Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - Taking A Crap On Big Diaper | Elimination Communication Expert Andrea Olson

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Today’s guest is Andrea Olson — mom of SIX, author of author of Go Diaper Free and The Tiny Potty Training Book. Want to learn all about elimination communication? 👀💩Buckle up! She’s helped MILLIONS of families ditch diapers from birth and she’s here to explain why diaper culture might be one of the biggest scams in modern parenting.Thank you to our sponsors!TAYLOR DUKES WELLNESS: Use code ALEXCLARK for 10% off your purchaseBLDG ACTIVE SKIN REPAIR: Use code ALEX for 20% off your orderCOZY EARTH: Use code ALEX for 40% offA'DEL NATURAL COSMETICS: Use code ALEX for 25% off first-time ordersBRANCH BASICS: Use code ALEX15 for 15% offUTZY: Use code LOWTOX to save 30% on Microplastic Daily DetoxOur Guest:Andrea OlsonAndrea's Links:InstagramYouTubeFacebookPodcastTiny Undies Website⁠⁠Instagram Tiny UndiesUse code "ALEX" for 15% off on Andrea's books or courses! Go Diaper Free WebsiteFree Elimination Communication Easy Start GuideElimination Communication Book👗 Get Alex’s freshest fashion picks and exclusive guest recommendations—delivered straight to your inbox!Sign up for the newsletter HERE:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEEKLY NEWSLETTER SIGNUP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FOLLOW ALEX:Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the Cuteservatives Facebook group to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the CUTEservative Facebook Group!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.

I've talked about big pharma. I've talked about big food. I have not talked about big diaper. In 1957, 92% of babies were potty trained by 18 months old. Now it's over three years old. Parents were guilted into thinking that they need to wait for signs of readiness. Like, my child can recite the ABCs. My child can stay dry in these diapers.

We know no other way. We've lost that wisdom. It hasn't been passed on. It's gone. So I'm bringing it back. What if your baby didn't need diapers at all? Today's guest is Andrea Olson, mom of six, author of Tiny Potty and founder of Go Diper Free, a movement that's turning the parenting world upside down.

She's helped millions of families ditch diapers from birth. She's been featured on the Today Show, parents, and motherly, and she's here to tell us why diaper culture might just be one of the biggest scams in modern parenting. From baby cues and potty training myths to corporate agendas, and what Pam doesn't want you to know. I had no idea what to expect with this episode, to be honest. I mean, doing an entire episode on diapers seemed like it could be kind of dull.

And then the interview happened, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It was a blast. Parents and non-parents are gonna be floored by this conversation. Watch on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel and make sure that you subscribe. I post tons of content there, or you can watch via the Culture Apothecary Spotify.

Join the Ket Service at his Facebook group to continue this discussion after the show. Please welcome Andrea Olson to Culture Apothecary. I've talked about big pharma. I've talked about big food. I have not talked about big diaper. Is it true that diapers were not invented for convenience, but actually because they were part of a larger agenda?

For sure. I mean, you just follow the money, right? With any of those things you just named. I think that big diaper has an agenda and it's not really in our favor. What do you mean by that? They want us dependent on their process. for longer and longer. I actually, I live in Asheville and there's a guy who lives in my town who has retired from Pampers and I asked him some questions one day and he basically gave me the dish on

diapers and how they had a really bad start in America. Like nobody wanted to buy them. Why? Moms at that time didn't want to put paper on their babies. They just didn't. They thought it would be bad for their skin. Man, they were so right. I know. Used to, nobody got diaper rash at all. No babies did. If they did, you were considered a bad mom. Now it's about 92 to 95% of babies get diaper rash at some point in their childhood. What were moms before diapers, before wipes? What were they using to wipe their baby? So they would just use like a wet cloth, you know, and they would use cloth diapers.

