Customer Reviews

Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I started putting my 6 month old son on a Baby Bjorn little potty. He started going #2 in the potty right away. When he was about 10 months old, a friend recommended this book. That is when I knew the goal was to have him out of diapers between 15-18 months.

He is 16 months old and we have not changed a #2 diaper in over a month. My parents take care of him two days a week and love not having to change messy diapers - that is not the case with my niece who is exactly one year older than him. My son was a very strong-willed infant so I knew the power struggle was going to be crazy if I waited for the readiness approach. He still screams and twists and turns when we change his wet diapers so we are VERY motivated to stick with this program.

Last week, I had him in his training pants and he ran out of the room. I found him trying to sit on the potty. I pulled off the pants and he sat down and peed. He felt good and I felt good. It was a win-win.

People will be negative and judgmental just like a lot of these posts - especially your own family. Surround yourself with positive people and this can be a great experience. I love to sit and read books to my son while he does his business. He puts bowls on his head and calls it a hat or plays with foam bath letters. We have a great time.

I am going to work with him when I am off work over the holiday (he will just have turned 17 months). I will update this post on our progress.

Update: I did work with my son over the holidays and now at 17 months he has gone eight nights in a row dry. We now do not have him in diapers at all even at night. We have an occasional "miss" during the day, but it is usually a little pee in his training pants, he pulls at them and says "wet". We then go to the potty and finish our business. We are very very happy and have no regrets with doing this program. It is also saving us about $1.50 a day in the cost of diapers.

Update2: My son just turned 22-months and he hasn't had a diaper on since he was 17 months, even at night. We cannot recommend this program enough. We are so thankful that we raised our son this way.

Let me say first, if I'd come across this book when my daughter was a newborn, I'd probably rate it five stars. I'm rating from the perspective of a parent starting later.

As a parent who has a toddler-aged child, I found this book to be very long (extremely long!) on research and "why-to," but lacking in "how-to." I didn't particularly need the "why-to" sections -- that's why I bought the book in the first place! The "how-to" portions of this book are geared almost exclusively toward those starting training at a very (six to nine months) young age, and the rest of us have to figure out on our own how to apply Dr. Lekovic's methods with an older child (my daughter is 20 months old).

I wish I'd found this book when my daughter was younger. Since I didn't, I would love to see Dr. Lekovic write a book (or supplement/article even) about how to work with an child who's already past 18 months.

I have read several books about early toilet learning, and I have to say that this was definitely not my favorite. The author does give a lot of evidence that supports early potty training, but does not give a lot of practical advice for implementation.

I would give Chapter 2 a 5 star rating, and without this chapter the whole book probably would have gotten only 1-2 stars from me. In Chapter 2, she gives a really great, detailed history of how traditional potty training progressed to "readiness training" in the US, and how nobody has ever given sufficient evidence that there are any benefits to waiting until the child shows interest in learning to use the toilet. This section is a great resource for anyone who is scared that by exposing a child to the potty early you are psychologically damaging him or her.

I liked that the author recommended taking the leap to underwear fairly early. I think that this is important and it is a hard step for parents to take because it can be messy, but it really is the best way to help your child to be more aware of his or her body, and super-absorbent disposable diapers just don't do that.

The advice that the author gives regarding the potty training process implies that there is only one way to do it - starting at 6-12 mos, which actually is actually LATE when you compare cross-culturally. There are positions that you can use to hold a tiny infant to help cue them before they are able to sit unsupported. Some people believe that babies lose some of their awareness of their elimination by 6 mos. If you plan to use this method and you have a child on the way or who is younger than 6 months, I highly recommend that you read Ingrid Bauer's Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene and any of Laurie Boucke's books, such as Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living, and Christine Gross Loh's book The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative. These books also contain some useful information about how to start this process for younger and older children and are more flexible in terms of when to start and how.

Something that I found disturbing, yet fascinating, about this book is that it is written from a perspective that overlooks and/or dismisses other parenting practices that seem to go naturally with this process: She gives a "lecture" that there are certain inconveniences that a parent should be willing to do for the well-being of their child, yet (1) she spends several pages in the book discussing details of bottle feeding and barely glosses over breastfeeding which is so much healthier for babies in so many ways including digestive system health. Although she does not discuss her personal reasons for not breastfeeding, it was apparent to me that she did not really think that it was important and I am frustrated to see that attitude from a pediatrician who is advising parents of young children. (2) She discourages cloth diapering because she finds that inconvenient. As a mother who has used cloth diapers AND early potty awareness with my child, I found this quite ridiculous. It is SO much more effort to take a child to the potty several times a day than to wash cloth diapers every couple of days (UNLESS you don't have a washing machine or you have a shortage of water), plus, if your child is using the toilet successfully you will have much less diaper laundry. I guess we all have our priorities, but I found this contradictory.

