A (2:50)

They were so right.

B (2:51)

I know. Used to. Nobody got diaper rash at all. No babies did. If they did, you were considered a bad mom. Now it's about 92 to 95% of babies get diaper rash at some point in their childhood.

A (3:02)

What were moms before diapers, before wipes? What were they using to wipe their baby?

B (3:08)

So they would just use, like a wet cloth, you know, and they would use cloth diapers. And I actually read a parenting manual from the 50s, and it's like any kind of catching this in a little chamber pot is bonus points, you know, and then once that baby's walking, you toilet train them. You don't use the diapers anymore at all. And cloth diapers are actually a pretty new invention. It's like a couple hundred years. Disposables were invented in the 60s, and that's when women were so like, you know, they were set on cloth. They were used to cloth. They didn't want to do disposables. So here's where the collusion comes in. They hired a pediatrician to do a study, a scientific study, and if you read it, which you can, it's by P. Barry Brazelton. If you read it, you'll see that there's nothing scientific about it, but it kind of guilts parents into waiting for signs of readiness for potty training. So with that study coming out in the 60s, diaper sales started going up. Parents were convinced to wait longer and longer to potty train. And that's how it began. And now we've doubled the potty training age in just a couple of generations because of that study, because of Pampers saying, hey, moms, now you can get out of the house, you can go join the workforce.

A (4:25)

You.

B (4:25)

You don't have to do diaper laundry all the time at home anymore.

A (4:28)

I was going to say, you saying that diapers were invented in the 60s. Disposable diapers, which. I didn't know it was actually that recent.

B (4:36)

Yeah.

A (4:36)

That correlates with the sexual revolution. And women, you know, being told, you're not going to feel fulfilled if you're not totally in the workforce. You know, being at home is never going to be enough for you. That's interesting to me. So do you think that that kind of plays into that, of trying to get more women to be cogs and machine of the workforce?

B (4:54)

Absolutely, 100%. And I. I think with that they started to speak to the woman's heart, like, how can we convince them to buy these diapers and to put them in and keep their babies in them longer and just convince them that they're a good thing? And they said, well, these are better for your baby's skin than cloth. They tried all the different angles, but it's that one scientific study that really did it, that started this whole sound bite that you should wait for readiness or you're going to psychologically damage your child.

A (5:23)

How much money could a family save annually if they switch to elimination communication or cloth diapers?

B (5:30)

About $2,000 a kid. So I have six kids, and I've saved about $12,000 over the course of all of them. I use diapers for the first year, but after that, I take them out of diapers when they're walking, just like our great grandparents did. I do use disposables because I think they signal better in them, but I'll reuse them over and over until the tabs fall off. So, like, they don't want to go in them. They'll signal more loudly in them. And so I'm reusing a lot of them, but I'd say roughly, like, you'd spend about $3,000 a kid on diapers if you didn't do EC if you do it, you're done in about a third of the time.

A (6:06)

What is EC or elimination communication for those who have never heard of it?

B (6:10)

This is crazy, but think about what did people do before diapers? You know, what did people do before formula? What do people do before car seats and strollers and things, you know, when we really think about what happened before diapers? If you believe in God, God designed us perfectly. So we come out into this world signaling for our needs. And we come out asking to be fed, to be held, to be potty, to go hygienically, et cetera. If you just believe in science, scientifically, we're born with sphincter control. We have hormones that keep us dry when we're sleeping. There's all this stuff developmentally that just a baby is born completely ready to use the toilet and signaling to do so. So EC Is basically a modern take on that, where we are using the baby signals and the baby's natural development and, like, hormones and all that other stuff, this big hodgepodge of perfect setup to help them do what they can't do by themselves until they can do it by themselves. So we basically team up with our babies from birth, helping them go to the potty hygienically until they're walking. And then we teach them how to do it themselves. And for example, I've never had to potty train my kids because I did this with them. It just naturally wrapped up when they started walking.

A (7:24)

So you are saying that it's possible for a newborn baby to know how to poop on the toilet.

B (7:28)

So newborn babies don't know toilets, but they do know that they don't want to soil themselves. So have you ever picked up a puppy, like a brand new puppy, and you hold them for a while and they're all cute and everything and then they start to wriggle and they really wriggle and they want out of your arms, so you put them on your carpet and they pee all over it.

A (7:45)

Right.

B (7:45)

That was a sign, that wriggling, that they needed to go. Well, all mammals have this instinct to not go on another being, to not go in their den, their sleep space, to not go on themselves. If we didn't have that instinct then a long time ago, we would have died out as a species. Like, think about it, cave babies peeing and pooping everywhere. There would have been disease and everything else. So we come into this world like, absolutely, like not knowing what a toilet is, but having this really strong set of instincts that we don't want to. It sounds kind of funny. We don't want to pee on each other. We don't want to do that to each other. Like all mammals do that. No other mammal wears diapers.

A (8:27)

Right. That's true.

B (8:30)

Why, in fact, no diaper was used as a toilet really until the last century. They were always used as a backup for when we couldn't. When we're nomadic and we're walking around, or when we just couldn't do it or were busy with other kids or whatever. It was never meant to be toilet.

A (8:49)

So like in the pioneer days, when you've got people in these covered wagons going across the country with babies. Yeah. What were those babies going to the bathroom in?

B (8:57)

I mean, they were pointing and shooting. They were really pick them up.

A (9:01)

This is crazy.

