Word Spy - potty whispering

potty whispering

n. The technique of training an infant to go to the washroom on cue by associating the act of elimination with a brief word or sound, especially one whispered in the baby's ear.
—potty whisperer n.

Example Citations:

[Ingrid] Bauer began "cueing" her baby with the word "caca." Before long, she says, he clearly responded, bearing down gently when she said it. "After a few weeks," she says, "it just clicked. He kind of taught me."

One morning when he was three months old, she simply "sensed" her son needed to poop. She removed his diaper, held his bottom over a potty with his knees pulled into his chest, and . . . the rest is history.

"I pretty well never cleaned a poopy diaper after he was three or four months old," she says.

Ms. Bauer coined her approach "elimination communication" (or more simply EC) in a self-published 2001 book Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene. ...

Ms. Bauer's manual on what is also called "potty whispering" was published this month by Penguin. Groups such as the Diaper Free Baby Support Network have sprung up with chapters in 35 American states and 10 groups in Canada. They meet monthly and share information and support on-line.
—Cecily Ross, "The potty whisperers," The Globe and Mail, October 7, 2006

Imagine raising a baby without having to change dirty diapers. The idea never entered my mind until I saw a newspaper article about a 6-month-old North Carolina baby who'd been using the toilet since he was 10 weeks old.

His coach and teacher was his grandmother, Karry Laney, who's pictured in the article bending over a toilet, holding a bare-bottomed tyke by his chubby little thighs above the toilet.

Laney is among a relatively small but growing number of caregivers who've abandoned diapers in favor of infant potty training, also called elimination control, potty whispering and natural infant hygiene.
—Mary Winter, "Are Americans really ready to get past the diaper stage?," Ricky Mountain News, August 19, 2006

Earliest Citation:

It often starts with a whisper, and it has many names: from the practical descriptions of "Infant Potty Training" and "Elimination Communication" to the nostalgic "Trickle Treat" from the early '90s. ...

I have now begun to think of it as "potty whispering" for this is how it begins in many places around the world.
—Laurie Boucke, Pottywhisperer.com, March 31, 2006

Category:

Pregnancy and Parenting

Posted on October 18, 2006