Welcome, Baby Lorelei!

I had decided to dedicate the first blog entries of the year to providing advice about potty training (and the role of signing to help it along) and have already started on that mission with two postings. Rest assured I will have lots more to say on that topic, but I want to take a break to describe something else that I recently enjoyed.

I just returned from spending a week on the East Coast with my niece and her brand new baby daughter who arrived on Christmas Eve. Little Lorelei would have been my sister’s first grandchild had she not died of brain cancer 18 month ago. I had promised Judy before she died that I would do my best to fill in the painful gap her death was creating in her two daughters’ lives, and traveling across country to help with this sweet baby was a joyful, if bittersweet, way to live up to my pledge.

What new insights did this experience give me? None, really. But it did remind me about a few things:

• How tiny a newborn baby’s fingers can be.
• How soundly newborn babies sleep!
• How worried new parents, especially first-time parents, are about every little thing.
• How sweet it is to hold a baby in one’s arms knowing that it is being welcomed into this world with deep reservoirs of love.
  

And finally, it reminded me of the importance of family—not just as a buffer against the pain and sorrow that the world so often and so unfairly delivers, but also as a source of great joy and inspiration—clear evidence of the continuity of life and love.

Welcome to the world Lorelei!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-founder, the Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Late Potty Training: Legacy of the Diaper Industry

Back in the 1980s when my children were young and not yet potty trained at 30 months, my mother-in-law would gently chastise me by saying that her kids were all trained by 18 months. At the time I thought that was pure exaggeration—the result of faulty memory or the desire to inspire me to get the kids trained. Now I know she was telling the absolute truth!

It turns out that before the 1960s children were routinely trained by 18 months—some estimates being as high as 95% of children. Given how distasteful and time-consuming it was to deal with the cloth diapers of the day, such an early age is understandable. Cloth diapers had to be rinsed out in the toilet, laundered in strong detergent and hot water, hung out to dry, folded and stacked—all steps that had to be repeated just a few days later. No wonder moms were eager to get their children out of diapers!

All this changed in the early 1960s with the invention of the disposable diaper. The good news was that their absorbency meant that babies stayed dryer and their ease of use meant that parents’ work was reduced. There was good news for the diaper industry’s bottom line, too, given the rapturous response parents had to this incredible new invention. It shouldn’t be a surprise, therefore, to hear that the industry began promoting the idea of later and later training.

By persuading both parents and pediatricians that later was better and by creating bigger and bigger diapers, the diaper industry has managed to move the average age of completion from younger than 18 months to over age 3—and still climbing! Most recently the industry introduced a size 7 diaper that can accommodate 6-year-old kids! And don’t let the name “pull-ups” fool you. They are simply disposable diapers in the shape of underpants.

The trend toward later and later training would be fine if it was good for children—but it’s not! It’s not good for children or their parents—and it’s definitely not good for the environment.

I’ll explain all this soon. Stay tuned. . . .

Best,

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, UC Davis