B (9:01)

Lift up the dress, go like this and then aim into a bush.

A (9:04)

I just, I guess I just assumed like these babies were wearing cloth diapers or something. I didn't know that that was such a recent phenomenon. This stat freaked me out. In 1957, 92% of babies were potty trained by 18 months old. Now it's over three years old.

B (9:21)

And that's an average. Three years is an average.

A (9:23)

What happened?

B (9:24)

The diapers were invented the study was done and parents were guilted into thinking that they need to wait for signs of readiness. Like, my child can recite the ABCs. My child can stay dry in these diapers, which is crazy. My child can manipulate their clothing later and later and later.

A (9:42)

Is it true that no diaper has truly ever biodegraded?

B (9:46)

It's true. And one of the statistics I have is in 2009, there's not been a lot of studying on it, but 2009, 27.4 billion disposable diapers were landfilled in America alone.

A (9:58)

Oh my gosh.

B (9:59)

Full of pee and poop. And no diaper has ever biodegraded since they were invented in the 60s. So they're all full and you're supposed to dump them and rinse them, even the disposables, before you throw them away. This is like highly toxic gels and chemicals and everything else. Even with the natural diapers today, those don't biodegrade either. So every single diaper that's ever been used is just sitting there. And I kind of theorize that maybe someday they'll all off gas and kill us all and just something terrible will happen because it's like it just isn't sanitary or safe. It's the third largest part of our weights waste stream. And waste management cannot figure out how to recycle or do anything with these buried diapers.

A (10:41)

I'm going to be honest with you. When I have heard about elimination communication, I've always said, guarantee that person has one child, this is their first child. They have no one else screaming, running around the house that they have to take care of. That's why they are zeroed in on that baby and they know when it has to go to the bathroom. There is no way that this is parents of multiple children. However, you yourself have six kids that you have managed to potty train without doing it in the traditional sense. How did you do this?

B (11:09)

Well, yes, and it's true. I should have had three in diapers at the same time at one point because I had my middle four really close together. It's all I've ever known. So I never wanted kids. I heard from a friend of a friend that they like pottied their baby into a sink and didn't use diapers before I ever considered having kids. And I was like, cool, that sounds good. I might do it if that were the case because diapers are gross. And I remember babysitting like I never wanted to do that. Then I found myself pregnant in my early 30s and I was like, what was that thing? I have to do that thing because I'm not changing a poopy diaper. And with my first child, I did not change a poopy diaper. It was amazing. He was trying the whole time. He pooped on the floor one time when he was two and a half because he was sick.

A (11:51)

What about traveling in a car?

B (11:52)

We traveled with him. I went to Thailand, we traveled in tuk tuks, we traveled in boats, we traveled in airplanes, we traveled in cars. I would carry a little potty with me or I would use the bathroom that all the adults used. So it's not like a constant hovering and going, oh, I need to catch every single thing. Like, I definitely did not do this crazy intense helicopter thing because that backfires and nobody has the energy for that. But from the beginning, I was like committed to my child is asking for help with this. I'm gonna try to tune in and hear what he wants. Like, if he's hungry, I'm not gonna ignore him and be like, oh, whatever, you'll be fine. You know, like, I'm gonna give him the breast, you know, I'm gonna wear it, make sure he feels safe and secure. And then when he needs to potty, I'm gonna offer it to him. So it's always like an offering. And yeah, when I had another baby and another baby, I would just have the older ones help me. This is what we do in our family. Let's potty the baby. And boy, do they love it. I have pictures of like two and a half, three year old kids with the little baby on the little top hat, potty in their lap, pottying them. And they'll like carry them around. And it was like they're part of the family.

A (13:01)

How do you know when a baby needs to go? I mean, what signs are you looking for?

B (13:05)

So the biggest one is sudden fussiness. If anybody's like starting EC and they have a brand new zero to four month baby, I always say right when they wake up, potty them. Because the antidiuretic hormone wears off. It wears off for you? For me, like you need to pee in the morning right when you wake up.

A (13:21)

Yep.

B (13:22)

So do I. So right in the morning. That happens right after they wake up from any nap. The hormone wears off, the bladder fills, and then it's time to offer. We call it a potty tunity. It's just a chance to go to the body. They don't have to, but it's an opportunity. And so we like to do that one. And then after you nurse anybody listening to this, like next time you nurse your baby five to 10 minutes after you're done, they're gonna fuss. That's a sign that they need to go to the bathroom. And you just hold them over something and you make the PSS running water sound. That's what they do all over the world where they still do this because they don't have diapers. That's what we do with ec. You make this sound association and you hold them over something and they go. And it's amazing. Like the first catch, you get this high and you're like, whoa. I can't not know that now. So I'm gonna have to do this. I'm gonna have to really. I wanna figure this out. So like wake ups, first fest after feeding. And then I like to get the poops. I call these the easy catches. Cause they're like, you're basically catching it in the potty before you start this two way communication, you know? So with poops, I think everybody with a baby knows when their baby's pooping or like has this feeling or can tell when they make that face where they're like, is that a smile or is that, you know, something else? And they'll start to bear down. You have time. Babies are born with sphincter control. So you just say, wait, take off the diaper, potty them. And it's truly that easy to kind of get your feet wet into it.

A (14:52)

You literally say wait to a newborn.

B (14:54)

Oh yeah.

A (14:55)

Oh my gosh. This is.