And I actually read a parenting manual from the 50s. And it's like any kind of catching this in a little chamber pot is bonus points, you know? And then once that babies walking, you toilet train them. You don't use the diapers anymore at all. And cloth diapers are actually a pretty new invention. It's like a couple hundred years. Disposables were invented in the 60s. And that's when women were so like, you know, they were set on cloth. They were used to cloth. They didn't want to do disposables. So here's where the collusion comes in. They hired a pediatrician to do a study, a scientific study. And if you read it, which you can, it's by P. Berry, Barry, Bray. If you read it, you'll see that there's nothing scientific about it, but it kind of guilts parents into waiting for signs of readiness for potty training. So with that study coming out in the 60s, diaper sales started going up. Parents were convinced to wait longer and longer to potty train. And that's how it began. And now we've doubled the potty training age in just a couple of generations because of that study, because of Pampers saying, hey, moms, now you can get

out of the house. You can go join the workforce. You don't have to do diaper laundry all the time at home anymore. I was going to say, you saying that diapers were invented in the 60s, disposable diapers, which I didn't know it was actually that recent. That correlates with the sexual revolution. And women, you know, being told you're not going to feel fulfilled. If you're not totally in the workforce, you know, being at home is never going to be enough for you. That's interesting. interesting to me. So do you think that that kind of plays into that of trying to get more women to be cogs and machine of the workforce? Absolutely. 100%. And I think with that, they started to speak to the woman's heart. Like, how can we convince them to buy these diapers and to put them in and keep their babies in them longer and just convince them that they're a good thing? And they said, well, these are better for your baby's skin than cloth. They tried all the different angles. But it's that one scientific study that really did it that started this whole. sound bite that you should wait for readiness or you're going to psychologically damage your child.

How much money could a family save annually if they switch to elimination communication or cloth diapers? About $2,000 a kid. So I have six kids and I've saved about $12,000 over the course of all of them. I use diapers for the first year. But after that, I take them out of diapers when they're walking just like our great grandparents did. I do use disposables because I think they signal better in them, but I'll reuse them over and over until the tabs fall off. So like they don't want to go in them. They'll signal more loudly in them.

And so I'm reusing a lot of them. But I'd say roughly, like you'd spend about $3,000 a kid on diapers if you didn't do EC. If you do it, you're done in about a third of the time. What is EC or elimination communication for those who have never heard of it? This is crazy. but think about what did people do before diapers, you know, what did people do before formula? What did people do before car seats and strollers and things? You know, when we really think about what happened before diapers, if you believe in God,

God designed us perfectly. So we come out into this world signaling for our needs and we come out asking to be fed, to be held, to be potty, to go hygienically, et cetera. If you just believe in science, scientifically we're born with sphincter control. We have hormones that keep us dry when we're sleeping. there's all this stuff developmentally that just a baby is born completely ready to use the toilet and signaling to do so. So EC is basically a modern take on that where we are using the baby signals and the baby's natural development and like hormones and all that other stuff.

It's a big hodgepodge of perfect setup to help them do what they can't do by themselves until they can do it by themselves. So we basically team up with our babies from birth, helping them to go to the potty hygienically until they're walking and then we teach them how to do it themselves. And for example, I've never had to potty train my kids because I did this with them. It just naturally wrapped up when they started walking. So you are saying that it's possible for a newborn baby to know how to poop on the toilet? So newborn babies don't know toilets, but they do know that they don't want to soil themselves. So have you ever picked up a puppy, like a brand new puppy? And you hold them for a while and they're all cute and everything. And then they start to wriggle

and they really wriggle and they want out of your arms. So you put them on your carpet and they pee all over it. Right. That was a sign, that wriggling, that they needed to go. Well, all mammals have this instinct to not go on another being, to not go in their den, their sleep space, to not go on themselves. If we didn't have that instinct, then a long time ago we would have died out as a species. Like think about it, cave babies, peeing and pooping everywhere.

there would have been disease and everything else. So we come into this world like absolutely, like not knowing what a toilet is, but having this really strong set of instincts that we don't want to. It sounds like we don't want to pee on each other. We don't want to do that to each other. Like all mammals do that. No other mammal wears diapers. Right.

