Natural Learning & Toilet Independence

I was thinking about how we learn naturally, and it struck me that the way our society "trains" children to use the toilet is in stark contrast to the way they learn everything else up to that point in their little lives.

Take talking for example. Children learn to talk by spending time with adults while they talk. They watch, listen, emulate, and eventually speak independently. Walking and eating are other examples, they see us standing and walking and want to try it for themselves, they start out by adults holding them steady, they take their first steps with their parents holding their hands above them, and eventually they take some steps on their own and with practice they become steady and speedy. Their first experiences with food other than breastmilk is watching us eat and then reaching out to try it themselves. Monkey see, monkey do! That's my understanding of natural learning. But our society treats learning about elimination very differently.

Firstly, it is less likely that a child gets to watch their parents use the toilet (unless you have a close family, but in my mainstream family parental toilet time was very much behind closed doors). That puts a big obstacle in the way of a child learning how to use the toilet in my opinion. Sure, we adults tell them how to do it, but that is so different to learning from seeing it everyday. Parents using the toilet is not a part of the child's everyday activities like walking, talking, and eating are, in most families.

Having said that, this is not the case in the family I'm creating. I frequently take my baby girl into the toilet with me when we are home alone, she usually watches me from her bouncer, sometimes she is in a sling or a wrap on me.

By practicing elimination communication, toileting is something that the child does with her parents every day for as long as she can remember. As with walking a child in an ECing family experiences her first eliminations into the toilet in the supportive hands of her parents. And it happens so early in her life that she doesn't ever remember not using a toilet or potty of some description, just like she doesn't remember learning to walk.

There is no sudden or drastic changes introduced to the life of an EC'd child when it comes to toileting independence. Gradually they make their way from being supported on the potty by parental hands, to using it on their own.


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