Your Baby is Walking! How Does This Affect Elimination Communication?

You’ve being doing Elimination Communication (EC) with your baby for all or part of the first year, and now your baby is walking!  This important milestone in your baby’s life, usually around 10-14 months, often impacts your potty-training progress significantly.  Read on to learn more! 

This article assumes you did EC when your baby was younger, but if you haven't started EC yet and want to know the best strategy to get started with a young toddler (12-17 months), I'll be posting that article soon!  Stay tuned.

The One Year Potty Regression 

I’ve seen it a hundred times.  Maybe you’ve had great success with EC for months, but then your baby starts walking and suddenly resists the potty.  Maybe you’ve had a steady decline in EC success for a while, but at one year old things really spiral downward. 

This nearly universal potty pause might take you by surprise, but it really shouldn’t!  Your baby is quickly becoming a toddler and her newfound mobility has awakened her to the fact that she can now say “no” to things.  She might resist being put in the highchair or car seat, being put down for a nap, transitioning from a fun activity to something else, and, of course, being placed on the potty.

The good news is that the One Year Potty Regression can be overcome!  Read on for tips.

Giving Choices

Toddlers want to be in charge, and the best way to overcome this potty pause is by handing them choices.  Note that the choice you’ll be offering is NOT “Do you want to go potty?”  Why?  If you ask IF your child wants to go potty, the answer will almost always be NO!

Instead, TELL your child it’s time to go potty, and then offer a choice about HOW that happens.  Here’s some examples that have worked for me and other parents:

• Do you want to pee standing up or sitting?  (Great for boys)
• Do you want to use your little potty or the big toilet?
• Do you want me to read you a book or sing you a song while you go potty?
• Do you want me to go potty first, or do you want to go potty first?
• Do you want to bring your dinosaur or your car to the potty?
• Do you want your doll to go potty first, or you?
• Do you want to go pee inside or outside? (I’ve found my boys loved going pee on a tree in the back yard)
• Do you want Mama or Daddy to take you potty?

Now that he’s got an important decision to make, your child will likely forget all about resisting the potty!

My children all loved being read to while they pooped.  My middle child also really liked to go potty in his bathroom at the same time that I went potty in my bathroom (we would “race”).  My third child loves to race her big brothers to the toilet and “win”.

When in a public restroom, I usually use “Do you want me to go first or you?”  My oldest, who was always wary of public bathrooms, always wanted me to go first (I think he wanted me to prove it was safe).  My middle kid always wanted to go first (competitive much?).

Lots of babies love to go potty with their toys, like the baby shown here!  You can buy a little doll toilet like the one in this picture here. 

Be creative with the choices you offer your child and see what works!

Change Things Up

Resistance is often a sign that your child needs something to change.  Here are suggestions:

• Change your potty:  Try a floor potty if you’re using the toilet (or vice versa), change the location of the potty (move it to a different room or put it outside), or try using a potty cozy (especially if resistance began with chilly weather).  For boys, you can try a urinal or see if he likes standing to pee using a step stool at the big toilet.
• Hold and comfort him on the potty if he seems to have separation anxiety, or potty him by placing the potty on your lap.
• Change your timing:  Pees and poops may become less frequent as your child ages or happen at different times.  It’s possible you’re offering too frequently, or you’ve become out of sync with your child’s new rhythms.

Make the Potty a Part of Your Day

Toddlers thrive on routine and do best when you set their expectations ahead of time.  If you take your child abruptly away from an interesting activity without warning, you’ll get an instant tantrum.  On the other hand, if you give warnings (“we’re leaving the park in 5 minutes … one more minute, then we’re leaving … Okay, it’s time to go”), your child is more likely to cooperate.

Build the potty into your day just like meals, nap time, running errands, bath time, etc.  To your toddler, the potty will become just another Thing We Do.  For example:

• After lunch, we’re going potty and then we’ll read stories.
• When we get to Grandma’s house, we’ll go potty first and then play.
• After you go potty, we will get into the bath.
• When you’ve gone potty, we can watch a show.

This fits well into EC timing, as many children need to go potty during transitions between activities.

Should I Give Rewards?

Many modern potty-training techniques involve rewards, like stickers, candy, or reward charts. Most parents in the EC community do not use this technique with their children for three reasons.  First, a 12-17 month old probably doesn’t have the cognitive ability to understand the reward system.  Second, it goes against the EC philosophies about communicating cause and effect and incorporating the potty as part of normal life.  Lastly, treats can be hard to stop once you’ve started them.

