Oh Crap! Potty Training

teach cause and effect, which is an okay theory but not that great in
reality. I remember when I was pregnant reading a brilliant article
about toddlers. The gist was that toddlers aren’t really out to bug the
hell out of you or kill themselves. There’s just so much to discover
that every moment is an experiment and discovery. So when they
pour their milk out onto the floor, it’s for the joy of seeing, “Oh . . .
this happens when I do that. Cool.” And, yes, that is cause and effect.
However, it’s our job as parents to let them know that pouring milk
out onto the floor is not acceptable. While we wouldn’t yell or shame
them, we would consistently probably frown and say something akin
to, “No, no . . . no milk stays on the table.” Right?
So, now let’s look at the cause and effect of peeing anywhere,
anytime the urge hits. If you never let on that it’s unacceptable . . .
then it’s acceptable. It’s therefore learned behavior to just pee where
you need to pee. This might be okay in the early days, regardless of
what age you started ECing, but once your child consistently does
this for any big chunk of time, it’s sort of cemented in. In other
words, you’ve traded in a diaper for your floor.
The only reason I bring up Diaper-free Time is because the very
first thing I hear from an EC Mama is resistance to a naked day.
When I first met Jean, the first thing out of her mouth was a kind of
angry, “I do not see the point in a naked day. I have done months of
naked days, and all I do is clean up pee.” I still have to ask you to do
the naked day. The naked day is vitally important to one of the
biggest steps in building the bridge from EC to PT, which brings us to
issue number two.