Just What I Needed To Hear...

Thank-you to one of the women at Nappy Free Babes on Ravelry for sharing this quote from Diaper Free! by Ingrid Bauer:

“Your baby needs to be in close contact with you, to have your attention and be responded to. But if catching every pee becomes an obsession, you may be missing the point and the sweetness of this practice and the relationship. It’s important to remember that this is just one way of meeting your baby’s needs and not an outcome-based reflection of your parenting. A strong relationship, not a perfect track record, is the goal.

If you recognize yourself in this position, the most helpful thing to do is to take a step back and detach. No matter how hard it seems. Breathe. Try to bring your attention to being present for your baby. Focus on the relationship, not on the outcome. If necessary, take a short break from Elimination Communication. Trust your child in her process. Try to let go of all emotional charge to her actions. Expect that she wants to and is doing her very best. Don’t praise her excessively if she goes, and don’t make her wrong if she doesn’t. Deal with accidents completely calmly and neutrally. Pee your baby if you think she needs to, but immediately respect and signs of a “No.” Try again later, and always respect the “No.”

And, here’s the ultimate and ongoing parenting lesson: Reach for that place deep inside where you can let go of any desire to control your child or what happens. That’s when you can truly be in the moment and respond.”

Beautifully said!

And this reminder could not have come at a better time as we are facing the big developmental stages of teething and crawling, the offset of which is far more misses than when she was younger and more obvious in her communication about elimination.

Monkey See, Monkey EC

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that we were staying with some friends whose 23 month old son (turning 2 this month!) brought the potty to me when he saw me take my baby's nappy off and was quite fascinated with the whole EC process. Well today I got an email from my friend including photographs of her son ECing one of his dolls :)

Awww.

EC is NOT Toilet Training!

"They treat their children like dogs! Training them to poo in response to commands!"
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"Oh look at your daughter! She's weeing on demand. What a good girl!"
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"It doesn't seem very natural to me to make your child go to the toilet on cue"

Above are all comments I have heard others make about elimination communication. And each comment is based on a misunderstanding of EC. Elimination communication is NOT about training a child to wee or poo on demand for parental convenience (although it can be coincidentally convenient to parents). The purpose and aim of elimination communication is to foster communication between parent and child and to maintain and nurture the child's natural awareness of her elimination urges.

Personally, I object to the term "infant potty/toilet training" to refer to EC because it does not accurately reflect elimination communication. EC is about communicating about elimination! Parents who practice EC do not treat their children like animals or use Pavlovian techniques to condition their children to wee or poo on cue. Rather, parents watch and listen to their children closely and learn their children's natural body language and sounds which they make when they are about to wee or poo.

ECing parents who make a sound while their children wee or poo (and not all do) do so to help strengthen their child's awareness of how it feels to eliminate. If this awareness is kept strong within children they remain clear in their communication to their parents that it is time to make a catch. In addition to maintaining strong elimination awareness in infants, making a sound (such as "sssss") while the child wees or poos helps the child to relax her body and therefore helps her release her elimination because of the association she has with weeing and pooing and that sound.

When a silly nurse said my daughter was weeing on demand I pointed out that it was the other way around; I was catching her wee on cue. If anything, EC is about parent training :)

Training or conditioning a baby to wee and poo at times based purely on parental convenience is not natural or gentle or empathetic. Parents who practice this kind of infant training are not communicating with their children, because communication is a two way street.

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.


To read a related entry click here

Parenting & Learning Gently

Gentle parenting is one of the many words for the attachment style of parenting, also called natural parenting, helping mode parenting, instinctive parenting, parenting by heart, and I like to call it parenting with empathy. The more we practice elimination communication, the more I come to realise how gentle the practice is, particularly when you compare it with some methods of toilet training.

In my own family toilet training was an experience riddled with manipulation, shame, fear and physical discomfort. The physical discomfort was the result of being ordered to "hold it in" as my parents rushed me to my potty or a toilet. Extremely stressful for a little person and I've no doubt bad for our health! The fear came from understanding that using the toilet is a big person activity and I was a little person. The toilet was something outside of my realm and I had to grow-up and face it.

I was terrified of falling into the big toilet, and I was afraid because I knew that at some stage I was going to have to do it all by myself, and I didn't like the idea of being on the toilet without a big person there with me. That fear stemmed from being pushed into toilet training. Rather than gradually learning to use the toilet in my own time I felt pressured into learning fast for my parents convenience, which only made it scary and stressful. As I write this I realise that today I get in and out of the toilet as quick as possible, and sometimes I will feel that there is still more to come but I finish up and hold on for a while because I don't want to spend anymore time in there!

The shame came about when I didn't make it to the potty or toilet in time and I wet myself. It made me feel like a failure. When that happened I knew I had disappointed my parents, which really upset me, but it also made me feel bad because I was still a little person who wasn't ready for the big person thing of being toilet trained, and that made me feel inferior to adults and other children.

