How to Start Elimination Communication With Older Babies

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You’ve just learned that you can potty-train babies and want to know if it’s too late to begin with yours.  Or, you’ve known for a while that you want to do Elimination Communication, but life happened and you haven’t gotten started yet.  Either way, we’ve got the tools you need to begin!

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Is it too late to start EC?

It is never too early or too late to introduce the potty!  The only thing that changes with your baby’s age is how you approach EC.  This guide includes the best approach for babies that are past the newborn stage but still under a year old.

EC sounds like a lot of work.  Is it?

A lot of people hear about EC and think that it must be time-consuming.  They imagine that EC parents sit around all day watching their babies, waiting to put them on the potty.  Or that you must have to put your baby on the potty hundreds of times to get lucky enough to catch anything.

Fortunately, it doesn’t work like that!  EC is very easy to build into your baby’s routine; most parents don’t try to catch everything, and they use a diaper backup for “misses” (a fun EC word for accidents). 

Here’s a typical EC schedule:

• Potty first thing in the morning
• Potty after breakfast
• Potty between lunch and nap time
• Potty right after waking up from the nap
• Potty before bath/bed

Notice anything about this schedule?  ALL of those pottytunities (another fun word!) happened when you were probably changing your baby’s diaper anyway.  An easy way to begin with EC is just to offer the potty during diaper changes!  Your baby is already bare-bottomed, and diaper changes tend to happen at times babies naturally need to go. 

Once you start doing this, you’ll also pick up on your child’s cues (behaviors that precede or coincide with pee/poop), which will help you better predict the ideal times to offer the potty.  It quickly becomes second-nature, and poops are MUCH easier to clean up when they go straight into the toilet rather than smeared all over your baby’s bum.  

If you’re using cloth diapers, you’ll ease your laundry burden tremendously by starting EC.  If you’re not using cloth diapers, you cut down significantly on your diaper trash and cost.  Many babies prefer to poop outside a diaper (don’t we all?) and will quickly start to hold it or signal to their parents that it’s time to go.

EC also gives you a massive head start on potty-training.  If you start EC now (even part-time or laid-back) you’ll go into potty-training already knowing your child’s timing and cues. 

Also, the longer your child poops in a diaper, the more conditioned he will become to that feeling.  Some of the most common issues in potty-training toddlers stem from poops:  Poop withholding, demanding diapers to poop in, fear of pooping in the potty, etc.  All of these can be lessened or prevented by introducing the potty for poops as young as possible.

How to Start

There are two ingredients to EC:  Natural Timing and Diaper-Free Time.  Both of these ingredients will help you learn your child’s unique elimination pattern and cues.

Natural Timing

All humans have natural times that they need the bathroom; the most obvious example is first thing in the morning.  The following are some optimal times to offer the potty.  Note that your child might not need to go potty at all of these times; these are simply suggestions for you to get started.  You’ll figure out which times work for your baby very quickly!

• After Waking.  Offer the potty first thing in the morning and after every nap.
• After (or in the middle of) a Meal:  Eating can get things moving, so to speak.  For example, some babies poop right in the middle of nursing or right after having a meal of solid foods.
• During Transitions Between Activities:  Try the potty after riding in the car, swing, or stroller, before a bath, during a diaper change, etc.  Try a few transitions and see if they work for you.
• Watch for Cues:  You might already know when your kid is pooping.  She might make a "poop face" or have really smelly farts right before.  These are “cues”—body language or behaviors that precede or coincide with peeing or pooping.

All 3 of my babies went through phases when they needed to poop mid-meal!

The first step of EC is adding the potty to your routine during these key moments.  Pottytunities offered during natural times, like waking or feeding, are what we call “prompts”, because you initiated the pottytunity, not your child.  A prompt may be initiated by you in one of two ways:

• You prompt your child based off natural timing (like after a meal)
• You prompt your child when you notice body language cues

Every time you take your baby potty, use a cue noise:  A sound that you make that your baby will associate with going potty.  The idea is to build a sound association for your child so that he will go when prompted by the noise.  Most parents use a sound like “pss pss” or “shh shh” for pee and/or poop, or by blowing raspberries or grunting for poop.

