Elimination Communication and Potty Training
Table Of Contents
Elimination Communication and Potty Training
In this post you’ll learn about:
- what elimination communication is and how I prepared my family for it
- how we ditched diapers and got our 20-month old daytime potty trained in less than a week
- tips we used to help ease the journey
- my recommendations for EC equipment (with some discount codes!)
So what is Elimination Communication (EC)?
If I had to define EC to some random person on the street watching me put a mini potty in my trunk (because I have one in there 95% of the time), I would say EC is learning your child’s natural potty signals and timing to be able to preemptively get them to a potty BEFORE they go. This not only reduces the time of potty training when they get there, but it gives them a chance to be independent and both parent and baby get to share in the moments of pride when baby goes pee or poo in the potty.
Does it sound weird to hold a 6-month old on a potty when they can’t even talk yet? Sure it does! But did you know over half the world’s children are potty-trained by the age of one while the average age of being potty-trained in the US is 3 years old? Children are clearly capable of so much more than we give them credit for. That’s why I decided to do part-time EC with Espen once he turned 6 months old.
Part-time EC is when you potty your child when it’s convenient or fits into your schedule. This worked better for my family’s schedule and still helped Espen learn what a potty was, what went in the potty, and how to sit on it way before he was a year old. For example, we would always put Espen on the potty when we were changing a diaper because usually kids have more left in the tank when you see a soiled diaper if you know what I mean. Another easy EC opportunity for us would be before and after Espen got out of the car seat after a long ride somewhere. These little opportunities are called ‘transitions’ and happen throughout our normal day, so it was easy for us to add EC into our life.
How did I prepare myself and my baby for EC?
I was not about to dive into the EC rabbit hole on the internet when I learned about EC because what parent has time for that? I decided to take the Go Diaper Free Elimination Communication course (discount code below) which gave me all the confidence and information I needed to take the plunge into the EC world and ditch loads of diapers. I made sure to keep my husband informed of my EC goals so we were both on the same page. Our plan was to put Espen on the potty every diaper change to give him another chance to go on the potty, before and after car rides, upon waking and before bed. We slowly started learning his body clock of potty times so we would make more ‘catches’ in the potty outside of just the transition times mentioned previously.
We also informed any family members that would be helping watch Espen (really just the grandmas because Espen doesn’t go to daycare). We wanted to make sure the EC experience and expectations were clear and consistent for Espen so that he understood and trusted the process with all caregivers.
Tips that worked for us:
Putting the least amount of pressure on ourselves is what helped our EC journey be as successful as it was. Before he was a year old Espen understood ‘hold it’ if we needed to get home and we had just heard him grunting getting ready to go you know what. Clearly it works. The part-time EC is low maintenance so it wasn’t really adding much more to our already full plate. While many people do full-time EC, that just wasn’t going to work with both my husband and I having full-time jobs, so we didn’t feel guilty about only doing it part-time.
Trusting the process and giving Espen a chance to shine was a huge factor in our success with EC. Patience is a virtue I was not born with, but trust me I’m working on getting more and more every day. EC will test your patience sometimes but with the end goal in mind of ditching diapers WAY earlier than the average age in our country, I was laser focused and had loads of patience for potty times.
The equipment I’ll list in the section below really has worked best for us. Once you get to potty-training mode I highly recommend the other course from Go Diaper Free (listed below). Espen was daytime potty-trained in less than one week before he was 21 months old. We ditched diapers all in one day and have never looked back. Nighttime diapers were ditched too! We also recommend the ole double sheet with water protectors in between trick for easy clean-ups at nighttime. Your sleep will thank you. We are still working on the nighttime potty training because that just takes time. For now we are doing 2 dream pees (getting E up and putting him on a potty we leave in his room overnight to pee quickly then get him right back in bed). We have very few nap/nighttime accidents because his body is slowly adapting to holding his pee when sleeping. Have faith and stay the course…it will happen!
EC & Potty-Training Equipment I Recommend:
Note: we use a plastic travel potty seat for E but we feel it's fine because he doesn't sit on it for long and being 100% non-toxic in life is impossible. So we choose not to stress over that bit since we do our best 99.9% of the time.
Go Diaper Free EC Course - Andrea Olson:
- Use code LOWTOXTOTS for 15% off!
- Recommended for ages 0-18 months!
- Use code LOWTOXTOTS for 15% off!
- We kept this book by Espen’s potty so he connected more with it.
- Includes Mini Potty we started using with Espen.
- Use code LOWTOXTOTS for $5 off!
- First underwear
- Training pants
- Mini potties
- Wet/dry bags
Potette Plus Portable Potty Seat:
- Fits in your diaper bag (and eventually will just be called a backpack once you ditch those diapers).
More great undies for potty-training
- Note: this brand is also one of my favorite non-toxic clothing brands for Espen.
- Lower to the ground/no back for smaller children.
- We used this once Espen grew out of his mini potty. This one has a higher back and is higher off the ground so it’s good for toddlers.
Waterproof Mattress Protector for nighttime potty-training
Tiny Potty Training Book - Andrea Olson:
- Use code LOWTOXTOTS for 15% off!
- Once you are ready to potty train this book is for you...well…your little one!
- Recommended for ages 18 months and up!
More of my product recommendations can be found in my e-book!