B (14:58)

And they start like within two weeks. I'm telling you, Alex, within two weeks they start to look to you before they need to go. They are so easily poop trained.

A (15:06)

This is crazy.

B (15:07)

If everybody knew this, the diaper companies would surely like lose billions of dollars. I get that. Not everybody stays at home and stares at their baby all the time. And that's literally not what we do. But if you just have, you're on leave and you have a baby around and you're just like hanging out anyway. Just try those three things and you'll catch something and you'll be like, whoa. And the baby will look at you and say, wow, I feel heard. They are instantly less fussy. They are like you're building strong attachment, secure attachment, right? And everybody, it's all the rage right now. We need to have securely attached kids. How do we raise them if we're neglecting their cries for anything? They're going to start to be, what is it? Anxious attachment, right? That's what I have. Like we are all kind of messed up, us adults these days. And we had our wounding. So we want to do it right. Right? So we want to not have an anxious attached kid or avoidant attached kid. We want to have a secure attachment. And so when we try our best, like we don't have to be perfect, but when we try our best to say, okay, you're fussing, you just ate, you also just woke up, right? You must need to pee or you're bearing down like you must need to poop. And they start to feel heard, they feel safe, they feel like they can trust you to help them with things until they're able to do it themselves. And it's a really beautiful connection.

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B (18:58)

You can start it at any age. I help parents any age between 0 and 18 months. When you get into 16 and 17 months, it's more like developmentally appropriate to do potty training because it's really straightforward and I do teach that too. And it's a different thing. It's the parent saying, you've been in diapers, it's time to be out of diapers. With EC it's more like we're gonna do this together.

A (19:20)

So how do you start doing this? Let's say you've got, let's say you've got a 14 month old. How are you gonna start doing this?

B (19:25)

So the cool thing with the 14 month old is they're in the Montessori period for, it's a sensitive period, right. For potty learning. So basically 12 to 18 months in a traditional Montessori class, they'll put them all in cloth training pants, they'll have them all go potty together. They'll all be potty trained by 18 months. If you're in a traditional Montessori class these days, there aren't very many of those left. But so what you would do is you would start to do the easy catches. You do the morning pee. You'd offer, you'd start offering at predictable times. You would also do observation. So I have Tiny Undies is one of my companies and I have these little like turquoise blue training pants that show immediately when they're wet. So I would put them in those. Cause they're walking, they're gonna be going around your house and I would just write down on a piece of paper how often they go pee. So now I know. And at 14 months old, it's probably gonna be like every 45 minutes to an hour. With a newborn, it's like every 15 minutes. So like don't ever try to catch all of them, but you're gonna get a sense of their natural timing. And then at a diaper change, when they start to poop, when they wake up, you're going to offer and we sort of get into it that way. And then within a couple months, you're gonna wrap it up. You're just gonna teach them the things they need to know. This is how you push down your pants. This is how you wipe. This is how you put new pants on. You know, I cover all this in detail in my book, like broken down by age, because it's really different between a newborn and a young toddler. But the cool thing at 14 months is you get to start and finish within a few months. And so it takes a little longer than potty training at that age. But your kid is still like connecting long term memory from synapses. Right. So they're still in that developmental stage. It just takes a little bit longer. But it's really cool because it's before the no stage. I don't know if you know any toddlers.

A (21:14)

Yeah.

B (21:15)

But man, I've got a two and a half year old right now and she would be so hard to potty train. She is like, no, I will do it myself and then get really frustrated, have a tantrum. So we're doing it before all of that happens.

A (21:27)

Did you say that a newborn baby goes pee every 15 minutes?

B (21:31)

Some of them do.

A (21:31)

Okay, so then how do you live life and then do the ec?

B (21:35)

So I just do the wake up first, fuss after feeding, and then I potty them one more time before a nap and I really just skip the rest. I let the diaper catch the rest.

A (21:43)

Okay, so then that's where it's a cloth diaper.

B (21:46)

Cloth or disposable? Whatever works.

A (21:48)

Okay. Okay. That's what I was concerned about.

B (21:50)

After baby one, I gotta be honest, I used disposables, I used compostables for a while. Like, I just couldn't keep up with cloth diapering even though we weren't cleaning poop.

A (21:59)

Right.

B (22:00)

And again, I noticed that they stayed drier than the cloth diapers because you got a baby who's crying, they're screaming their head off. And you're a new mom, you're like, oh, My gosh, what do you need? You're trying to think of the Dunston language. You saw that on Oprah. You're like, okay, what does this cry mean? We'll try the breasts. We'll try swaddling. We'll try Harvey Carp's four S's, five S's, whatever. We're going to shush and swaddle. And it's crazy, right? You try everything to get the baby to stop crying, and then you check their diaper and they have pooped or peed, and you're like, oh, you were crying to get changed. But if you rewind a few moments, they were crying to get you to take the diaper off so that they could go hygienically, like, in alignment with their very strong instinct to not soil themselves.

A (22:40)

Okay, but so even people that are doing full time elimination communication, it's not every time throughout the day they go to the bathroom, you're trying to do it ec they're still wearing diapers.

B (22:50)

They're still wearing them. And that point I was making is just like, they don't want to do it so much more in certain kinds of diapers versus others. So you want to choose the one as your backup that they signal the best in. And then usually it's like super fast. You offer the pee. You offer for them to go pee, they go. You put the same diaper back on them and you move on with your day. Like, it saves so much time.