Diaper-Free Time

Diaper-free time is exactly what it sounds like:  You observe your naked (or bare-bottomed) child.   There are two objectives to this EC tool:

1. Observe your child to learn his body language cues. 
2. Provide opportunities to teach your child cause/effect (I started to go pee + mom put me on the potty = Pee goes in the potty) to encourage intentional cues.

Choose a time for diaper-free observation when you can dedicate your whole focus to your child for at least an hour or two.  Your only job is to watch your baby.  Do not scroll your phone, don’t fold the laundry.  Do nothing but watch your child (you can play and interact with her, of course!).

As soon as she starts to go pee or poop, transfer her immediately to the potty and use your designated cue noise (again, this is usually "pss pss", but some parents grunt or blow raspberries for poop).  Keep the potty close so that it’s easily accessible.  Yes, you will probably leave a trail of pee or poop during the transfer (more on that in a bit), but do the transfer anyway, even if nothing makes it to the potty. 

Talk to your child about what’s happening, too.  “Oh!  You’re going pee.  Let’s go to the potty.”  Use the ASL sign if you’d like.  If there’s a mess on the floor, you can also matter-of-factly say, “Uh-oh, pee got on the floor.  Pee goes in the potty, not the floor.  Let’s clean up.” 

The ASL sign for "toilet"

When your baby goes in the potty, you can acknowledge it (“You went pee in the potty, where it belongs”) or praise it (“Good job!  You made it to the potty!”), depending on your parenting philosophy on praise.  Afterwards, be sure to take note of any body language cues you noticed prior to the pee/poop (you can use this potty log here).

The immediate transfer to the potty is extremely important (even if nothing makes it into the potty) because that is how your child connects the potty to pee and poop.  Instead of prompting your child, like with natural timing above, this type of pottytunity teaches your child to self-initiate.  The more diaper-free opportunities you give your child to learn cause and effect, the quicker your child will connect the dots, start to hold it, and begin intentionally signaling (which, after all, is the ultimate goal of potty-training!).

When your baby will start intentional signaling is unique to your child, and there is a wide range of normal.  Some babies start signaling well before their first birthday, others won’t do this until closer to age 2.  It might not be consistent in the beginning, either; you’ll likely still have to prompt your child based off body language cues or timing for a while.

You can encourage intentional cues by using the ASL sign for “potty”, consistently talking to your child about the process, and immediately responding to intentional cues when they happen.

What kind of potty do I need and how do I clean it?

Most potties are designed for toddlers aged 3-4 (that’s the average potty-training age, after all), and will be much too large for your baby.  My favorite short potties that are little enough for babies and young toddlers can be found by clicking here.

You can also use a toilet seat reducer over your actual toilet for easy cleanup.  I also recommend the following items:

• A foldable toilet seat reducer and/or foldable potty for outings
• Waterproof pads for diaper-free time
• Step stool for the toilet and/or the sink
• Soap dispenser that your child can use

All of my favorite potties, toilet seat reducers, and travel potties are linked HERE!

To clean the potty:

• Pee:  Dump the pee in the toilet (or a bush, car tires, etc. on outings when a toilet is not accessible), rinse with water, and dry with a towel.  Pee is sterile, so sanitizing is not necessary.
• Poop:  Dump the poop into the toilet, rinse, clean with a disinfectant of your choice, rinse again, and dry with a towel.  If you’re out and about without access to a toilet, line the potty with a plastic bag or diaper for easy cleanup.
• Poop hack:  Put a square of toilet paper into the potty beforehand so that the poop doesn’t stick to the potty and is easier to dump.

Those are the basics!

I hope this information helps you get started with EC!  If you still have questions like...

• Do I really need to do diaper-free time?
• How do I contain the mess during diaper-free time?
• What if my baby has no cues?
• What if my baby resists the potty?
• How do I potty my baby while out and about or traveling?
• How do I tackle night training?

I go much deeper into the ins and outs of newborn EC in my full book, Diapers Stink!, which covers how to start, how to navigate common challenges, how to ditch the diapers for good (and how to tell it's time), plus other important topics such as daycare, travel, bedwetting, and more.  Click below to snag your copy now!