That's true. Why? In fact, no diaper was used as a toilet really until the last century. they were always used as a backup for when we couldn't when we're nomadic and we're walking around or when we just couldn't do it or we're busy with other kids or whatever

it was never meant to be a toilet So like in the pioneer days when you've got people in these covered wagons going across the country with babies what were those babies going to the bathroom in? I mean they were pointing and shooting They were going to pick them up This is crazy

lift up the dress go like this and then aim into a bush. I just I guess I just assumed like these babies were wearing clothed diapers or something, I didn't know that that was such a recent phenomenon. This stat freaked me out. In 1957, 92% of babies were potty trained by 18 months old. Now it's over three years old. And that's an average. Three years is an average. What happened? The diapers were invented. The study was done and parents were guilted into thinking that they need to wait for signs of readiness. Like, my child can recite the ABCs. My child can stay dry in these diapers.

which is crazy. My child can manipulate their clothing later and later and later. Is it true that no diaper has truly ever biodegraded? It's true. And one of the statistics I have is in 2009. There's not been a lot of studying on it. But 2009, 27.4 billion disposable diapers were landfilled in America alone. Oh my gosh.

Full of pee and poop. And no diaper has ever biodegraded since they were invented in the 60s. So they're all full and you're supposed to dump them and rinse them even the disposables before you throw them away. This is like highly toxic gels and chemicals and everything else. Even with the natural diapers today, those don't biodegrade either. So every single diaper that's ever been used is just sitting there. And I kind of theorize that maybe someday they'll all off gas and kill us all and just something terrible will happen. Because it's like it just isn't sanitary or safe.

It's the third largest part of our waste stream. and waste management cannot figure out how to recycle or do anything with these buried diapers. I'm going to be honest with you. When I have heard about elimination communication, I've always said, guarantee that person has one child.

This is their first child. They have no one else screaming, run around the house that they have to take care of. That's why they are zeroed in on that baby and they know when it has to go to the bathroom. There is no way that this is parents of multiple children. However, you yourself have six kids that you have managed to potty train without doing it in the traditional sense. How did you do this?

Well, yes, and it's true. I should have had three in diapers at the same time at one point because I had my middle four really close together. It's all I've ever known. So I never wanted kids. I heard from a friend of a friend that they like pottyed their baby into a sink and didn't use diapers before I ever considered having kids. And I was like, cool, that sounds good. I might do it if that were the case because diapers are gross. And I remember baby. be sitting. Like, I never wanted to do that. Then I found myself pregnant in my early 30s and I was like, what was that thing? I have to do that thing because I'm not changing a poopie diaper. And with my first child, I did not change a poopie diaper. It was amazing. He was put me. The whole time. The whole time. He pooped on the floor one time when he was two and a half because he was sick. What about traveling in a car? We traveled with him. I went to Thailand. We traveled in took tooks. We traveled in boats. We traveled in airplanes. We traveled in cars. I would carry a little

potty with me or I would use the bathroom that all the adults used. So it's not like a constant hovering and going, oh, I need to catch every single thing. Like I definitely did not do this crazy intense helicopter thing because that backfires. And nobody has the energy for that. But from the beginning, I was like committed to my child is asking for help with this. I'm going to try to tune in and hear what he wants. Like if he's hungry, I'm not going to ignore him and be like, oh, whatever, fine. You know, like, I'm going to give him the breast, you know. I'm going to wear it. Make sure he feel safe and secure. And then when he needs to potty, I'm going to offer it to him. So it's always like an offering. And yeah, when I had another baby and another baby, I would just have the older ones help me.

This is what we do in our family. Let's potty the baby. And boy, do they love it. I have pictures of like two and a half, three-year-old kids with the little baby on the little top pat patty in their lap, potting them. And they'll like carry them around. And it was like, they're part of the family. How do you know when a baby needs to go? I mean, what signs are you looking for? So the biggest one is sudden fessiness. If anybody's like starting EC and they have a brand new zero to four month baby, I always say right when they wake up, potty them because the anti-diarrotic hormone wears off. It wears off for you, for me. Like, you need to pee in the morning, right? When you wake up? Yep. So right in the morning, that happens right after they wake up from any nap.