A (23:13)

Okay.

B (23:14)

People think I was meeting with a customer this morning while I'm in town. I was like, let's meet up. And I met with a couple of customers. And one of them was like, yeah, I haven't started yet. I have a 10 month old. And I was like, what's holding you back? Like, why don't you just start? She's like, I don't know. I'm just so used to changing diapers into doing this. And I was like, okay, next time your baby wakes up, just do it. Just try it one time and you'll be amazed. Like, it'll, it'll work. And then from there you get to pick and choose. Like, you can do super low bar EC and still not have to potty train.

A (23:44)

Okay? So there's levels to it. There are some women who are home and they're every time their kid has to go, they're like making sure they go in the toilet. But then there are some people that are only doing it a few times a day.

B (23:54)

I have one podcast episode on the Go diaper free Podcast. It's called Super Part Time ec. And it's about this teacher who read my book and was like, what do I do? I have my kid in daycare from nine to six every day. And so I coached her to go, you know, have them go before, have them go after, talk to them during daycare. You're not gonna. You're gonna use the diaper instead. Do EC at home. What? Anytime your child's at home, just do it exactly as I teach. Like, you're gonna just be responding. You're gonna know their timing, and you're gonna go, okay, it's been like 40 minutes. You're fussing. I'm gonna offer the potty. Because there's literally nothing else it could be. Yeah, right? And so she did it that way. And then when the daycare allowed her, which is they used to daycare, like, daycare law. It's not a law, but they used to potty train our kids for us in the 90s. And now they're like, you can't let your kid be here without diapers until they're two or three. So, like, we have conflict there. But if you work with them, and I worked with a lot of people with their daycare, you can find a nice middle ground and they'll be like, okay, when they're two. So this particular woman, when she. Her kid was two, she did a potty training experience. After doing it part time. Super part time. She said it was she, quote, unquote, joyful. It was blissful. Now, how many potty training stories do we ever hear where it's like a blissful experience?

A (25:13)

Yeah. Never.

B (25:14)

It's never. It's the opposite. It's terrible. You have literally only given them the diaper for years because that's what you've been told to do by your doctor, by your mom, by whoever. Then you're gonna be like, hey, you have to go in the toilet now. And they're terrified. So, like, we're. We are setting them up for failure, all of us, ourselves and them for failure. Instead, when we do it this way, we're doing an exposure technique. We're exposing them to the toilet at least once a day. Just whatever you have the capacity for. And then when we get to the point where the daycare allows it, we do the potty training. And it was joyful. It was like one or two days. She was like, no big deal. And then her child would go to school without a diaper. So it's a thing that holds a lot of parents back because like what you mentioned, we've got moms in the workforce doing nine to fives. So how do they do this? How do they raise a securely attached child as well? It's gonna be harder, Right. So we have to get creative. So I say just do as much as you can. Talk to your child about what's going to happen. It's a backup while you're at daycare. But a lot of kids will ask the daycare workers to take them.

A (26:20)

Yeah.

B (26:20)

So it kind of backfires on the daycare workers. You're just like, so.

A (26:23)

So how do you go from EC with an infant to EC with a walking toddler?

B (26:30)

So it gets a little rough in there. I have a really good example for you. Like when we lived in mud huts, right. Intact community. Like, I've went to Ghana, like, 25 years ago. Totally lived like that. When the babies were crawling, they no longer did the point and shoot at all. Like, they no longer potty their babies. That baby would crawl. Well, they would pee in the mud hut. The parent would chew them out. You know, they would crawl outside, then they would crawl further, and then they're starting to walk there. They would walk to the place where everybody goes potty and they would go with the other kids to go potty. Where everyone goes. We live in the modern world. We've got carpets, we've got clothing, all of that stuff. So it gets a little bumpy during the crawling months. You can imagine they're like, well, I could just crawl away. So they're gonna pee in their diaper and then they're gonna crawl away. But they still have it on them. So it becomes a thing of where the parent just sticks to it. Just stick to the, what I call the four easy catches. And just get the morning one, get the poop. Even if you're just catching, like, one a day, which has happened to me, just stick with it. And once they have totally mastered whatever they're working on, which you don't know until after the fact ever with parenting. Oh, they were cutting a tooth or, oh, they were learning how to say mommy. When they're past that, they'll get back on track. But it's really up to the parent to, like, hold fast on it. Like, this is what we're doing. This diaper is a backup. This is not a toilet. And I'm going to use it until you're walking and we can stop using them.

A (27:53)

So, I mean, step by step, logistically, what happens when you are on a plane or on a train or on a Bus or you're in a car on a road trip and you've got this little. You call it the top hat potty that you're setting on your lap and you're holding your baby above it. They go in it and then what do you do? How do you dispose of it? I mean, logistically.

