"Early Potty Learning?" A Transition from EC --I'm So Lost

[Past_VNE]

DD is 19 months old. We've EC'ed her part time from the very beginning and she totally gets the idea that the toilet (and the outside world) is for pottying.

When in a diaper (cotton), she'll tug at it and clearly (nonverbally) say that she needs to go poo. We usually don't have poopy diapers at home anymore. (And rarely when out, because she prefers to poop at home.) However, I rarely know when she needs to pee.

When out of a diaper, she'll get one of her little potties to poop in sometimes, or just poop where she is and then ask for help to clean up. She'll often go the door (we're REALLY REALLY rural with no neighbors) to pee, like she has seen her brother do so many times. On the other hand, she'll also pee on the floor, but then run for a rag from the kitchen and try her best to clean it up on her own. (Thank god for tile!!!)

I have zero doubts that this girl could be 99% potty "trained" at this point....if I only had a nice old foreign lady to teach me how to do it. But, on my own...??? I have no clue.

I didn't potty "train" DS on this issue. He was part time ECed, rejected it at 1 yr old, and at just prior to 2.5 yrs, up and decided that he used the potty one day with no help from us. So, I'm like a first time parent on this one.

Any thoughts?

I'm probably leaving something out...it's way to late at night for my brain to be functioning at capacity.

[Maela]

I don't have a lot of experience with this, but I just recently read Potty Free Before 3, and I really like it. I also EC "part time."

[rumi]

Hmmm, have you ever offered the potty even when she does not ask? It could be that if you suggest, "let's go potty before we leave the house" she would do it. When we EC'd I would often go at the same time as dd. Another possibility is to offer her a "toy" eg. shampoo bottle) or read a book while she is on the potty. Till she gets in the habit of it.

Gradually you might be able to do this at other times throughout the day - get in the habit of going before bed, when waking up, after lunch, and other regular times. Usually if you sit on a potty with your clothes off then you body will do the needful.

[crunchynerd]

I am very interested in this too because I EC'd DS and had great success before he was mobile, and at that point it got to be no end of headaches... and we aren't rural!

I've recently seen some info that even in China in places where diapers are still not catching on, the old ladies universally recognize that 10 months or so marks a "difficult period" for them not wanting to stop what they are doing and go in the appropriate manner.
Someone else here pointed out that diapered toddlers also tend to go through a phase of objecting to diaper changes and making a struggling hassle and screaming headache for the parents, during that time!

So either way you go, diapers or EC, seems like there's no getting around that toddlerdom "hate to have to be still for anything especially pee and poo" stage.

If anyone has found a better way to cope or get through it, besides accept cleaning up numerous pee puddles and a few poop piles from the floors each day (and we have hardwood that can't have puddles on it constantly!) please tell the rest of us!

I am not above going back to my cloth diapers, though I would feel guilty if I didn't even try to EC, yet on the other hand, it's not like cloth diapering is a crime, and I know better than to believe it harms babies, because my first was not EC'd, just cloth, and turned out fine.

Sigh. I really want to make a better go of EC this time, but if we are all doomed to piles and puddles everywhere for several months, with our lives revolving around that, I am not really sure it's worth it! Worth it for the early infancy awareness, yes. But the stress and hassle on me, when the outcome if I just plain diapered, would be about the same in the end (potty trained and out of diapers sometime between 18 months and 2 years, like my other kids, 1 only diapers, 1 EC?) so my thing right now is wondering whether it wouldn't be better just to go ahead with plain old diapering.

But the little voice in me says "you can't fit the genie back into the bottle, and now that you know they need and want elimination awareness and assistance from birth, how can you turn a blind eye on that need?"

what to do?

[crunchynerd]

LOL you and I both are wishing we had a "nice old foreign lady" to show us the ropes!

Part of my motivation for trying EC again with Baby #3 is for the sake of my daughter, who will most likely someday be a mother, and if I can learn it, and give her the gift of growing up with it as part of her acquired cultural expectation, wouldn't that be a gift?
I certainly wish I had had the advantage of growing up with it, so that now, I would know what to do in every instance, and not be so stressed out trying to reinvent the wheel out of a book!

If you find a hidden cache of nice old foreign ladies, send some my way too!

[sapphire_chan]

25 months here and still only the faintest signs that she's even aware she's peeing when she's standing watching the stream go out of her.

[heatherr30]

I agree with the pp who said you just need to give her lots of opportunities to sit on the potty throughout the day.
She sounds ready to me. I potty trained using an ebook on www.thepottytrainer.com. It worked like a charm. It involves being in charge of your Dd's potty schedule for a while till they ask reliably, but if you've done EC then you're not opposed to that anyway. It was so much fun for DD and waaay better than diaper changes!

[Vaquitita]

Originally Posted by crunchynerd

If anyone has found a better way to cope or get through it, besides accept cleaning up numerous pee puddles and a few poop piles from the floors each day

what i did with my older two when they went through this phase was put them back in cloth diapers to save my sanity. changing a diaper is much easier than cleaning pee/poo off the floor. but i did not totally give up on ec'ing either. i still took them when they woke up, if i thought they needed to poop, when i went, on the rare occasion they signalled, etc. What i learned after the first time was for me to keep my attitude calm/laid back, not stress out/try harder if i had no catches that day. and of course i changed their diapers everytime (well almost ) they peed. i think they keep their awareness this way. nothing groundbreaking, but thats my 2 cents.