Our Potty Adventure continues...

I have been reflecting on my potty training experiences with my own children. I had not been able pin point any reason why I did not have any problems training my 4 children. I always felt very lucky. The way it seemed to me was as if they almost trained themselves.
This is what I remember doing. From birth until they were potty trained I let all my babies diaper free no less than one hour a day. In the beginning I would just leave them air out for ten minutes after each diaper change.  I would lay them on a water proof pad and put a cloth diaper under them. When my babies were able to sit up on their own I would sit them on their little potty each time I used the toilet during the day. I felt it was the best place to set them when in the bathroom. I never let them sit more than a minute or two. I did this with and with out a diaper. Then at each diaper change I would also sit them on the potty. My initial hope was to cut down on laundry.
My first son was very animated when he had to poop. So every time I would hear and see him getting ready to poop I put him on the potty. After a few times I realized it was much less work to put him on the potty than it was to clean poopy cloth diapers. Soon after that my son was letting us know he had to pee in the potty by holding him self. This was before he started walking. Then around 11 months he would wake me up at night to go pee. That is when I realized he was totally potty trained and we stopped using diapers altogether.

My next son was also this easy. The only problem I had with baby two was that he was not so animated about going poop. This took a little longer to figure out. What I did was when he started walking I added more diaper free time and still sat him on the potty often. I would put extra big shirts on him and no diaper or underwear. Usually size 4t or 5t would work for a shirt. I also put knee socks on him because we did not have leg warmers back then. It was not much more than two or three weeks and he realized what was happening and started using the potty consistently.
My last two babies had virtually the same potty training experience.
After thinking over the experience I realized when reading this article on Elimination Communication  this is what I was doing back 20+ years ago. If you are potty training I recommend reading the Elimination Communication article. Good luck to all you potty trainers. Until next week.