One small pet peeve of mine is that, in the section where she talks about nutrition, constipation, and avoiding juices, she reiterates the old "8 glasses of water a day" myth, which is just not true (how could children and adults of all different sizes have exactly the same requirement, anyways?). In fact, we get most of our water from the food that we eat and only need to drink water when we are thirsty. For more information, do a search at Snopes or type in "8 glasses water" on your favorite search engine.

There were definitely some interesting things in this book other than what I have listed, but overall I think that most of the useful information can be found elsewhere. This book is not one that I would recommend to people who are considering early potty training.

I would give this book five stars for its ability to normalize infant potty training and to empower the parent or caregiver to put it into practice. However because of the author's tendency at times to use the book as her personal parenting soapbox and her failure to address an audience with diverse parenting styles, I lowered my rating to three stars.

Written by a pediatrician and grounded in research, this book had me convinced within a few chapters that infant toilet training was the most normal thing in the world. Though I read the book for practical reasons, my interest was piqued by the history and social context of toilet training and diaper use in the US. I was fascinated to learn that the age of initiation of toilet training gradually changed from one month in the early 20th century, to six months in the 1950s, to 18 months in the 1970s, to 24-30 months today. In non-Western cultures, the process for infants often begins within the first few weeks of life. Though the author recommends starting at six months, it is because she sees it at more practical in our modern society and not because younger infants are not capable. But the clear message is that beginning toilet training at age two or three, which is the norm in Western countries today, is actually only a very recent societal trend and it's possible to start at a much younger age.

It's important to clarify that the "training" referred to is not accomplished through any type of coercion or rewards system. In a nutshell, it is more of developing an association for the child between voiding and actually sitting on the toilet. When the child is young the caregiver pays attention to the baby's cues and patterns (for instance usually babies urinate soon after eating or waking up from sleep) and simply puts them on the toilet at those times, starting with just once or twice a day and gradually increasing. The caregiver makes it a positive experience by reading books with the child or giving them a favorite toy to play with while sitting on the toilet and makes it a built-in, matter-of-fact part of daily life just like getting dressed and eating breakfast. As the association builds the child will naturally wet her diaper less and less often.

The author effectively dispels the myths and articulates the benefits of early toilet training, and then goes on to provide very practical and straightforward instructions for how to actually accomplish it. She also provides helpful information about how children's bodies work and related medical issues such as urinary tract infections and constipation that all parents would benefit from, regardless of choice of toilet training method. As a reader I felt motivated and eager to start as soon as I could.

On the other hand, I was put off at a few points when the author took advantage of her captive audience to dispense her personal parenting advice which was only tenuously related to the topic of the book. A few examples are that she advocates cry-it-out sleep training, says that bottles and other comfort items should be cut off at age one, and devotes the entire epilogue to a critique of helicopter parenting. This is not only out of place and irritating but in some ways it is detrimental to her message, as it does not acknowledge a diverse audience of parents. For instance, she seems to assume that families bottle feed and only gives passing mention to breastfeeding. Her solution to nighttime bed wetting is to not allow fluid intake in the evening. For parents who nurse or bottle feed their children to sleep (let alone nurse/feed in the middle of the night) she offers no advice except "don't do it." She also does not differentiate clearly between breastmilk and cow's milk in her discussion of the role of milk in constipation. She dismisses the use of cloth diapers as too much of an inconvenience, which not only perpetuates this cultural myth but is inconsistent with the rest of her philosophy about toilet training (as she states in many places how disposable diapers are unhelpful in toilet training because the child does not feel wet in them.) While these views may appeal to a mainstream audience that formula feeds and uses disposable diapers, in the same breath she alienates (or at least fails to address the practical concerns of) parents who breastfeed, nurse to sleep, or use cloth diapers. In short, while the core of this book is solid, some parts of what she says or fails to say are too heavily influenced by her own personal parenting experiences and thus not broad enough for a diverse audience.

My final critique of this book is that it offers no advice for parents who want to begin toilet training before the age of six months. I have also begun to read Infant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke which explains how to do this from birth and considers babies over six months to be "late starters." Though I haven't finished that book yet I can already say that while it seems to be solid in both research and detailed practical advice, it definitely leaves me with the impression that it is a very alternative practice, whereas Diaper-Free Before 3 makes me feel like it is normal, mainstream, and uncomplicated. Ultimately I'm glad I am reading both books as they seem to complement each other. Other books on infant toilet training include The Diaper-Free Baby: The Natural Toilet Training Alternative by Christine Gross-Loh and Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene by Ingrid Bauer. Whatever you read, the take-home message is that infant toilet training is normal and healthy and requires only a few basic instructions and principles to get started. I'm glad I am learning about this topic and am enjoying accompanying my baby in the process of learning to use the toilet!

