[noemit]

She had me on a schedule and would hold me up. Yep at 3 months babies can't even sit up. She said at the start she would hold me up until I went, even if it took hours, and if I went she would reward me. She Pavlov'ed me. I think she said I would cry or babble in a certain way, or if she even suspected I needed to go she would put me on the potty and hold me up.

[em-bee]

that's pretty much the chinese way of doing it. i don't know about the schedule or starting time though, actually i think they start almost right after birth. since traditionally the grandparents help with taking care of children they have more time to sit around with a baby in their lap.

the chinese also invented split pants that are open at the bottom making it possible to just grab a child when you see it ready to go without having to hassle with undressing. and once the children can walk they just need to squat down to go on their own. i did a quick look on wikipedia. apparently in europe it was common for young kids of both genders to wear dresses which i suppose also made that easier. (although dresses were worn much longer than necessary for toilet training, so they must have had another purpose or benefit too)

[Macha]

> although dresses were worn much longer than necessary for toilet training, so they must have had another purpose or benefit too

Easier to reuse across a wider range of child sizes (either the same child over time, or siblings). You don’t need to worry about e.g. leg diameter or crotch/knee heights like you would with trousers, so can get by basically just folding it to fit height and waist. In an era where people modified and repaired their own clothes more rather than having modern cheaper but more disposable clothes, that would matter more.

[allturtles]

Fascinating. I'm not sure what would drive someone to do this, since until the child can actually go to the toilet on their own, you haven't achieved the actual point (IMO) of the training.

[noemit]

She had only cloth diapers, no washing machine, she had to wash them by hand and boil them to disinfect them. I guess the time lost just waiting for me to go was better than the time lost doing all that cleaning. I was her second so she had experience doing this.

[allturtles]

I hadn't considered that. I can see how without modern conveniences the tradeoff would make sense.

[KaiserPro]

Manual labour of cleaning clothes without either a dedicated washing machine, and probably no access to a tumble drier.

That seems like a reasonable motivation to me

[throwaway173738]

The point would be to not clean diapers.

[trollbridge]

Not having to change poopy nappies is a powerful motivator.