The hormone wears off. The bladder fills. And then it's, it's time to offer, we call it a potty tunity. It's just a chance to go to the body. They don't have to do that one. And then after you nurse, anybody listening to this, like, next time you nurse your baby, five to ten minutes after you're done, they're going to fuss. That's a sign that they need to go to the bathroom. And you just hold them over something and you make the running water sound. That's what they do all over the world where they still do this because they don't have diapers. That's what we do with EC, you make this sound association and you hold them over something and they go. And it's amazing. Like the first catch, you get this high and you're like, whoa, I can't not know that now.

So I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to really, I want to figure this out. So like wakeups, first fest after feeding and then I like to get the poops. I call these the easy catches because they're like, you're basically catching it in the potty before you start this two-way communication, you know. So with poops, I think everybody with the bee's, baby knows when their baby's pooping or like has this feeling or can tell when they make that face where they're like, is that a smile or is that, you know, something else. And they'll start to bear down. You have time. Babies are born with sphincter control. So you just say wait, take off the diaper, potty them. And it's truly that easy to kind of get your feet wet into it. You literally

say wait to a newborn? Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. This is like. And they start like within two weeks. I'm telling you, Alex, within two weeks, they start to look to you before they need to go. They are so easily poop trained. This is crazy. If everybody knew this, the diaper companies would surely, like, lose billions of dollars. I get that not everybody stays at home and stares at their baby all the time. And that's literally not what we do. But if you just have, you're on leave and you have a baby around and you're just like hanging out anyway, just try those three things.

And you'll catch something and you'll be like, whoa. And the baby will look at you and say, wow, I feel heard. they are instantly less bussy. They are like, you're building strong attachment, secure attachment, right? And everybody, it's all the rage right now. We need to have securely attached kids. How do we raise them? If we're neglecting their cries for anything, they're going to start to be, what is it,

anxious attachment, right? That's what I have. Like, we were all kind of messed up, us adults these days. And we had our wounding. So we want to do it right, right? So we want to not have an anxious attached kid. or avoid an attached kid, we want to have a secure attachment. And so when we try our best, like we don't have to be perfect, but when we try our best

to say, okay, you're fussing, you just ate, you also just woke up. Right. You must need to pee or you're bearing down like, you must need to poop. And they start to feel heard. They feel safe. They feel like they can trust you to help them with things until they're able to do it themselves. And it's a really beautiful connection.

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between zero and 18 months. When you get into 16 and 17 months, it's more like developmentally appropriate to do potty training because it's really straightforward. And I do teach that too, and it's a different thing. It's the parent saying, you've been in diapers. It's time to be out of diapers. With EC, it's more like, we're going to do this together. So how do you start doing this? Let's say you've got, I'll say you've got a 14 month old. How are you going to start doing this? So the cool thing with a 14 month old is they're in the monosory period for, it's a sensitive period, for potty learning. So basically 12 to 18 months. In a traditional monastery class, they'll put them all in cloth training pants. They'll have them all go potty together. They'll all be potty trained by 18 months if you're in a traditional monastery class these days. There aren't very many of those left. But so what you would do is you would start to do the easy catches. You do the morning pee. You'd offer. You'd start offering at predictable times. You would also do observation. So I have Tiny Andes is one of my companies and I have these little like, turquoise blue training pants that show immediately when they're wet. So I would put them in those

because they're walking. They're going to be going around your house. And I would just write down on a piece of paper how often they go pee. So now I know. And at 14 months old, it's probably going to be like every 45 minutes to an hour. With a newborn, it's like every 15 minutes. So like don't ever try to catch all of them. But you're going to get a sense of their natural timing. And then at a diaper change, when they start to poop, when they wake up, you're going to offer. And we sort of get into it that way. And then within a couple months, you're going to wrap it up. You're just going to teach them the things they need to know. This is how you push down your pants. This is how you wipe. This is how you put new pants on. You know, I cover all this in detail in my book, like broken down by age because it's really different between a newborn and a young toddler. But the cool thing at 14 months is you get to start and finish like within a few months. And so it takes a little longer than potty training at that age. But your kid is still. like connecting long-term memory synapses, right? So they're still in that developmental stage. It just takes a little bit longer. But it's really cool because it's before the no stage. So if you know any toddlers.

