Dealing with Inconsistency in Elimination Communication

First, I want to tell you a story. So when my second child was born, my first one was about three years old, and my second child Isadora was born. We did EC for the beginning. And then we of course stopped doing EC completely. How many of you have done that before? Raise your hand in the chat.

We stopped doing EC completely from months eight to 13. When I realized that we had stopped doing EC, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm set, I'm teaching this, I'm the expert in the field." And I am, I'm the leader of the Elimination Communication movement. I have grown the awareness around EC for all these last 10 years.

But wait, I'm not even doing EC with my child. What is going on? Now mind you, I was dealing with postpartum depression and I definitely was having some challenges in my personal life with my ex and all this other stuff.

So on top of everything else, I decided I'm just going to make this a priority. So I got from a complete inconsistency, hardly doing EC at all, to let's get back on track. And I do have a podcast on that it's called Getting EC Back on Track. And I have a mini course on that, Getting EC Back on Track, which shows you exactly what I did with Isadora to get back on track with her. We got back on track, stopped using diapers.

So actually from months eight to 11, we weren't doing EC. I'm sorry, my mommy brain is still foggy. Eight to 11 we did no EC for three months
straight. Then I got her back on track. We switched to cloth diapers, we did a timing observation session, everything. And then we got out of diapers at 13 months, and at 15 months she was telling me every single time.

So the reason I'm telling you this story is that yes, Andrea Olson has also been inconsistent with EC. Even though I have five children who are all out of diapers by walking every single one of them. And I'm here to tell you today that it's normal to lose track of things and to get inconsistent with EC. And all we have to do really, is get back on board. So in order to do that, I have some notes for you today. And I'm going to start off with the very first, most important thing you guys, and that is to forgive yourself.

So have a lot of grace and a lot of compassion for yourself. Like what you would give to your own baby, give that to you. And what you would give to somebody else, give that to you right now. Because being inconsistent with EC is just a symptom of something else going on.

So either you're over tired, you're under exercised, you're under loved, you're not loving yourself. There's something going on that causes us to drop the ball with parenting. So it's normal. In fact, this year I've had experiences like that as well. I've as you probably know, I got a divorce, you could listen to the podcast on that, several months ago. And I've had a lot of inconsistencies in my parenting since then, but also I've been able to find out what I need more and give that to myself in order to become more consistent. So now let's talk about potty consistency with EC.

The minimum thing you guys that you can get out of EC, and this is where I just want you to know you don't have to be perfect at all, is this is a great exposure method. So if all else fails, if you after listening to this or watching this or whatever you are just like, "Okay, I just can't find a way to become consistent," which I'm going to make it easy for you today in today's lesson. If you can't and you're having a hard time like I was, and maybe you have postpartum depression and it's undiagnosed.

Maybe you're just like, "I don't know, I'm not very good at this, or I'm not a natural." I would just say, look, do this once a day, as an exposure technique and potty training at 16, 17, 18 months, 20 months at the latest is going to be super easy. So at the minimum, EC is an amazing exposure method. And if that's all you get out of it, oh my goodness gracious, mama. You are far ahead of in front of anybody else.

So really congratulate yourself, forgive yourself, because you've been doing as much as you can do with what you have as far as resources go, and you can't do more than what you have the capacity to do. But when you know better, you can also do better. Maya Angelou said something to that effect. So here's my tip for you today. I want you to deal with inconsistency with Elimination and Communication by committing to one pottytunity a day.

And I didn't say one catch a day. A catch is when we make it in the potty. I didn't say that. I said one pottytunity. Well, what's a pottytunity? A pottytunity is when you offer the potty. It's basically an offering of the potty, pottytunity, an opportunity for your child to go potty. They don't have to do it.

They don't have to cooperate even, but you're giving them that chance. And eventually doing this consistently enough, you guys will sync up and you will be able to work together. So that's my biggest tip for today. Now, how do we do this? So if you've read this book called Atomic Habits, definitely if you haven't, it's amazing. If you have, then you'll know that we're supposed to peg a new habit that we want to form on top of an existing habit.

So I'm going to use that for EC. I want you to pick something you're already doing with your baby every single day. This could be, your baby wakes up every day from a nap or from overnight sleep. You change your baby's diaper every day, we're already doing that. If your baby poops every day, great.

Some of you have babies who poop every seven days, which is normal for a newborn. Some of you have babies who poop multiple times a day, which is also normal, which is totally confusing. But that is something that if that happens every day and you kind of already know around when that happens, or you know what it looks like when your baby's making the face like this, that's what they do. Then you're going to be able to take this as a peg. We're going to peg this new habit of pottytunity on top of something that's already happening consistently.

