With our kid we ruthlessly followed Jamie Glowacki's "Oh Crap!" potty training book. The tl;dr is let the kid run around without pants and figure out, through immediate feedback, if they wet themselves and for the parents to, like a hawk, identify "tells" that the child is in need of a toilet before the event. It essentially sucked up 2 weeks of our life being focused on the process of getting our child to notice when they need to toilet (and cleaning when they don't) but by 18 months old our kid was mostly potty trained.
Interestingly in relation to the article's point about rewards: the only reward we introduced was parent/child dancing after using the toilet successfully. And it continues 6 months later which is sort of adorable.
Also, we followed the advice of "dream pee's" where a parent wakes up 1-2 times a night to get a groggy toddler to pee while sleeping. It was successful in removing all negotiations around diapers and eliminating them completely from the conversation day or night. I feel eliminating potential sources of misincentives or negotiation is something the author struggles with quite a bit.
Oh, and although the process of the book above worked well for us. The tone of the book can be a bit overbearing and annoyingly dismissive of fathers. But, that seems to be the state of many parenting books so I have learned to ignore it.
Finally, I believe the article is right that the super absorbent 4 hour disposable diaper creates a issues when tackling all of this. Our kid was in cloth diapers and was sort of ready to get rid of the diapers as well due to the obvious discomfort. It is one of those pain now vs pain later sorts of things it seems.
Glad to find another person who uses this book/method! We used it on our son (22 months). I’m just really glad we decided to go diaperless cold turkey, because I’ve heard from other parents that it’s really hard to transition from night-diapers/pull-ups. We also used cloth diapers which I hear helps.
We plan on starting earlier with our other one. Honestly I think we start potty training way too late here in this country. It wasn’t perfect at 22 months but that investment is far better than wiping poop off his 3-year old butt now, or changing his pull-ups on the mornings.
I think that this is a change that is due to modern diapers. IIRC Dr Spock, writing in the 40's, advised that if they are left to their own devices most children will potty train themselves by age 2
We cloth diapered as well. I don’t know if it really helped my son, but it definitely incentivized me to stick with it through those pretty stressful first few days and weeks.
With respect to potty training, I can really recommend cloth diapers for 3 reasons (in order of importance):
cost:
We estimated the total costs before we started with our first child, and they would end up costing about the same as disposable diapers, however we have used them for 2 kids now :-)
potty training:
Both our kids were potty trained at the age of 2, with little extraordinary effort, meaning the effort was constantly more since we have to clean the diapers.
Indeed scraping poop from cloth is a good incentive for yourself to get them trained, so we combined the diapers with (but not very strict) the use "elimination communication" ("baby zindelijkheids communicatie" in Dutch). Simply put, we tried to keep diapers clean by holding the baby over the potty when we thought they were going to do nr 1 or nr 2.
My thoughts on why cloth diapers are better is this: the kids feel discomfort very clearly and immediately after the action, while the technologically superior disposable diapers are simply too comfortable to get this immediate action-response they need to learn by themselves, and indeed the first signs they were ready for full time potty training was that they started telling us the diaper was freshly made dirty.
environment:
While honestly this is mostly based on my personal logic and not so much on science, but I cannot imagine cloth diapers being as bad for the environment as disposable diapers made from plastic and chemicals, event taking into consideration they need to be washed.
I can almost guarantee you're wrong about the environmental benefits, depending on what diapers you use, where you live and how you wash. Using LCA, it's usually an energy factor of 4x worse for cloth, 10x worse for water and air emissions, and 6x worse for water use. And most of that is from the washing, so prolonged use doesn't make it better.
It's literally one if the textbook examples taught in sustainability Engineering to get students to stop "feeling" about the better option and start thinking & documenting.
That said, I have no problem with people picking what works for them. But environmental justification and smugness... especially when it's downright false.
Own up to your preference and accept the fact that it's environmentally worse.
Call me skeptical. That article only says that the creation, washing, and drying of cloth diapers takes more “coal” energy than disposable diapers dumped into a land fill. It says nothing about the design of cloth diapers, HE washer dryers, etc, or the habits of those who cloth diaper.
Many cloth diapers now have two parts, a shell and an insert. Typically you can use the shell multiple times, only washing the insert, which is made out of absorbent bamboo fabric.
Also parents who cloth diaper are generally more environmentally conscious in other ways. We have solar panels, a high efficiency washer/dryer, and can dry the diapers on a laundry line for most of the year (pro tip: this really helps remove most poop stains, especially from newborns!). In California I don’t think any PGE power comes from coal.
We’re already on our 3rd child with the same set of cloth diapers, blowing past this articles assumptions. Really, once you realize how much landfill waste you’re saving you won’t go back. It does take extra work but so does a lot of things about being a parent.
I totally get what you’re saying, and I’m surprised to see the data myself. However I think if you asked someone if it’s better to use more water (renewable) and power (clean) versus space in a landfill, I’m sure almost everyone would say that the former is the better option.
Landfill space isn't a problem though. And pulp is also renewable.
Also, people don't realize it, but whatever gets flushed ends up in a landfill as well, in the form of wastewater sludge. In what ends up being a volume not all that less than a wrapped up diaper. So you're not avoiding landfill use.
>almost everyone would say that the former is the better option.
Who? Not environmental or sustainability engineers.
Again, if cloth works for you, use it. There are plenty of good reasons to. It's just the environment isn't one of them.
With our kid we ruthlessly followed Jamie Glowacki's "Oh Crap!" potty training book. The tl;dr is let the kid run around without pants and figure out, through immediate feedback, if they wet themselves and for the parents to, like a hawk, identify "tells" that the child is in need of a toilet before the event. It essentially sucked up 2 weeks of our life being focused on the process of getting our child to notice when they need to toilet (and cleaning when they don't) but by 18 months old our kid was mostly potty trained.
Interestingly in relation to the article's point about rewards: the only reward we introduced was parent/child dancing after using the toilet successfully. And it continues 6 months later which is sort of adorable.
Also, we followed the advice of "dream pee's" where a parent wakes up 1-2 times a night to get a groggy toddler to pee while sleeping. It was successful in removing all negotiations around diapers and eliminating them completely from the conversation day or night. I feel eliminating potential sources of misincentives or negotiation is something the author struggles with quite a bit.
Oh, and although the process of the book above worked well for us. The tone of the book can be a bit overbearing and annoyingly dismissive of fathers. But, that seems to be the state of many parenting books so I have learned to ignore it.
Finally, I believe the article is right that the super absorbent 4 hour disposable diaper creates a issues when tackling all of this. Our kid was in cloth diapers and was sort of ready to get rid of the diapers as well due to the obvious discomfort. It is one of those pain now vs pain later sorts of things it seems.