Yeah. But man, I've got a two and a half year old right now and she would be so hard to potty train. She is like, no, I will do it myself and then get really frustrated to have a tantrum. So we're doing it before all of that happens. Did you say that a newborn baby goes pee every 15 minutes? Some of them do. Okay, so then how do you live life and then do the EC? So I just do the wake up first, first fuss after feeding, and then I potty him one more time before nap. And I really just skip the rest. I let the diaper catch the rest. Okay. So then that's where it's a cloth diaper? Cloth or disposable, whatever works. Okay. That's what I was confused. After baby one, I got to be honest, I used disposables. I used compostables for a while. Like I just couldn't keep up with cloth diapering, even though we weren't cleaning poop. Right. And again, I noticed that. I noticed that. I that they stay drier than the cloth diapers because you got a baby who's crying. They're screaming their head off and you're a new mom. You're like, oh my gosh, what do you need? You're trying to think of the Dunstan language. You saw that on Oprah. You're like, okay, what does this cry mean? We'll try the breasts. We'll try swaddling. We'll try Harvey Carps, four S's, five Ss,

whatever. We're going to shush and swaddle and it's crazy, right? You try everything to get the baby to stop crying. And then you check their diaper and they have pooped or Pete. And you're like, oh, you were crying to get changed. But if you rewind a few moments, they were crying to get you to take the diaper off so that they could go they could go hygienically like in alignment with their very strong instinct to not soil themselves okay but so even people that are doing full-time elimination communication it's not every time throughout the day they go to the bathroom you're trying to do it EC they're still wearing diapers they're still wearing them and that point I was making is just like they don't want to do it so much more in certain kinds of diapers versus

others. So you want to choose the one as your backup that they signal the best in. And then usually it's like super fast. You offer the P, you offer for them to go pee, they go, you put the same diaper back on them and you move on with your day. Like it saves so much time. Okay. People think I was meeting with a customer this morning while I'm in town. I was like, let's meet up. And I met with a couple of customers. And one of them was like, yeah, I haven't started yet. I have a 10 month old. And I was like, what's holding you back? Like, why don't you just start? She's like, I don't know. I'm just so used to changing diapers into doing this. And I was like, okay, next time your baby wakes up, just do it.

Just try it one time. And you'll be amazed. Like, it'll work. And then from there, you get to pick and choose. Like, you can do super low bar EC and still not have to potty train. Okay, so there's levels to it. There are some women who are home and every time their kid has to go, they're like making sure they go in the toilet.

But then there are some people that are only doing it a few times a day. I have one podcast episode on the Go Diper Free Podcast. It's called Super Part-Time EC. and it's about this teacher who read my book and was like, what do I do? I have my kid in daycare from 9 to 6 every day. And so I coached her to go, you know, have them go before, have them go after, talk to them. During daycare, you're not going to, you're going to use the diaper instead. Do EC at home. Anytime your child's at home, just do it exactly as I teach. Like, you're going to just be responding. You're going to know their timing and you're going to go, okay, it's been like 40

minutes. You're fussing. I'm going to offer the potty because there's literally. nothing else it could be. Yeah. Right. And so she did it that way. And then when the daycare allowed her, which is they used to daycare, like daycare law, it's not a law, but they used to potty train our kids for us in the 90s. And now they're like, you can't let your kid be here without diapers and still are two or three. So like, we have conflict there. But if you work with them and I worked with a lot of people with their daycare, you can find a nice middle ground. And they'll be like, okay, when they're two. So this particular woman, when she, her kid was two, she did a potty training experience after doing it part time, super part time. She said it was, quote unquote, joyful.

It was blissful. Now, how many potty training stories do we ever hear where it's like a blissful experience? Yeah, never. It's never. It's the opposite. It's terrible. You have literally only given them the diaper for years because that's what you've been told to do by your doctor, by your mom, by whoever. then you're going to be like, hey, you have to go in the toilet now.