B (28:11)

So I had one reel go pretty viral where I'm potty and you weren't on an airplane. And breast. Breastfed milk doesn't smell. It has no smell. It's like pretty non toxic. So like she went in it. I put the top hat potty between my feet, just still at the air in the, in the airline seat. And I put it down there. I held it between my feet so it didn't spill. I put her flat on her back. A baby held in this position for EC is in a low squat. So everybody's seen the unicorn pooping commercial about the squatty potty. It makes it easy, but it also makes it come out clean. So, like, really didn't need to wipe her. Put her on her back, put her diaper back on her, and then passed her to my partner. And then I got up, went to the lavatory, pulled the little cotton part out of the way, dumped it into the toilet, put some water in it from the sink, swished it around, dumped it into the toilet, wiped it with paper towel, back to my seat. Oh, flushed it and then back to my seat. And so people criticized me. They're like, why didn't you just make her go in a diaper? And I'm like, where would I have changed her, right? Because you know, that would have been all up her back and I would have to change her whole outfit. So the other thing is, like, anytime I go to a restaurant or a store or whatever, it really depends on the age of my baby. But typically I'll offer the potty in the car because it's like, I know this toilet and they know this toilet. And we're gonna have like a really discreet potty session. So I'll hold the top hat between my legs, have them go, and then if it's just pee, I just pour it into the grass or onto the concrete just like if a dog did it, would it evaporate? Okay, fine. If it's poop, I will usually just bring it in and go to the toilet and dump it, just like I described in the airplane. So sometimes I'll put it in the bottom of the stroller. Sometimes if I'm in car line at school, for example, it has happened Where a kid has pooped in the toilet, I will wrap it up. I put it into a Starbucks cup one time, and I sound like I go to Starbucks all the time. I do not go to Starbucks anymore. I'm way past that. But back in the day, I had a cup in there and I put it over it and I, you know, put the lid on it and then I wrapped it all in a plastic bag and we made it home. And it wasn't that bad. But typically there's a bathroom nearby no matter where you are, right? And like, if you're hiking, what would you do if you had to poop?

A (30:28)

You just leave it out there.

B (30:29)

You just leave it out there. You probably dig a hole and then cover it up like you're supposed to. I don't know. We just figure it out. We find ways. But what I like to do is like, get to a place potty, Then I can shop and the baby's not gonna fuss. I can put them in the carrier, they're gonna be relaxed, and then when we leave, I potty them in my car again. So I'll either use the public toilet before and after a shop or the car toilet before and after a shop. Now this sounds like it takes a ton of time. Like anything would take forever, but it actually takes a lot of things off my plate. I don't have to find a changing table. I don't have to worry about disgusting public toilets. I don't have to clean a blow up a blowout off of my baby's body. I don't have to clean up a car seat. So, like, doing this before and after takes me a few minutes. And it helps us have, like, a really relaxed, chill shopping experience. And then one thing I want to add about baby wearing, when babies, like, try to get out of the baby carrier, that means that they need to go to the bathroom, usually.

A (31:25)

Oh, wow.

B (31:26)

So in a store, I'll just strap them into my baby carrier, walk around, and then if they start to get fussy, I just take them to the public toilet. That's a really cool tool because it's like instant signal maker is having them in the carrier.

A (31:41)

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B (33:37)

Yes, it's called the Pampers Institute and they help to write. My stepmom became a nurse a couple dozen years ago and her medical text said that they don't have sphincter control till they're 18 months old.

A (33:50)

And that's absolutely false.

B (33:52)

Absolutely false. There's no way, because I've helped over a million babies do this, okay? I have seen it with my own six kids. Babies are born with sphincter control. They will hold it till you get the diaper off. They're born with it. So I Met this guy and he worked for pampers for like 30 years. He holds the patent for the newborn diaper that has a little cutout part.

A (34:15)

Yeah.

B (34:16)

And so he and I met. Cause I was like, oh, you're the enemy. I need to have coffee with you. So he came over and we talked and he was like, he had so many stories, so many things. But basically he told me that Brazelton, the one who did that study, was the head of the Pampers Institute and that they did heavily influence the medical texts. They worked together. They continue to work together today. Your pediatrician will tell you you need to circumcise your boy. You need to get all of these vaccines way earlier than. Well, we won't get into that. Well, we should supplement with formula so that the baby's jaundice doesn't get worse. And you need to wait till your child says they're ready to potty train. Where did all these messages come from? You follow the money. They came from those big companies.

A (35:05)

I mean it is exactly the same. You're saying that, you know, if Pampers or other big diaper brands literally chose the people to run studies a certain way to sway the market, that's exactly what food companies do. That is exactly what pharmaceutical companies do. So this corruption really goes everywhere, which is insane. Is diaper culture damaging a child's self esteem?

B (35:30)

Absolutely. Now I don't have empirical studies about this, but there is no way that being told to ignore your instincts and to dedicate in your own pants for three years is not damaging to a child.

A (35:47)

I mean, I do it all the time. Nobody seems to have a problem.

B (35:51)

Now for grandma and grandpa, maybe that's a normal thing, but that's because they're incontinent at a certain point. Babies aren't incontinent. So we are literally telling them to ignore their instincts. We're shushing them into doing it the way that it's not the parents fault, the way that we've been told to do it by people we trust. And it's also just infiltrated our whole society. I mean, it sounds like a huge conspiracy theory, but honestly you just look through the steps of it. That's exactly what happened. They just wanted to sell diapers. Now this friend in Asheville who was, he's still a shareholder in Pampers, so he can't reveal his name. But he said after talking to me and after talking about, I told him that there's an alternative that you can potty train earlier. That it's what all babies of all human history have done, and none of them were psychologically damaged. Like, hello. That doesn't even make sense that he said that the diaper companies have gone too far. And he couldn't talk to me for several days. He's like, I just need to go think about this. And then when we got back together, he was like, wow, my mind is blown. And he's like, I'm not gonna say anything because I'm a shareholder, but my mind is blown.

