The Baby Who Never Wore a Diaper: How the World Potty Trains
Let me blow your mind
for a second: there are babies in East Africa who are completely potty trained
by five months old. FIVE MONTHS. My kid couldn't even sit up properly at five
months, and these babies are managing their own bathroom needs.
Meanwhile, the average
American kid isn't out of diapers until they're three years old – some even
later. We spend roughly $3,000 on diapers per child, create literal mountains
of waste, and then spend months begging a toddler to please, for the love of all
that is holy, just pee in the potty.
So what are we
missing? Turns out, most of the world has been doing this whole potty thing
completely differently than us.
Let's start with the
Digo people of Kenya and Tanzania. According to a landmark 1977 study in
Pediatrics, these folks start "toilet training" when babies are two
to three weeks old. The mother sits on the ground with her legs straight out,
places the baby on her shins facing away (for pee) or facing toward her (for
poop), and just... waits. No special sounds, no coaxing. The position itself
becomes the cue. By five to six months, these babies are dry day and night. The
researcher, Dr. deVries, noted that the Digo believe babies can learn from
birth – a pretty radical concept compared to our Western "wait until
they're ready" approach.
Then there's Vietnam,
where mothers have turned whistling into a superpower. A 2012 study from the
University of Gothenburg followed 47 Vietnamese families and discovered
something incredible: mothers start making a specific whistling sound every
time their newborn pees, starting from literally day one. By three months,
babies start associating the whistle with peeing. By nine months, all 47 babies
in the study could use the potty when reminded with the whistle. By 24 months,
they were completely independent. No Pull-Ups, no sticker charts, no potty
training boot camps. Just... whistling.
And China? Oh, China
went and invented pants that potty train themselves. They're called kaidangku,
or split-crotch pants, and yes, they're exactly what they sound like – pants
with a giant split down the middle so kids can squat and go whenever, wherever.
I know it sounds shocking (I certainly clutched my pearls the first time I saw
them), but these pants have been China's answer to diapers for centuries. Kids
wearing them are typically potty trained 14 months earlier than their
diaper-wearing peers. The pants basically make the child an active participant
– they feel when they need to go, they squat, they go. No sitting in wet
diapers teaching them to ignore their body's signals.
One mom in Beijing told researchers she preferred split pants to diapers because "diapers teach babies it's okay to soil themselves." When you think about it that way, we're the weird ones. We literally teach our kids to pee and poop on themselves for years, then act surprised when they resist using a toilet.
The research backs up
what these cultures have known forever. A Vietnamese study found that
early-trained babies completely empty their bladders more effectively and have
fewer UTIs. The African studies showed that expectations matter more than
"readiness" – if you expect a baby to learn early, they do.
But here's the thing:
these methods work because of how these societies are structured. Vietnamese
and Chinese grandmothers are often full-time caregivers. African mothers carry
babies constantly in those early months. The community supports and expects early
training. Meanwhile, we're trying to juggle daycare drop-offs and Zoom calls
while debating whether our 3-year-old is "emotionally ready" to give
up their Lightning McQueen Pull-Ups.
Still, there's
something deliciously rebellious about knowing that somewhere in Kenya right
now, a five-month-old is taking themselves to the bathroom while my neighbor's
four-year-old is having a meltdown about pooping in the potty.
Reflection
Every time I change
another diaper, I think about those Vietnamese mothers and their magic
whistling. Maybe we've made potty training harder than it needs to be. Or maybe
we've just accepted that teaching a stubborn three-year-old is the price we pay
for not having to hold a newborn over a toilet twelve times a day. Either way,
it's humbling to know that what feels like a universal parenting struggle is
really just one way of doing things.
Sources:
- deVries MW and deVries MR. (1977).
"Cultural relativity of toilet training readiness: A perspective from
East Africa." Pediatrics, 60:170-177. Study of Digo people achieving
day/night dryness by 5-6 months.
- Duong TH, Jansson UB, Hellström AL.
(2012). "Vietnamese mothers' experiences with potty training
procedure for children from birth to 2 years of age." Journal of
Pediatric Urology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpurol.2012.10.023
- Duong TH, et al. (2013). "Urinary
bladder control during the first 3 years of life in healthy children in
Vietnam." Journal of Pediatric Urology, 9(6):700-6.
- Wikipedia: "Open-crotch pants" - History and current use of kaidangku in
China
- Atlas Obscura: "The Split Pants That Are
China's Alternative to Diapers" (2017)
- CNN: "Potty training around the
world" (2017)
- University of Gothenburg: "Whistle away the need for
diapers" -
ScienceDaily (2013)
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