Finally, the manipulation happened when my parents praised me for making it to the toilet in time, clapping when I used the potty or toileting and rewarding me in other ways (positive attention, edible treats, cuddles etc.). I was manipulated into believing that nappies were for stupid babies undeserving of parental respect, and that I had to win my parents attention and love by training myself to use the potty and toilet. And obviously that made me rush and stress out because I desperately wanted them to make me feel loved rather than shamed. In addition to those "positive" forms of manipulation was my grandmother's negative tactic. She invented an imaginary granddaughter who was the same age as me, but told me that she was the good one and I was the bad one. She referred to this imaginary person as "Nanny's other little girl". Nanny's other little girl was with my grandmother whenever I wasn't, and she never missed the potty. My mother often told me she wished that the other little girl was her daughter! These are obvious examples of harsh and cruel parenting, very far from gentle.

With elimination communication our child gets to gradually learn to use the potty and toilet, and she is supported by us throughout the entire journey. When it comes time to use the big person's toilet she will already have used it, because we make catches in toilets. Her first experiences with the big persons toilet have already begun, safely in the arms of her parents.

The shame of not making it to the potty or toilet is not a cause for shame in an ECing family, because misses are just a part of the journey. And the manipulative praise and rewards systems used in toilet training are not part of the practice of elimination communication because catching poo and wee is just an ordinary part of the day. Toileting is just an everyday activity for the little person, just as toilet independence is a part of everyday life for the big person, nothing to get excited about.

And of course as a mother who is committed to gentle parenting, my daughter will never be placed in competition with any other children, real or imaginary! Her toileting journey is her own.

You Can't Force Forward

I'm feeling a bit better about ECing today. Mainly because I realised how far we've come on our breastfeeding journey in a few short weeks without actively trying to push progress along. It was a pleasant surprise to one day realise it was coming naturally to both of us. I am going to trust the same will happen with ECing.

The ECing journey is definitely challenging me to develop into a more patient and trusting mother.

Let Go of Expectations & Just Trust

I've been finding it hard to trust her and listen to her rather than tell her what she needs at any given time. Sometimes she stirs in her sleep and I misread it as a cue and take her to the potty only to unnecessarily wake her and upset her :( Other times I hold her over the potty for ages only to discover that she never needed to go. I still feel like I'm flying blind, but I am aware of the high standards I expect of myself with everything I try my hand at, so I am trying to chill out and remind myself that it's not about me or getting results, it's about listening to her.

With that in mind, yesterday I was holding a sleepy baby who slowly began to wake and decided to leave her be and probably miss a wee, but eventually she became wide awake with a look of concentration and I said to her Dad "looks like the face of someone who's considering eliminating" so I held her over the potty and almost immediately she wee'd into it.

Not long after I noticed her squirming with frustration so I offered her the potty again and she did a poo immediately. Earlier I said that I found it hard to differentiate between her different motivations behind restlessness, but I think I'm starting to get it now. When it's about poo or wee she is not just squirming or kicking, it's sort of forced, and there is tension in her movements, she seems frustrated. Still not 100% sure, but I will keep my eye on this. And on a wee that I missed I realised afterwards that I had been trying to make eye contact with her but she had been avoiding it, so that could be a sign wee is to come.

The cool milestone for the day though, was that I caught a wee in front of some friends who came to meet our baby today :) And they didn't think we were hippy freaks at all, they thought it made good sense.

Yesterday's stats: 8 wee's and 1 poo. Sadly, yesterday I missed her second poo - the first poo miss in eight days!

Go Gently

Read a great article that couldn't have found me at a better time. I'm feeling worn down today and have only caught one poo and two wees and feeling a little bit down about the whole process. And then read this:

Regularly, I receive enthusiastic emails from parents just discovering Natural Infant Hygiene. For example, a mother may read something I've written on the Internet. Something "clicks" with her, and she writes me, interested and excited. On the first day, she has observed her infant's elimination rhythms, and already sees a signal and catches a pee! She is amazed, convinced and elated.

Then, three or four days later, she contacts me again, feeling defeated. She has missed several pees in the last few days. She is not sure she can do this, and wonders if she's bonded enough with her baby, or whether this can even work in our society. She is using diapers part-time and worries this will harm her baby and the process. Should she quit?

I am always both saddened and surprised by how many mothers think they should "get it" the very first day or week they practice Natural Infant Hygiene. Some moms do, of course. But it's rare. For most, the process is gradual and takes several weeks, or even months, similar to developing a comfortable and secure breastfeeding relationship. Some mothers also need time to learn how to use a sling in ways which baby appreciates, or how to get a good night's sleep with a little body snuggled close...

The temptation can be great to perceive in these responsive parenting practices yet another opportunity for parental stress and guilt, another place to fall short of the mark. We certainly don't need another one of those! It is important that we learn to be very gentle with ourselves as parents, as gentle as we wish to be with our babies. In the strength of this gentleness and acceptance, we can strive forward to debunk the myths and half-truths and rediscover our instinctive resources for parenting...

Remember: You do not have to be totally tuned into your baby to begin parenting responsively. You only need to be open and willing to learn. As homeschooling advocate John Holt pointed out, "We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way".

Communication and confidence develops as an inevitable consequence of the practice of responsive parenting, rather than being a prerequisite condition. You don't need expertise to begin, just a clear and gentle willingness to try. From Being Gentle with Ourselves While Learning Natural Parenting

On top of me feeling run down, I think our baby's going through a big development stage because I've noticed her being a bit more interactive lately, she's started crying a new sounding cry, like a little high pitched squeal. And she was rather fussy, lots of unexplainable crying today :( So I've lowered my expectations for our ECing progress for now and am very pleased with our three catches for the day.