A (36:55)

How do you respond to people that say elimination Communication is extreme and unnecessary and unrealistic?

B (37:02)

It's the new old thing. It's what people did. It's. It's ancient wisdom. It's how our babies are wired. It's not a fad or a trend. It's literally what they did before diapers. If you don't want to do it, that's cool, but maybe you want to early potty train. Did you know you could do it between 16 and 18 months and it's easier? Like, try that. But usually the people who say that aren't going to early potty train either. They're going to let their child potty train themselves, and they're going to have their kid having problems with bedwetting at 7 and 8 years old. Like, it's all related.

A (37:31)

Oh, it is.

B (37:32)

Oh, yeah.

A (37:33)

What's your theory on bedwetting?

B (37:34)

They're born with sphincter control. We're teaching them to ignore those signals from their bodies, to not trust their own body cues. And those muscles, they stop getting used, so they're gonna start to become flaccid. And I think that we're physiologically damaging our kids by making them go in the diaper for so long. And again, y' all are innocent if you didn't know anything. But now that you know, the earlier you potty train, the. The less of a correlation there is with bedwetting.

A (38:03)

So when somebody. When you have a mom tell you, well, my pediatrician says that my child isn't ready yet, what do you say?

B (38:08)

If the mom does everything the pediatrician says, there's no help in her.

A (38:12)

Okay.

B (38:12)

I love you. You know, like, we can't. We can't help those people. Yeah, maybe with the next child, hey, look me up, because this is gonna suck for you. If you wait longer and longer, you're gonna have a terrible time, and you're gonna be like, andrea, I have a new baby. Help me. I would say, what does your gut tell you? And I would tell them some stories about indigenous people, about our history I'd give them those stats, like, in the 50s if 92% were done by 18 months. Do you think that our kids are any biologically different or physiologically different than kids? What is that, 70 years ago? They're not. We haven't evolved into a different set of everything. Like, they're the same.

A (38:52)

So I think the tie here, what I think is interesting, which, you know, I didn't know any of this about potty training, and I don't have children, and so I've never potty trained a child. So this is. I'm hearing all this for the first time. But what I do know is I've talked extensively on this show with different experts about how. I mean, even without having kids, just looking at the world around me, I do feel like we are undercutting children a lot, saying that they are not capable of things that they are capable of. And I feel like there is a distinction here. There. There is a connection. You know, I see that in older kids, but also, like, are we doing this? Is this actually starting as young as potty training? Age as young as infancy of feeling like, oh, our kids, you know, they're incapable of being able to tell us when they need to use the bathroom and we're undercutting them, you know, as young as just days, weeks, months old, 100.

B (39:43)

Do you remember a little bit ago in this interview you said you say wait and the baby waits?

A (39:50)

Mm, yes.

B (39:51)

That baby is capable of communication, comes out communicating, understands language far before they say their first word. So babies are so much more capable than we and we. And we really dumb it down. We. We. We make them convenient. We make them fit into our lives. And there is a certain amount, like, there's a part of me that really believes in the convenience of how do we raise babies in a convenient way that works with our lives? Because I'm a single mom of six kids. Let me tell you how much I need convenience. You know, I'm the one who should have everybody in diapers and who should be doing all the things that are easier, like not breastfeeding, all of that. The way I see it, though, is it's an upfront investment. Like, I'm going to breastfeed them. I'm going to give them those healthy. I'm going to try to birth naturally. Like I birth all my naturally. I did three free births with no doctor or midwife or anything. Like, wow, I am gung ho about how we start, is how we continue on. I want them to have a peaceful beginning where they Feel safe and good and heard.

A (40:49)

What was your free birth experience like?

B (40:51)

Oh, my gosh. I can't even. That wouldn't fit in. Three hours of talking. It was amazing. They were 75 minutes. And like, I had. No, no, I was. I was at Starbucks the next day getting a latte. I was like, so resilient. That is crazy. And it was amazing. It was so wonderful. But I guess what I'm saying is, like, I don't believe what people say about babies not getting it. I think early on in my pregnancies, I read Continuum Concept, which is about Stone Age Indians in the 60s. And this woman, Jean Liedloff, she went down there and like, spent time living with the Stone Age Indians. And it became like this kind of parenting manual even though we don't have intact communities. So, like, parts of it don't really work. But, like, the parts I got from her book were really trusting that that child is into their self preservation more than you are.

A (41:39)

Yeah.

B (41:40)

Like, they are smart, they're survivors, and they are forgiving and loving and resilient and they are communicating and they get it. And they're not stupid, they're not incontinent, they're not dumb. Babies are brilliant and they are learning so fast. And like, they go through all of these developmental milestones in the same pattern, whether the developmentally delayed or not, and they, they go through and achieve each thing. It's like, it's so beautiful to watch six of my own babies go through all these phases. And my whole goal is kind of Montessori in nature is like, to support, to make the environment supportive of whatever milestone they're in while trying not to hover or helicopter.

A (42:25)

Yeah.

B (42:25)

Thank God. Having multiple children, you can't. So it's like they're kind of on their own, like, hey, I hope you're okay over there. Like, I have to do this and I really want to, like, set up the environment and then listen. And I do my best, but I am very, very allergic to the perfectionism people expect out of moms. I am so imperfect. But they're forgiving. So, like, at least I'm trying. Like, I figure if I'm trying, then my child is going to be way more securely attached than I was, you know, and that, like, you just try to be healthier than your parents were, you know, I like that. Do it.