And they're terrified. So like we're, we are setting them up for failure. All of us ourselves and them for failure. Instead, when we do it this way, we're doing an exposure technique. We're exposing them to the toilet at least once a day, just whatever you have the capacity for. And then when we get to the point where the daycare allows it, we do the potty training. And it was joyful.

It was like one or two days. She was like, no big deal. And then her child would go to school without a diaper. So it's a thing that holds a lot of parents back. Because like what you mentioned, we've got moms in the workforce doing nine to fives. So how do they do this? How do they raise a securely attached child as well? It's going to be harder, right?

So we have to get creative. So I say just do as much as you can talk to your child about what's going to happen. It's a backup while you're at daycare. But a lot of kids will ask the daycare workers to take them. Yeah. So it kind of backfires on the daycare workers. You're just like, So how do you go from EC with an infant to EC with a walking toddler?

So it gets a little rough in there. I have a really good example for you. Like when we lived in mud huts, right, intact community. Like I went to Ghana like 25 years ago. Totally lived like that. When the babies were crawling, they no longer did the point and shoot at all. Like they no longer pottyed their babies. That baby would crawl.

Well, they would pee in the mud hut. The parent would chew them out. know they would crawl outside, then they would crawl further, and then they started to walk. They would walk to the place where everybody goes potty. And they would go with the other kids to go potty where everyone goes. We live in the modern world. We've got carpets. We've got clothing, all of that stuff. So it gets a little bumpy during the crawling months. You can imagine they're like, well, I could just crawl away. So they're going to be in their diaper and then they're going to crawl away, but they still have it on them. So it becomes a thing of where the parent just sticks to it,

just stick to the what I call the four easy catches and just get the morning one, get the poop. Even if you're just catching like one a day, which has happened to me, just stick with it. And once they have totally mastered whatever they're working on, which you don't know until after the fact ever with parenting, oh, they were cutting a tooth or oh, they were learning how to say mommy. When they're past that, they'll get back on track. But it's really up to the parent to like hold fast on it. Like this is what we're doing. This diaper is a backup. This is not a toilet.

and I'm going to use it until you're walking and we can stop using them. So, I mean, step by step logistically, what happens when you are on a plane or on a train or on a bus or you're in a car on a road trip and you've got this little, you call it the top hat potty that you're setting on your lap and you're holding your baby above it. They go in it and then what do you do? Like, how do you dispose of it? I mean, logistically. So I had one reel go pretty viral where I'm potting and you weren't on an airplane and breast

breastfed milk doesn't smell. It has no smell. It's like pretty non-toxic. So like she went in it. I put the top potty between my feet, just still in the airline seat. And I put it down there. I held it between my feet so it didn't spill. I put her flat on her back. A baby held in this position for EC is in a low squat. So everybody's seen the unicorn pooping commercial about the squatty potty. It makes it easy, but it also makes it come out clean. So like really didn't need a wiper, put her on her back, put her diaper back on her and then passed her to my partner and then I got up, went to the lavatory, pulled the little cotton part out of the way, dumped it into the toilet, put some water out from the sink, swished it around, dumped it into the toilet, wiped it with paper towel,

back to my seat, oh, fleshed it, and then back to my seat. And so people criticize me, they're like, why didn't you just make her go in a diaper? And I'm like, where would I have changed her. Right. Because you know that would have been all up her back and I would have had to change her whole outfit. So the other thing is like anytime I go to a restaurant or a store or whatever, it really depends on the age of my baby, but typically I'll offer the potty in the car because it's like, I know this toilet and they know this toilet and we're going to have like a really discreet potty session. So I'll hold the top half between my legs, have them go. And then if it's just pee, I just pour it into the grass or onto the concrete. Just like,

If a dog did it, would it evaporate? Okay, fine. If it's poop, I will usually just bring it in and go to the toilet and dump it just like I described in the airplane. So sometimes I'll put it in the bottom of the stroller. Sometimes if I'm in carline at school, for example, it has happened where a kid has pooped in the toilet. I will wrap it up. I put it into a Starbucks cup one time. And I sound like I go to Starbucks all the time.

