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

New Year's Resolution: Potty Time!

The new year is upon us and, if you’re like me, your mind out of habit is gravitating toward “New Year’s Resolutions.” (It’s a given that two of mine will be to exercise more and eat less—and this year I mean it!)

But as I let my mind drift back, it returns to a New Years over 20 years ago—1988 to be exact--when my son, Kai, was 2 ½ and I was facing (no, dreading!) the challenge of potty training. I had been asked by my mother-in-law over Christmas why he wasn’t trained yet and I told her he “wasn’t ready” and that my pediatrician had assured me that Kai would let me know when the time was right. But darn it, he seemed perfectly content to let things continue as they were! The problem with this was that I needed to enroll him in a new child care program more convenient to the university where I taught and they wouldn’t let him in unless he was out of diapers.

So, I made a New Year’s Resolution to start in the Spring. Ready or not, here I come—with the potty! By that time he was closing in on 3 and really not interested in wasting time using the potty when he could be playing and just using his diaper as he had been doing for the past 30 months. Problem was that the child care enrollment deadline was looming and he simply had to get trained!

Fortunately, the passage of time has dimmed my memory of the struggles that ensued (and there were struggles)—with one exception. I remember vividly promising the director of the child care center that he was, indeed, trained—and then feigning surprise when they would inform me that he had had an accident again. “Oh, I’m sure it’s the stress of starting a new school,” I lied. I’m not proud of myself for lying to them, but, like many parents before and since, I was desperate!

Since that time I’ve learned a lot about potty training, enough in fact, to feel comfortable writing about a book about it and creating a whole program designed to make it easier for parent and child alike. In the next few postings I’ll talk about some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the hope that it will help some of you out there to make good on your own New Year’s “Potty Time” Resolution.

Happy Signing!

Linda

Co-Founder, the Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Make Room for Dolls!

A few days ago I wrote about the “Truck” gene and how my 18-month-old grandson was totally “gaga” over trucks. Well, that’s still true, but there’s another side to the story that pleases me no end.

Before Christmas my daughter-in-law, Julie, decided to give Olivia, Nate’s twin sister, a baby stroller and baby doll. The more she thought about it, however, the more concerned she became over not doing the same for Nate. Her motivation was partly philosophical (not wanting to perpetuate gender stereotypes) and partly practical ( knowing how Nate and Olivia, fight over toys). Because of these concerns, and despite feeling a bit extravagant, she purchased an identical stroller and similar baby doll for Nate.

Turns out it was a good thing that she did. Although his two Christmas trucks still hold a special place in his heart, he is also enthusiastically tooling around the house with a baby doll (any will do) in his stroller! Not only that, but he was the first of the two children to put a doll to bed in the wooden toy cradle that my husband and I made for them and rock the cradle back and forth! Actually, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise because the twins witness their dad, Jim, doing these kinds of things every single day with a smile on his face and obvious joy in his heart.

What lessons do I take from this? Here’s the first: Yes, both girls and boys may have a hierarchy for play, placing one type of toy at the very top (trucks for Nathan), but that doesn’t mean that they don’t also get pleasure out of others. Like adults, children are not one-dimensional. The second lesson is even more important: Especially if they see the males they love modeling such behavior, little boys who love trucks can also love nurturing children and see it as a natural activity than any girl or boy can truly enjoy.

Happy New Year!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, the Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

The "Truck" Gene

When I started graduate school in Developmental Psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1969, the Woman’s Movement was just getting underway. Yes, I joined a “consciousness raising group” and started complaining about how my boyfriend wouldn’t pick up his wet towels and constantly left dirty clothes wherever he took them off. I also started religiously using “he/she,” instead of just “he” in my writings and talked about the Chair” of our department rather than the “Chairman.” (I was never willing, however, to give up my bra having waited until nearly age 18 to even need one!)

The Woman’s Movement was having an even more profound effect on the science of Developmental Psychology. Up to this point there had been an underlying assumption that, of course, little boys and little girls are very different. Now the shift was strongly in the opposite direction: little boys and little girls, while undeniably different physically, are not different in talents, penchants, or psychological traits until society makes them so! It was our differential treatment of boys and girls from the time they are clothed in pink vs. blue baby blankets that accounts for the myriad differences we see later.

Many wonderful things came out of this shift: Title IX calling for equal support of women’s sports, concern about getting girls interested in math and science, general shifts in attitudes toward “traditional” roles (girls can be doctors!) to name only a few.

There is one area, however, where change has not happened—and not for want of trying. In fact, our failure to equate little boys and girls in this domain has contributed mightily to a shifting of the pendulum back toward a middle position, toward admitting there are some fundamental behavioral differences between little boys and little girls (at least on average) and that’s fine!

I’m talking about the “truck” gene which, I am increasingly positive, is located on the Y chromosome and, therefore, primarily found in little boys. Despite the efforts of now generations of parents to make sure that little boys have access to dolls and little girls have access to trucks, it’s increasingly clear that love affair between little boys and trucks is not going away!

I’ve seen this up close and personal with my twin grandchildren, Nate and Olivia. Olivia’s first sign was MOON and her first word was “more;” Nate’s first sign and word was “truck—the later shouted at full volume whenever one is spotted. Yes, he’ll hug a stuffed animal at bedtime and enjoys books about lots of things, but given the choice it’s truck, truck, truck. This was abundantly clear Christmas morning when Nate practically leaped from one end of the couch to the other as his dad began unwrapping a present and the hood of a truck appeared through the paper. “Truck…Dump!” Of course, Grandpa (my husband Larry, the purchaser of the truck) and Dad Jim (the purchaser of an even bigger truck that appeared later that morning) are thrilled. And why not? After all, who do you think passed the truck gene onto Nate!?

Happy Signing,

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, the Baby Signs Program

and

Professor Emeritus, UC Davis