A (42:59)

Not the healthiest, but healthier.

B (43:01)

Exactly.

A (43:05)

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B (45:12)

Yeah, I mean I've seen hundreds of thousands of people start at all the different ages between 0 and 18 months. You just need to learn. You need to learn. And that's where I will. I'll just toot my own horn, come to me and I'll teach you how to do it, whatever age you're at. Because it's going to be a little bit different at each age. But really, just one client told me one time, take the diaper off. There you started. It's literally the first step. Just take the diaper off. Don't be so afraid. It's just a baby. It's just pee. You're gonna get peed on anyway. If you potty train, like, there's gonna be messes. You might not get peed on, but, like, with a baby, there's gonna be mess. But just be curious, Explore. See what's going on. You can do observation over a waterproof pad if your baby's not crawling. And you can see just like, what's going on with this creature, you know, and you can notice these shifts and stuff. It's like a little study where you're, like, learning each other, you know, and you can see if they signal or whatever. So just observe if you feel like it's too late, just observe and see. And the next time they wake up, offer the potty. Like, they don't have to go in it. It's not potty training. If I could leave you out with anything. The EC is not potty training. It is this, like, this team effort towards just helping to fulfill their needs until they can do it themselves. So there's no expectation that you're gonna do this one thing and it's just gonna work. It is like a feedback loop. So you're gonna try something and it's gonna blow up and you'll be like, whoa, never mind. Won't be trying that again. And just be open to what it looks like. But that's why I created the four easy catches. It's like these four things. You're almost guaranteed to catch something in the potty and then you can get started.

A (46:52)

What is the number one mistake that parents make when they try early potty learning?

B (46:57)

Expecting their baby to go on the clock every 30 minutes or something. Expecting them to go exactly when offered. I think going off clock timing is a huge mistake. I don't go off clock timing. Do you like? No, no. I mean daily. Sure. For number two, we've got a daily thing, but that for babies doesn't happen till they're six months old.

A (47:18)

How do you handle pushback from teachers or pediatricians or family members? What do you tell parents to say when their other family and friends think they're nuts.

B (47:26)

I say, don't say anything. I say, keep it to yourself. It's like your own little special thing that you get with your kid. You don't need their approval. I would also say the proof is in the pudding. So one woman filmed her child successfully taking herself to the bathroom at home, showed it to the daycare worker. Look, she's doing it at home. She's 18 months old. And the daycare worker was mind blown and let her come without diapers with family members. Like, if you have a partner who's not supportive, do it anyway. And that child's gonna ask your partner or your ex husband or whoever it is to do it with them too. Because this baby really wants this. So it's not like we're just contriving something to make a baby do, like a trick or a game. This is actually like something that they're born really wanting. And then when you finally get it, they're like, oh, mommy gets it. Daddy gets it. Great. And then they start expecting it from everybody. But in the end, like, ignore what everybody says because they're gonna go off of this really deeply ingrained diaper culture message that you have to wait for readiness. It's not true. It's just meant to sell more diapers and pull ups are diapers. It's meant to have you as a customer for six years. Tune that out. If anything sounds like that, tune it out and just go, all right, I'm gonna do this quietly with my own baby. And then maybe somebody might see me doing it and be like, whoa, it really works.

A (48:48)

Am I nuts to point out that it seems like on social media, you know, obviously pro breastfeeding, that's huge. It's widely accepted, I think, now for the most part. And then you have baby wearing, like, baby wearing, like, ever. Like, everybody's doing that. Everybody's talking about that. Elimination communication. It seems like this is the last thing. To me, those things all align. It's all about, like, what a baby naturally is made to do. But elimination communication is still, to me, kind of like the redheaded stepchild, right? No offense to redheads. So, like, what's going on there? Why. Why does it seem like this is the last thing that people want to.

B (49:26)

Kind of support, I would say money, because they have invested so much into marketing something that parents never. That moms never wanted. So they have a lot invested into it. The other thing is, it's pretty clear how to breastfeed. And you've got lactation consultants at every hospital that can help you learn the latch and how to do it, how to pump, all of that. I think that formula versus breastfeeding is like a no brainer decision. If you can breastfeed, you're gonna do it because it's proven to have more, you know, good effects on your kid. Baby wearing, easy to see how to do it right. Oh, that's how you just strap them on and then you can easily. Like it's a low bar entry. Like, there's very low friction. You can just kind of get into both of them pretty easily. With ec, it's like for some people, they think it's so complicated that they don't try it, you know, And I think if you try it just once, just when your newborn wakes up, your whole belief system will shift on it. It's literally by doing it, you'll be like, whoa, that really works. And it does give you like a little dopamine spike. You're like, wow, I know I did it.

A (50:34)

You know what I'm realizing talking to you is that everybody thinks I would never fall victim to a cult. I could never be indoctrinated. I would never fall for any of that. And we have all collectively fallen for a complete indoctrination scheme when it comes to diapers.

B (50:52)

Absolutely. We're brainwashed, Alex. We're brainwashed. We need to wake up and it's like the 99th monkey thing, you know, like when. What's the tipping point here? How many people need to know about this before we go? Wait. Okay, we need to change course on this. And I think the first step in changing course on this whole cultural thing is to start doing conventional potty training earlier. Let's just start there. Everybody doesn't need to do ec. If you're listening to this, you're like, whoa, this sound. This makes so much sense. So I'm gonna do it, then do it.