As a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Lekovic offers a much-needed critique from within the medical community of the academic sacred cows (such as the so-called `readiness approach') that continue to be perpetuated in spite of a great deal of contemporary evidence to the contrary.

As a physician who is also a parent, though, what I appreciate most about Diaper Free Before Three is that it is one of those rare books that is intelligently written and well researched enough to be used by medical providers and yet approachable, impassioned, and even funny at the same time.

Moreover, the book is a comprehensive reference on all things related to toilet training, including all of the problems commonly associated with it such as bedwetting, constipation, etc., so that even if you are done with potty training your kids, her book still has tons of useful information.

I personally think the route that she advocates is an ideal middle ground between infant training and the advice most pediatricians are giving their patients to wait for readiness.

There really is nothing else out there like this book!

I read Infant Potty Training by Boucke and this book before my baby was born. When my baby was born, I was unsure which approach I would take. I could see they had very different approaches, Boucke recommending starting at birth, and Lekovic recommending starting at 6 months. However, it quickly became apparent that Boucke's method was not for me. My daughter gave me no signs when she peed, and very little when she pooped, making it very frustrating to tell when she was voiding. She also hated to be bare-bottomed for any length of time. I felt that to use Boucke's method, I'd basically have to live in the bathroom. I found Lekovic's method much more compatible with modern western living.

I actually started Lekovic's method at 3 months, putting my baby on the potty for a few minutes after naps (fully clothed), 3 months earlier than she recommends in the book. When my baby started solids at 6 months, her stools became much more solid and she hated the feel of them in her diaper. After a few poops in the diaper, she started holding it for the potty. Now at 7 months she is pooping exclusively in the potty. The solidification of her poop was the first major step in her training, and I'm glad I had introduced her to the potty before I started solids.

I don't consider Lekovic's method to be "elimination communication" because the baby doesn't need to cue you. You just need to offer the potty at predictable times, and praise your baby when they go in the potty. I consider it "training" because the potty time is initiated by the parent. I also don't consider this to be a "diaper-free" method because my baby is always in diapers, except for potty time and diaper changes. If you want to do diaper-free elimination communication, I recommend Boucke's book. This is a way to do infant potty training without those things.

I really enjoyed the history of potty training in the west that's included in the book. It could give more detail about the "how" of training, but so could Boucke's book. I actually found the "how" in this book to be clearer than Boucke's book. The table on page 78 of the overview of the plan pretty much sums it up.

Two things that she recommends I don't agree with: she doesn't recommend cloth diapers (I think either work fine; I've used both), and not to nurse your baby to sleep (I may let up on this after 12 months, but it's a wonderful way to put a baby to sleep and we both enjoy it). These are minor drawbacks though; the bulk of the book is excellent.

EDIT: Now at 10 months, I am weaning my baby off being nursed to sleep. It has not only helped with nighttime dryness, as Lekovic suggested, but it also helps my baby sleep easier and better not to be dependent on a nipple to get to sleep. I am using "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" as a guide, which is an excellent book.

I have used Dr. Lekovic's method to toliet train both of my children. My 4 year old son was trained at 26 months at my 2 year old son was trained at 20 months. They are happy, healthy and confident children! This is a great book!

A friend recommended this book to me before my daughter was a year old. I am so glad she did. I started putting my daughter on a potty when she was 13 months old. Whenever she woke up, after dinner, and whenever she was having a BM, we put her on the potty. She still wore diapers until she was about 17 months old because there was no way to toilet train at daycare until she was in a room with a toilet. But she was getting used to the idea of what a potty was for. A few weeks after she moved into the toddler room at daycare, she wore underwear exclusively during the day. She had plenty of accidents at first, but now (at 18 months) only goes when we sit her on the toilet (with minor exceptions). She can't do everything herself- she needs help taking off her pants, and she won't tell you in advance she needs to go- but she knows that is what you are supposed to do when you sit on the toilet (and only on the toilet). As long as we offer it to her every 1-2 hours, she stays dry. We're transitioining from the little potty to a seat that goes on the real toilet. I'll keep her in diapers at night until she moves out of the crib and into a toddler bed.

I think it makes so much more sense to condition your child to use the toilet from an early age. The longer you wait, the more comfortable they are with going in their diaper. The idea of 'signs of readiness' has so many parents confused and points them down the wrong road.

'Early' potty training and baby sign language have been such a great resource for me, I can't recommend them enough.

I first became interested in early potty training when I was researching cloth diapers. My interest in cloth was primarily economically motivated, but I was intrigued by the other benefits as well. One article I read cited early training as a perk, since when children feel wet, they are more motivated to learn to use the toilet. According to a New York Times article, 92% of children in the 1950's were trained by eighteen months.