There are times, however, that EC parents have used rewards with success.  Some parents find that a little treat, like a raisin, M&M, or sticker, is just enough motivation to help a toddler overcome a potty pause.  This is especially true if your child is older (18+ months), has a treat-motivated personality, and is just struggling with something small, like making it to the potty on time without dribbling.  You can phase out treats by either setting the limit from the start (“you get an M&M out of the jar for dry undies until all the M&Ms are gone”) or slowly phasing them out.

When will my baby start intentionally signaling?

Many first-time EC parents wonder when their baby might start self-initiating, especially if your baby does not have obvious body language cues.  There is this feeling that if only your baby could TELL YOU that he needs to go potty, then he WOULD tell you, and then your life would be easier. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that!  Like any other milestone, consistent self-initiation happens for different babies at different ages and the learning process does not improve linearly.  Some babies intentionally cue consistently before a year, making EC very easy.  Some don’t tell you they need to go at all until closer to age two. 

Keep in mind, also, that even if your child is capable of saying “poo poo” or signing “potty”, it doesn’t mean he’ll do it consistently.  You will probably need to prompt your child based off timing for quite some time—even older kids still sometimes need prompting, especially before bed or a long car ride.

The best way to encourage self-initiation is to incorporate diaper-free time regularly into your routine.  Schedule it for a 1-2 hour period where you can dedicate your whole focus to watching your child and transferring him to the potty immediately when he starts to go.  This immediate transfer is how your child will connect “pee and poop” to “potty” and is the best way to encourage your child to start holding it and signaling to you that it’s time to go.  The more regularly you do constructive diaper-free time, the faster he will learn.

Keep in mind that intentional signaling might not be verbal.  Babies this age might look at you and pat the diaper, vocalize, or fuss.  They also might start crawling or walking to the potty.  You can encourage verbal signaling by using the ASL sign for “potty” (see picture below) and consistently using the words “pee” and “poop” when using the potty.  Encourage more signaling by immediately responding to self-initiation when it happens!

When can we stop using diapers completely?

EC babies are ready to go diaper-free much earlier than exclusively diapered babies.  On average, EC babies are ready to wrap up right around 18 months (although the range of normal is 12-24 months).  Compare this to the USA national average of 3 YEARS!

For EC babies, wrapping up EC is usually a separate “potty-training” process where you switch from doing part-time potty use to full-time potty use.  Like traditional potty-training, you’ll begin with a couple naked days, followed by adding clothes without diapers, followed by outings without diapers.  Because your child already goes potty regularly, this process is usually quite smooth and takes about 3-7 days.

When to do this is totally up to you.  The younger your child is when you ditch diapers, the more responsibility is on you to make sure everything ends up in the potty.  The process can also take weeks instead of days if you begin too early, especially if your child’s bladder is still very small or your child is not cognitively capable of self-initiation.

If you try to ditch diapers with a very young toddler and aren’t having a lot of success after a week or two, there’s no harm in doing a “reset”:  Return to part-time EC for a month or two and try again when your child is older.  It’s quite amazing how much your child will develop physically and cognitively in a few short weeks!

Is it ever too late to ditch diapers?  Jamie Glowacki, author of Oh Crap! Potty Training, cites 20-30 months as the ideal age for potty training exclusively diapered children.  After 30 months, potty training becomes exponentially harder, so I absolutely recommend wrapping things up during the day by age 2.5.  When you're ready to wrap up EC, go here.

Should I switch to training pants or underwear?

If you’re having a lot of misses or feel like you want to switch to full-time pottying, you might be wondering if underwear or training pants could help.  The short answer is:  Probably not.

If your baby isn’t fully potty-trained, pee will just go right through underwear or training pants.  They’re also not very easy to manipulate until your child is capable of pulling his own pants up and down.

Once you DO decide to go diaper-free, the best way to begin is with naked days followed by clothes WITHOUT underwear or diapers (commando).  Use loose pants, skirts, or dresses with nothing underneath.  Underwear and training pants feel too much like a diaper and can trigger accidents from muscle memory.  Have your child go commando until you’re solidly dry all day for at least a couple weeks; then you can add underwear.

EC is easiest with clothes designed for potty learning, like Flappy-Nappies® drop-flap diapers and Chappy-Nappy pants shown here.

Prior to officially potty-training, I recommend using EC-friendly cloth diapers.  Flappy-Nappies® pop open like a flap when it’s time to go potty and offer excellent backup for misses.  They’re also much easier to put on and take off than training pants or underwear—they can be changed while your baby stands or one-handed in your arms.

The Flappy-Nappies® diaper snaps to the waist of the Chappy-Nappy crotchless pants.  Pop it open from front or back to go potty!

That’s all I’ve got for now!

 Do you have anything to add about doing EC with a young toddler?  Leave us a comment or contact us here.  You can find a lot of commonly asked questions in our FAQ page for toddlers here (coming soon).