The key to consistency is just to commit. And what I'm asking you to do today is to commit to one pottytunity a day. So another example is, your baby eats every day, whether you're still exclusively breastfeeding or you're feeding solids, your baby definitely eats every day. Your baby might take a bath everyday. I have five to children, so my children do not bathe every day. If you have multiple children, then you know, you're with me on that one. And with eating and bathing, we would do this pottytunity either before they eat or after they eat. Or we would just say, hey I'm just going to pay attention during the feeding or the bath to see if there's any signals. Because usually they'll want to get a out of the water, or they want to get out of their high chair, or start to wriggle around and start pushing.

All right? So, and the last example I want to give you that we can peg this new habit onto is, your baby goes to bed every day. Your baby will go to a nap or to an overnight bed every single day. So we all have examples.

An example also to use if you're wanting to do better with consistency on outings is, you get out of the car to go into some place every single time you go on an outing. You park your car. How about that as a peg? So you park your car and every time you park your car, you go, okay, I'm going to get out of the car and offer my baby a pottytunity in the top hat potty in the car. So these are just multiple examples. Now when this peg, when this thing happens, this thing that happens every day, anyway, it's just your normal life.

When this happens, you're going to say, all right, baby's woken up I'm offering the potty, set them on the potty. Well, what if they don't sit it? What If they don't stay? If they're big enough to sit on a toilet seat reducer, set them on the toilet seat reducer leave the room.

If they're not, set them on the mini potty, in a bathroom with the door closed with both of you in it. And just ignore, not ignore, but like divert your attention somewhere else. So you're paying attention to scratching the grout off of the wall or whatever. So you can do things. And we talk about won't sit, on the podcast elsewhere as well.

So when this thing happens, when you change the diaper, you're going to say, and you can even make yourself a little sticky note, change diaper arrow pottytunity. So have your mini potty right there. If you guys don't have a mini potty or a newborn top hat potty, I do sell the best ones on the market.

I'm biased, I know. But they are literally the tools that we need, over at tinyundies.com. So definitely grab one of those. So when any of these things happen, and I've got my notes here, wake up, diaper change, poop, eat, bath, goes to bed, or you arrive to a store, or get back in your car from a store. You are going to offer your one pottytunity of the day. And doing this every single day, pegged to a habit that you already have and you're already doing anyway, is going to help you develop a new habit, which is potting your baby.

Are we clear on that? So the ask for today from me to you is to pick one. That's all I'm asking today. That's your action item today. So pick one of these that I've just named. If it's poop, for example, or you're paying attention during eating and bath and they start to poop, all you have to do by the way is just say, "Wait," just like that, wait or "Wait," and pick them up, airlift them to the toilet, and have them finish on the toilet.

You do that a couple of times, babies are mammals. They prefer to go outside of their pants, they are going to align with you and sync with you. So just trust that. You got to trust me, I've done this with five babies, but I've also helped hundreds of thousands of other parents do the same thing.

This works for every single baby, and older babies will test you because they'd rather be doing something else, or because they're so used to going in the diaper. So that's my challenge for you today. Pick your one thing that you're going to peg this new habit on. You're going to go for and pottytunity a day. And if you don't have it already, grab a copy of my Easy Start Guide. So you can get my Easy Start Guide. Pretty easy. If you don't have it already, it shows some positions, the easy catches, it's got a couple of thoughts about things and signals.

All right, your baby doesn't have to signal for you to be able to do EC. If you've already been doing EC and you're just like, "I feel stuck, a little bit stuck." Then add one of these new pegs that you haven't done before, and that could help you move from part-time EC to full-time EC for an example. So I want you to get my Easy Start Guide and pick your one fix per day.

Your one little consistency fix, this is where we're going to fix our problem. One little peg. I also would love to hear your comments. So please go to Go Diaper Free Podcast and leave a comment with what your one fix is going to be, your one way to make more consistency happen with your easy practice. Okay. So go over there, type in the comments over there. And also if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. We look at all of the questions, we answer as much as possible. And you can go get the easy start guide through a link on those show notes as well, or just go to Go Diaper Free website.

And if you already have my book, then go ahead and open it up. And if you're looking at the digital copy you can search for this, look for the four easy catches. And this is in the part of how to potty your baby. It's a really sweet way to kind of dip back into EC if you haven't done it already, or if you're just starting, or if you are already started and you've already been doing EC for a while, it's a really good reminder of some of the things that I just suggested that you pegged this new habit to. All right you guys, good luck.