Tuesday, September 18, 2007

ECing and the media

There have been some ECing articles in the news this week. I subscribe to ivillage.com because they often have some good ideas on parenting. My inbox came up with "Diaper Free Baby" from ivillage, and I clicked on it. Here is the link: http://slideshow.ivillage.com/parenting/pregnancy/calendar/your_babys_development/diaperfree_babies/?nlcid=pb09-17-2007 I thought that the description was fair, but the comments about it were harsh. Here is the article that is attched to it from MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20464264/ Although I am not a diaper-free mom, I am definately a part-time ECing mom. Ben even pooped and peed in the potty this morning. With Jackie, I caught all but six or seven poops since she was a year old. She would hiss when she needed to go potty. Even at my mom-in-law's house, she started hissing, and fussing, and my mom-in-law kept checking her diaper. She wouldn't poop in her diaper. When I got back from my meeting, Jackie came up to my hissing, so I took her. My mom-in-law was shocked. I bought her a little potty that day, and she used it. Babies cannot be able to "hold it" for a long time because their muscles aren't strong enough, but they are able to know the sensation and purposely cue the parent. That is being potty trained. What is the difference between "SSSSS" and "Mommy I need to potty."? I feel that there is no difference. The child is aware of the sensation and purposely communicate a need.

The difference between Elimination commucation and traditional potty training is the attitude. Im am not potty training my babies. I'm helping them be more aware of their bodies, and I am helping them learn to communicate their needs with me. I love ECing, and I'm glad.

3 comments:

Summer said...

EC is hard to understand unless you've tried it, and a lot of people aren't willing to believe that a baby can feel the need to eliminate. Um, why wouldn't they? Nerves not hooked up yet?

Now that we've gone through the EC experience, I catch other kids' cues. My husband does, too -- he recently impressed one of my friends by he told her that her 24-month old needed to poop, and he was right!

le35 said...

I can see the part about not understanding unless you've tried it. And I guess I was a bit skeptical at first, but I think that the biggest reason people have a hard time with it is that they know that a baby is not capable of getting him/herself to the potty, so the mom is skeptical because she doesn't want to have to take them.

For me, it's easier to just hold my baby over the potty than to scrape off the poop after he's used his diaper.

Robert said...

I hear a lot of people say that they find it easier to just let their kids potty train when they're "ready" but with our daughter, she was "ready" a lot younger than those kids, and that saves diapers (money) and cleaning off poop (which is nasty after a while). I definitely prefer EC.