Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Views on Elimination Communication


Elimination communication (EC) is a toilet training practice in which a caregiver uses timing, signals, cues, and intuition to address an infant's need to eliminate waste. It starts as soon as the child is born. Mothers who practice EC claim it's better for the baby and for the environment. Hey, ancient civilizations never had Pampers!
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I say you must be a dedicated mother to spend your day milking your goat, weaving floor length skirts out of home grown hemp and loading your bong with one hand because you are constantly holding your kid's bare ass over a bowl waiting for "the signal". Guess what? Not everyone wants a kid pooping into a bowl on their bed or sofa. I don't and you can't visit me either. You aren't training the infant, the kid is training YOU to be a port a potty. Good luck with that.

31 comments:

Christina said...

Amen, Sista!!! I have read about this and even watched some sort of video, but would not have tried that, myself. I suppose that if you have absolutely nothing else to do, it could be an idea, but for most moms. . . totally impractical.

Sole` said...

Eww. I hate having to scoop my cats litter much less that. Major eww. Wonder what the ratio of catching the shit vs. getting shit on is? Prolly not good.

Dirty Disher said...

I got news for 'em. Ancient women DID have diapers made of moss, grass, down, ect. I think they're nuts.

Anonymous said...

When my youngest was an infant I remember seeing a show about these crazies....They were holding the kid over bushes and weird random things outside. It was gross, and I thought it was a joke...

snowbunnie

Mimi to 3 said...

Un-freaking-believable!

Anonymous said...

Ewwwwwww get real this is stupid ! Kiki :/

Bohemianmoon said...

You nailed that Pat! Training the parent to be a portable potty is what it is.

What does everyone think about the unschooling movement?

Cynthia said...

Another clear sign that Hippie-Ville will never die.

Now I'm just laughing.
Thanks, Pat!

Cynthia said...

Moon -
What's the "unschooling" movement?

Is it a new-Age plan to convince children that ignorance is bliss?

Kylie's Mom said...

BAH!! Crazy loonies. I can't imagine spending an ENTIRE DAY waiting for my kid to pee. And people thought *I* was crazy for using cloth diapers.

Unschooling means allowing your child to study what they want, when they want, right? Um...no.

Next interesting read: someone Google 'family cloth'. You're welcome :D .

Bohemianmoon said...

Cynthia~

Kinda of. They go along the philosophy that children will, upon their own volition, learn whatever they need to and whatever subjects they want, whenever they want, and they should not be "coerced" into learning anything that they don't want to.

I am all for progressive models of learning/education, but I am highly against this model. I think that one of the major dangers with it is the high probability of missing learning disabilities early on and therefore missing vital opportunities to help the child when they are more malleable, among other things. I think it does a grave disservice to children.

http://www.unschooling.com/library/faq/index.shtml

Cynthia said...

Moon ~
I recall back in the 50's and 70's the same "educational" model was offered. I believe it was called alternative education.
We had a school like that on the shoreline in Ct. - all boys.
Too much money, not enough brains.
Lots of weed smokin', tho.
And uniforms.
Navy-blue blazers, gold emblem on the pocket, tan chinoes and white button-down shirts.
Not that any of this has anything to do with the subject - my brain is just wandering....

Anonymous said...

I did that with my dog every time he went outside as a puppy. i gave him props and spoke in a baby voice and told him I was proud of him. He gave me the same look as the baby.

Jarhead

Cynthia said...

Another follow-up, more on topic (kinda).
It's amazing what people consider "education" to be.
I had the opportunity to review records of Colonial curriculum (or what we would consider to be curriculum) and compared it to modern day expectations for similarly-aged students.
My hand to God - I swear that it would take a genius to accomplish learning of the caliber that Colonial children were expected to attain. And they did - enormous amounts of education was pure rote - whole passages from Scripture, handwriting that was copperplate, and the MATH! OMG, the math was unreal. It was the level of today's college instruction. But they did it - they knew the value of education.
But, I'm sure given the choice of unstructured education vs traditional, the kids back then would have chosen free-style. It's human nature. Fortunately, most of us who are parents don't vote or agree with free-style education. There are already too many fools in this world.

escrow said...

LOL @Jarhead...I was thinking the exact same thing.

I have a friend who belives all babies should be carried around in a bucket 24/7 until they are 2. Seriously!

Melissa said...

Oh God. The family cloth. I did have to Google that, right? Why?!?!?!?!?

Anonymous said...

