Potty Training by Age One is the Wave of the Future for American Parents - Some Call it E.C

Lo, and behold, I had no idea. My mother said, "He'll be 18 months old soon, and he'll be ready to potty train." So I went to the library and got a couple of books on the subject. Two of the books were by the same author, so I just started with the latest, and it just so happened to be called Early Start Potty Training, by Linda Sonna. It was fantastic. I highly recommend it. I never needed another book.

Two weeks later, my 17 month old was into "big boy pants" and diapers only at night. And he was only having 1-2 accidents a day, always pee-pee. This is important because there are varying degrees of "potty trained."

There are a few things that just blew me away about the whole potty training thing. One is how unbelievably easy it was (I'm a stay-at-home mom and I had time to be consistent, which is everything). Another is that the trend is really toward potty training even younger than I did it - like as young as three months, yes you read right - three months. I'll tell you how they do it in a minute. The last thing that really struck me is how few moms and dads know about this yet. Just like breastfeeding, the art of potty training has been lost over the last couple of generations of Americans due to propaganda by big business.

We need to start spreading the word so we can save more children's urine-soaked and poopy behinds, more dollars, and way more landfill space. After you read this, you'll think it's scandalous to keep a child in diapers until age 3. We can't go blaming the parents though. They have no idea, or they wouldn't still be dealing with poo. No way Jose.

The first cut off is at 4 months. If you wait until after this window, the baby will stop giving you any clues that it's about to go, and the tactics are different. But up until 4 months, you do two things mainly. 1) let your baby go diaperless for a few days and really observe the child. Notice the cues that your baby gives right before she pees or poops (a grimace, a shiver, clasping hands, etc.) This way, if you've missed getting them to the potty on time, you'll at least have a heads-up.