I was surprised, however, when I met modern cloth-using families. Many children trained slightly earlier than their disposable diapered counterparts, but none nearly as early as eighteen months. I began to wonder how those 1950's mothers managed to do it. The reason? Mothers initiated training when the children were small, rather than waiting for the child to get the ball rolling.

'Diaper Free Before 3' addresses the problems with the readiness theory, which is now resulting in a much older average age of potty training. Dr. Lekovic provides a brief but thorough cultural and historical portrait of toilet training and outlines compelling reasons why parental initiation early on in the child's life is far superior to continuing to reinforce the habit of using diapers.

The author's own family and professional perspective gives the reader insight into how this actually works in a real family. Dr. Lekovic's plan is very sane. She suggests beginning to sit your baby on the potty whenever he or she is able to sit unsupported. Initiating training at this age is pretty do-able. Spending a few minutes on the potty becomes a part of the child's daily routine, and parents are less likely to encounter power struggles at the more compliant younger age than those trying to train toddlers. A Hungarian friend of mine is training her son this way (as is the custom in Hungary), though she is having difficulty finding a potty to fit her seven month old. American children now train so late that it is a challenge to find small enough potties and training pants.

Perhaps my favourite part of the book is the epilogue, in which Dr. Lekovic comments on the increasing trend of parents hesitant to levy any expectation or challenge on their children, for fear of pressuring them or damaging their self-esteem. Dr. Lekovic offers insightful critique of this new dynamic in which parents seem to fear being parents. While some aspects of child-centeredness inform good parenting, the concept taken too far deprives children of the guidance and direction they so desperately need.

We began using the potty with our son when he was seven months old, as soon as he was old enough to sit unsupported. We sat him down after each meal. Sometime he went, sometimes he didn't, but he didn't seem to mind it at all, and by sitting him down after meals, he began to consistently poop in the potty. I changed precious few poopy diapers, which was a blessing indeed!

Keeping him dry, however, was another matter. We tried Dr. Lekovic's method of dressing him in underwear/waterproof pants for increasing periods of time, but this did not work for us. We needed a more 'drastic' intervention. We finally went 'cold turkey', putting my son in regular underwear and taking him to the potty when he began to wet. It took a week--and it was a hard week--but he is now pretty reliably dry and is very proud of himself. He still needs reminding, but it is such a relief to have diapers behind us.

I would urge parents not to buy into the readiness argument. Just because your child isn't motivated to use the toilet doesn't mean he/she isn't capable. Most children are capable of training far earlier than we give them credit for. It requires diligence and commitment on the part of parents, but it is well worth the effort.

I was, however, disappointed by Dr. Lekovic's perspective on cloth diapers, which she seems to dismiss as too great an inconvenience for modern families. In fact, cloth diapering is far less of a hassle than I thought it would be. She also stated that cloth-diapered babies have a higher incidence of diaper rash, which I did not find to be a problem at all. Actually, the rate of diaper rash has increased since the widespread use of disposable diapers. Rashes are fairly easy to avoid with frequent diaper changes, and my friends who use disposables on their babies struggle with it much more than I have. It seems parents are more likely to leave their babies in dirty disposables because of their high absorbency and as an effort to use fewer disposables to save money.

Of course, these problems would be easily avoided if society moved more in the direction of earlier training. Hopefully Dr. Lekovic's book will convince more parents to question the readiness theory that we are all being sold.

The ideas this author puts forth are straight forward, no-nonsense, approaches to toilet training your child. I introduced my daughter to her big girl potty when she was 12 months old, long before I had heard of diaper free babies or this book. I didn't want her to be afraid of the potty and I wanted her to have the patience to sit on it for extended periods of time. But I didn't know what to do beyond that point. I was often heckled by other parents who continued to tell me not to force it, she would go to it when she was ready. I never thought it was force to have her sit there while I did my make-up. But beyond that, I didn't know what to do. When she turned two, I really started to watch for signs that she was "ready," but she never has wanted to undress herself and run around naked, or been bothered by a wet diaper, or any other supposed "sign" of readiness. Most of the children in our community were being trained at three years of age, which seemed extremely late to me, knowing my mother had trained all of her children by the time we were two.

When I found this book I was thrilled to read someone presenting evidence AGAINST the readiness crowd, it was a philosophy I just didn't agree with. Unfortunately, she does her readers a great disservice by NOT addressing practical issues and ways for trouble shooting the complications that arise when you start training your child later than she recommends. Her basic concepts are of great value to any parent embarking on this new phase of child-rearing. This book offers under 15 pages of discussion to begin training a child after 18 months of age. She really needs to offer a supplement, even a blog or discussion forum, on how to approach training the "older" child. If your child is under a year old this book will be invaluable. If however your child is older, you will need another book to assist you in the process.