A (51:23)

This idea that pediatricians say you have to wait till your child tells you they're ready to potty train is pseudoscience garbage.

B (51:30)

It's pseudoscience garbage. Read the thing. It's terrible.

A (51:33)

Are we culturally addicted to diapers?

B (51:36)

Absolutely. We know no other way. We've lost that wisdom. It hasn't been passed on. It's gone. So I'm bringing it back, you know, like, this is why I'm here. This is what I was strangely called to do.

A (51:49)

You're like the mother of this movement.

B (51:51)

I am.

A (51:51)

You're like the go to person.

B (51:53)

I am. What kind of Tools.

A (51:54)

Do you help people? Like, parents are like, I'm interested, but I'm overwhelmed and I'm scared.

B (51:58)

Yeah. I say, just do the four easy catches. Just try the wake up. Try the first fest after feeding. Try. When you see the poop face, why would you wait for the diaper to fill up with poop and then clean it off your baby's crevices? Do you do or fences or anything instead? Just like, stop, say, wait, and then catch it in the potty. Like, just start there and yeah, of course I have courses. I have lots of courses, little ones. But my main things are my books because they break everything down. And I start with. I don't start with the history and all that stuff. I'm like, this is how you do it. That's how the beginning of the book is. Because we're moms. Right?

A (52:28)

Right.

B (52:28)

And there's an audio version. So, like, who reads books anymore? If you have a newborn, you can't hold a book. I think that. And I also include, like a video library. I've always included that because there's. How do you hold the baby in this position? What does it look like? What does the signal look like? I have examples of all of that that come with my book because it's not black and white and two dimensional. EC is like a lively thing that they have always done, but that's now lost. So, like, how do I bring it back? I made it really in, like, here's all the different ways to wrap your mind around it. And my goal is to get you just to try to catch one, see how you feel, and then just know that there are options. Like, if you've so many people are like, wow, where were you 13 years ago? If I would have known about this, I would have done it. I just think, like, if it's not for you, tell somebody about it and then they can try it. But I think the bigger cultural shift is gonna happen when we start to give ourselves permission to potty train earlier. So if you do know EC and you're just like, okay, I can't imagine. Even though it literally makes mothering easier, even though it literally takes so much off your plate and makes it so much easier to parent your children, like, I have six, I am doing a good job as a mom. Like, I feel like I know them so well from doing this. I feel like we've got this super strong thing and, like, I feel like I've succeeded. Like, I've got amazing kids who are great in public. They're wild at Home. But like, we can start as a culture just by lowering the potty training age by one year now, the diaper company will lose, I think, I estimate like $11 billion a year. If we lower it by one year, they lose a lot. 2 billion 11 a lot.

A (54:06)

They're probably going to start upping it. They're probably going to be like, don't even worry about potty training till kindergarten.

B (54:10)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, diaper companies, if you're listening, you can partner with me because this is going to happen whether you like it or not. So though, I will help people potty train earlier and we will use your diapers but for less time, you know, and then you'll be the good guy in this whole thing. But seriously, like, if we bring it back from 36 months average to 24 months average, it's going to be easier for parents, easier for daycares, and our kids are going to be more well functioning grownups. Like, we're literally, I think we're really psychologically damaging our kids by waiting till 3 years old.

A (54:46)

Why do you say that?

B (54:47)

We are forced. We're giving them no other option but to soil themselves and ignore their own bodily sensations and to hush and no, you don't need that. I know what you need. You need to go in this diaper. And not that we're doing it on purpose, it's because what we're taught, but we're literally like telling them to ignore their own body. And that is, that's not the thing these days. We want our kids to honor themselves, protect themselves and be as healthy as possible. You know, their brains, their bodies, everything. So putting them in diapers and just basically forcing them to go on themselves, I think that's damaging.

A (55:28)

How do you work with a kid to go to the bathroom when they need to go to the bathroom and not like ignore it, go in their pants because they want to keep playing or they don't want to leave the situation they're in. I see that a lot.

B (55:37)

Absolutely. So I actually wrote a board book about that.

A (55:40)

Oh.

B (55:40)

And illustrated. It's called Tiny Potty Board Book. And it shows the kid feeling the sensation and then bringing the teddy bear with them to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom and then going back to play. Because if I'm working at my computer and I need to pee, I'm going to pause and I'm going to go pee.

A (55:57)

Right.

B (55:57)

So I think that it makes sense to model that for children. You can go. And maybe the tractor has to go potty too. And then they do over the toilet. All my kids do that. It's so cute. And then it's their turn to go and then they go back to play. So we want to teach healthy habits from the beginning.

A (56:11)

Where can people follow you on social media?

B (56:14)

Go diaper free. Everywhere.

A (56:15)

Go diaper free. And if you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?

B (56:23)

I would say we start with birth. Natural, undisturbed as possible. Birth. I feel like the way we come in matters. And then obviously potty your babies at least once a day.

A (56:34)

Andrea, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.

B (56:36)

Thanks for having me.

A (56:40)

What do you think? Your newborn baby just gonna say poo poo to diapers? I couldn't resist doing that. Okay, please leave a five star review. If you enjoyed this episode, you learned something new. Even if you totally disagree, I want to know your thoughts. In the Keith Servant is Facebook group, we post new episodes with different expert guests giving their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.