Elimination Communication Series: Part 3 - A Success Story

As our final post of this 3 part series on elimination communication, here is a success story shared by Sarah.

I have practiced Elimination Communication (EC’ing) with two of my children. I was curious about “potty training” a boy, since everyone told me that ‘training’ a boy was so difficult and that boys take a lot longer to become fully potty trained. So, being the devil’s advocate that I am, I started to research this. My instinct told me that boys should not be any harder, and I wanted to know the role that a parent plays in teaching or guiding their child to use the potty. I was thrilled when I discovered Elimination Communication and that there was an entire community of parents out there that not only believed in it, but that there is research that supports it.
My husband wasn’t completely convinced, but after a few weeks of part-time EC’ing he was just as pleased with this method as I was, and we knew it was a good fit for our values on parenting. We agreed with the philosophy that children already know when they need to void and we didn’t want our child to feel forced to go to the bathroom in a diaper. We wanted to give him another option. I really appreciate that you can start EC’ing at any age and that there really is no wrong way to do it. I did get some weird looks from some people, and my neighbours probably wondered why my child played outside with no diaper on, but I just kept on doing what I felt was right for our family and my baby. My friends and family who knew that I was practicing EC’ing also realized the positive impact it had on our relationship and that I never fought or bribed my child to use the potty. It felt great to be reassured that it didn’t matter the gender of my child when it came to ‘potty training’, and that the entire process brought us closer together, and that we learned to trust and communicate with each other about when he had to use the potty.

Thank you Sarah for sharing your experience with us.

I'd love to hear anyone else's stories on EC'g.

Vicky