Speaking as a teacher, we are already giving these kids too much in the way THEY want to learn---which is not at all. To them, school is a social event. There is no discipline and things will not get any better until these liberal parents understand there has to be discipline in a class and that most teachers only want the best for their kids. We need to take a few pages from the Asian book of knowledge---make education aprivilege not a right. There are students in the classroom who do not want to be there and are only there because of truancy laws. They cause trouble and make life hard for those who have college in their furture and know there are things they need to do to get there. Our own gov't. is part of the problem. The "system" needs to rethink it priorities---is it education?

And I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't agree. But I also know there are a lot of people who do agree and they know exactly what's going on in our classrooms and schools today. Some parents would be horrified if they only knew!!!

escrow said...

OH Anon, I agree. And don't forget to give them all trophies cause they showed up.

Maureen said...

Anon 9:00. I totally agree.
I remember when I was in high school, kids had the option to go to vocational school. It was a great program for those who knew college was not in their future. It gave them the opportunity to choose a trade such as car mechanics or hairdressing.
The vo-tech school now, in our area,only allows stellar students to attend. I find this totally unfair. High school for these types of students is nothing but a dead end.
These are kids will be pushed through high school and may or may not graduate without any knowledge or skills, at all.
It's wrong and I cannot figure out why vocational education has changed so drastically in the last 30 years.

Silvia said...

Unschooling debate: I believe that people live up to expectations and that we don't expect enough of children today. I'm afraid that most of us are rather lazy. If you're not going to get into trouble for not having homework done, why do it? If you're not expected to memorize the times table, you won't.

Elimination: I was flabbergasted when my mother told me that we were potty trained by the time we were 1. In those days they only had cloth diapers and she said that she would hold us over the potty before we could even sit by ourselves.

Anonymous said...

OMG you have to be kidding?

miss tia said...

cynthia---i have some text books from the 1920s and they are pretty difficult too....kids were expected to know some latin, math, grammar, not only history but how to act in society....

i think education started going down hill in the 1960s....i don't know why....but that's when it seems to have just fallen apart.....now it's just cram enough in kids so they pass the stupid no child left behind required tests and nothing else....

valle said...

their houses have to smell like a litter box

Anonymous said...

What is the family cloth? I'm afraid to Google it.

Cynthia said...

Tia ~
As someone who went to school in the 60's, I have to disagree. School for us was always a priority and I don't recall many of us having "entitlement" issues. School was serious business, and dropping out was a rarity at best.
I personally think education started to tank in the 80's, when our kids starting having children of their own and they somehow decided it was better to be friends with them rather than be an authoritative parent.
Respect for your elders flew out the window around that time, too.
As a kid of the 60's, if the teacher had any problems with you, the parents sided with the teacher unless there was something really "off" and that almost never happened.
I think that the 70's generation of kids who drank and partied and drugged their way thru school and who later on had kids created a big part of the educational problem.

escrow said...

No one has has brought up the subject of femenine hygiene products. Have you ever used or heard the term "I'm on the rag"? where do you think that came from? Those old t-shirts etc were used to make sanitary napkins that were washed and resused. They are coming back into fashion in the world of the mother earthers. It's about living sustainably. Next we can talk about composting toilets. How about the fact it's only the western world that shits in perfectly good drinking water?

Our Beautiful Life said...

I've heard of that before and it drives me CRAZY!!! Just let babies be babies for crying out loud!!!

I got plenty of "crazy" comments for cloth diapering my kids but elimination communication really is just too much.

Miss Tia said...

i think the fractures in education started in the 60s....but i'll accept your point about education in the 60s....with that caveat that it had started to fracture in parts of the country....

when i was in grade school in the 70s school was pretty laissez faire and it got worse in the 80s.....didn't reagan have some whacked school reforms?

Ella said...

Oh the family cloth!!!! That's terrible, sorry, no, I'll go back to the Eaton's catalogue before I do that.

Be afraid Anon 1:36:00 AM be very afraid. I'm wishing I hadn't googled it.

I agree though about the crapping in the perfectly good water problem, escrow, it really does need to be all reworked & reworked promptly, because it's not right & good water does need to be kept to drink. where are those scientists that get paid so much to figure these things out? They can afford to buy water so it's not a priority to them? Other countries have figured it out & are further along. I don't mind the idea so much about composting toilets, a lot of the people I know that have cottages have them.

Anonymous said...

I have some friend that have been lucky enough to be able to be with their kids 24/7 from birth. I think as long as you're with the kid all the time, why not try this technique? It beats having a droopy-diapered 3 year old peeing on your lap during a dinner party (that happened, of course) or wander off during a picnic to take a dump in her pants behind a rock (that was me at 2 - not good).

SaRAW said...

Elimination Communication is awesome! I just want to tell you that it's not as crazy as it looks. Check out this site, there's videos to watch. Don't knock it! :)

http://www.natural-parenting.net/category/ec/