By Dadical
In the October/November issue of the Leveller, Parenting from Below initiated a five-part series on diapering with “Disposable Diaper Culture.” The previous installment examined the profitable history of the disposable diaper industry and the questions it raised including alternatives to deal with my own baby’s diaper-associated agitation. Part three will examine the theory of Elimination Communication.
Elimination Communication (EC) or Natural Infant Hygiene, as coined by Ingrid Bauer, author of Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene, challenges the conventional Western notions of toilet training. It is a (radical) paradigm, a way of life based on intimate communication between parents and their baby to aid in the natural elimination of waste – the baby’s pipi and caca. The method, as put forth by Bauer, posits that babies are aware of and can voluntarily learn to regulate their elimination needs from birth, that Natural Infant Hygiene is a way of responding to these needs long before a child uses the toilet independently. If their elimination needs are responded to from the beginning, babies don’t have to be re-trained or taught to recognize them again.
However, EC practitioners and advocates contend that the framework has nothing to do with toilet-training in the conventional sense; it bypasses the approach entirely. Bauer asserts that, “by not disturbing the infant’s natural elimination awareness in the first place, the need for re-establishing that awareness never arises.” Rather, it is “fundamentally a way of being with one’s baby… it is a lifestyle, rather than a chore.” Millions of children around the world, predominantly in large parts of Asia and Africa, have always used a similar method to what we refer to as Elimination Communication or Natural Infant Hygiene. Research in the Western world has also shown that this method, which enables infants to take responsibility for their own pottying, facilitates toilet independence at a younger age than advocated by the diaper industry and their promoters in the medical field.
Elimination Communication, in my view, is simultaneously practical, political and personal. The benefits are numerous. For starters, EC helps keep a baby clean, dry, comfortable, healthy and happy, while at the same time creating a sense of body awareness. It is much better for the environment and for your bank account. It also helps to develop and build relationships between parents and children by embracing the notions of cooperation, respect, trust and compassion while rejecting notions of coercion, shaming, praise and punishment/rewards – a truly revolutionary undertaking that is strikingly logical.
The next issue of the Leveller will feature part four of this five-part series and will look at putting Elimination Communication into practice.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol.8 No. 4 (Jan/Feb 2016).
