto them through generations.