I potty-trained my baby at the age of six months. Parents whose kids are still in nappies at school are lazy

By the time Brittany Balinski’s son was age one, he was out of nappies.

This was a source of huge pride for his mum, who had started potty training him from the age of six months.

Though at first baby Benedykt wore nappies at night, during the day he’d do without – with Brittany, who wasn’t working at that point, watching him for any hint that he needed the loo.

“We laid down those plastic interlocking mats so if he had an accident, it didn’t matter – we just wiped it up,” says Brittany, 34, from Warwickshire.

“It moved so naturally from me carrying him to the potty to him crawling and then by 11 months walking to it by himself.”

Some may question why any new mum would add toilet training to the long list of chores, when disposable nappies can minimise the burden, but Brittany believes it’s “lazy” not to.

“We’ve got to a point in society where we train our children to go to the toilet in nappies for the first three to four years of their lives,” she says.

“Marketing from nappy brands normalises this and even makes nappies for children much older than that.

“But it’s not natural or normal. I think leaving a child in a nappy until they are three is just lazy. It really bothers me. Why have we allowed it to happen? It’s just a question of taking time to observe the cues that your baby needs the toilet. I’ve never had to nappy train any of my children.”

Indeed, an early years charity revealed as many as one in four children starting reception class in England and Wales are not toilet trained.

It happens all over the world, just not in Western culture. We are the ones who train our babies to go in a nappy.

Such is the extent of the problem that a council in Wales has warned parents of children who are not potty-trained that they must come into school to change their child’s nappies themselves.

Blaenau Gwent council in South Wales says the rule has been implemented because teachers are spending too much time changing nappies, which is impacting learning.

If that sounds harsh, a poll of 1500 parents found 90 per cent felt children should not even be allowed to begin lessons until they have learned the basics of using the toilet.

You might imagine then that those who take the opposite approach – toilet training babies as I potty-trained my baby at the age of six months — would be applauded.

Yet some claim it puts too much pressure on parents, not to mention the babies and toddlers themselves.

However Brittany, who has her own business, is adamant her approach is best and she’s not alone.

Comedian Katherine Ryan is an outspoken advocate, training all three of her children out of nappies by the age of one.

She explains on her podcast: “A newborn is still scrunched up, you can’t sit them on the potty, but from about the time they can listen to a story or look at a book, I just put them on the potty randomly throughout the day and they have an instinct to go. It happens all over the world, just not in Western culture. We are the ones who train our babies to go in a nappy.”

There is even a term for this: “elimination communication” was coined by Ingrid Bauer in her 2001 book, Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene.

The practice uses timing, signals, cues and intuition to anticipate a baby’s need to ‘eliminate’ waste and take him or her to the appropriate place.

As time-consuming as it might sound, it’s gaining in popularity among those who worry about disposable nappies damaging the environment and others who feel it is a more natural approach, considering it’s what mothers did for thousands of years before nappies were invented in Victorian times.

Brittany admits it was concern about the environmental impact of nappies that first led her to attempt to go without.

“Benedykt was about six months old and I was watching him playing and realised he was squirming around and obviously needed to go to the loo. I thought to myself, “This is a bit weird, am I going to sit here and watch him?”

So I whipped off his nappy and took him to the toilet and I remember thinking, “This is easier than people make out”.

“From that moment on we freestyled it. We saved so much washing! I only had one baby at the time, and I wasn’t working so I was able to watch him the whole time.”

Brittany’s subsequent three children were toilet trained from birth. With more going on around the house, and less time to observe, it took longer.

“They were all out of nappies well before two though,” she says.

“I’m not hardcore about it. We did it in a parent-led way. So rather than watching them all the time, or listening out for a particular cry, instead you take them to the toilet when you go to the toilet, when they wake up from naps or before they eat.

“They wore nappies as back-up when we were out and about or on long car journeys. It’s a more chilled way, without worrying about accidents.”

Personally, I can see the appeal as I encouraged my own son to go nappy-free from six months old.

Last January, we were due to spend three months with family in the Philippines when it struck me it would be wrong to discard disposable nappies in such a remote and beautiful place.

Instead, I packed a suitcase full of reusable nappies. But as soon as we arrived in the hot, humid capital of Manila, I realised they’d be too bulky and sweaty for him. Instead, I decided to do something radical and simply took his nappy off.

I didn’t know anything about “elimination communication”, neither did I have a plan for what was about to happen. I did know a friend of a friend who had potty-trained her baby from birth and, honestly, had always thought she was mad.

But I took Sid to the sink, held him over it in a squat position and whispered ‘Pss, pss, pss’ in his ear and guess what? He wee’d.

I could not believe it. Over the next few days, I followed my intuition and began to take him to the toilet as soon as we woke up, after feeding and sleeping, as well as before bed.

He still wore the reusable nappies at night, but within a few days, he was having few accidents in the day and after about four weeks stopped having wet nappies at night.

I learnt when he tended to poo – after breakfast – and would take him aside and hold him in a squat position to help him.

In the Philippines we had no carpets, and most of the time Sid was in few clothes, so it didn’t matter if he had an accident.

A friend, who works with non-verbal children, taught me some baby sign language to help me communicate with Sid: a simple tap on the shoulder, which he grasped quickly, when he needed to go.

I felt so proud of my baby who was nappy-free by nine months.

But back in London, in working mum mode, I had less time to watch him and we started to have lots of accidents.

Having those in the house, or with clothes on, was much more inconvenient!

Some of my friends thought it was gross, with one asking: “Are you going to keep letting him wee on the floor?”

His childminder told me he was too young to be potty-trained and it was getting in the way of playtime. So we re-introduced nappies. I felt defeated.

Meanwhile, Aki MacFarlane’s two daughters, now nearly five and two, were both out of nappies by 19 months old. (The average age in the UK is between three and four years.)

“I came across the idea in a blog and it made sense to me,” she says.

“When my eldest daughter was four months old, I decided to have a go. At first it was a haphazard approach. We went about our normal lives but around the time you would normally change a nappy, I’d sit her on the potty.

“After a couple of months I realised she had understood what she was meant to do. I was so surprised.”

Aki and her partner offered the potty to their daughter when she woke from sleeping and after eating, and within a few months she had the hang of it.

Aki now runs EC seminars for The Nappy Lady, the UK’s largest reusable nappy retailer.

She says: “I say to people, it’s not potty training, it’s a way you live your life with your baby. It’s something that improves your lives by building trust with your baby and helping build their confidence, and it saves you nappies.”

My son Sid is 18 months old and proudly shows his potty to anyone who comes into the house. He’s now fully nappy-free during the day.

It’s important children understand their bodily functions from a young age, and that Sid feels confident communicating his needs with me.

Indeed, Benedykt’s mum Brittany credits EC for the fact that, now eight, her son is “outgoing, independent and good at communicating his needs”.

“Part of that is that I have had a good line of communication with him since birth,” she says.