I do not go to Starbucks anymore. I'm way past that. But back in the day, I had a cup in there and I put it over it and I, you know, put the lid on it and then I wrapped it all in a plastic bag. And we made it home and it wasn't that bad. But typically there's a bathroom nearby no matter where you are, right? And like if you're hiking, what would you do if you had to poop? You just leave it out there. You just leave it out there. You probably dig a hole and then cover it up like you're supposed to. I don't know. We just figure it out. We find ways. But what I like to do is like get to a place, potty. Then I can shop and the baby's not going to fuss. I can put them in the car. They're going to be relaxed. And then when we leave, I potty them in my car again. So I'll either use the public toilet before and after a shop or the car toilet before and after the shop. Now, this sounds like it takes a ton of time.

Like anything would take forever, but it actually takes a lot of things off my plate. I don't have to find a changing table. I don't have to worry about disgusting public toilets. I don't have to clean a blowout off of my baby's body. I don't have to clean up a car seat. So, like, doing this before and after. takes me a few minutes and it helps us have like a really relaxed chill shopping experience. And then one thing I want to add about baby wearing, when babies like try to get out of the

baby carrier, that means that they need to go to the bathroom usually. Oh, wow. So in a store, I'll just strap them into my baby carrier, walk around. And then if they start to get fussy, I just take them to the public toilet. That's a really cool tool because it's like instant signal maker is having them in the carrier. If you're like me, you want to clean home, but you also want to live long enough to enjoy it. I was using cleaners that smelled like a meth lab exploded in a bath and bodyworks. I'd spray the shower and suddenly I'm hearing voices and losing time.

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a man who probably hasn't touched polyester since the Bush administration. That's UtsS.com slash Alex, code low talks for 30% on. Is it true that diaper companies funded research to delay potty training? Yes. It's called the Pampers Institute. And they help to write, my stepmom became a nurse a couple dozen years ago. and her medical text said that they don't have sphincter control until they're 18 months old. And that's absolutely false.

Absolutely false. There's no way because I've helped over a million babies do this, okay? I have seen it with my own six kids. Babies are born with sphincter control. They will hold it until you get the diaper off. They're born with it. So I met this guy and he worked for pamper's for like 30 years. He holds the patent for the newborn diaper that has a little cutout part.

Yeah. And so he and I met because I was like, oh, you're the enemy. I need to have coffee with you. So he came over and we talked. And he was like, he had so many stories, so many things. But basically he told me that Brazelton, the one who did that study, was the head of the Pampers Institute and that they did heavily influence the medical texts. They worked together. They continue to work together today. Your pediatrician will tell you you need to circumcise your boy. You need to. You need to. get all of these vaccines way earlier than, well, we won't get into that. Well, we should supplement with formula so that the baby's jaundice doesn't get worse. And you need to wait so your child says they're ready to potty train. Where did all these messages come from? You follow the money. They came from those big companies. I mean, it is exactly the same. You're saying that, you know, if pamper's or other big diaper brands literally chose the people to run studies a certain way, to sway the market. That is exactly what food companies do. That is exactly what pharmaceutical companies do. So this corruption really goes everywhere, which is insane. Is diaper culture damaging a child's

self-esteem? Absolutely. Now, I don't have empirical studies about this, but there is no way that being told to ignore your instincts and to devocate in your own pants for three years is not damaging to a child. I mean, I do it all the time. Nobody seems to have a problem. Now, for grandma and grandpa, maybe that's a normal thing, but that's because they're incontinent

at a certain point. Babies aren't incontinent. So we are literally telling them to ignore their instincts. We're shushing them into doing it the way that it's not the parent's fault, the way that we've been told

to do it by people we trust. And it's also just infiltrated our whole society. I mean, it sounds like a huge conspiracy theory, But honestly, you just look through the steps of it. That's exactly what happened. They just wanted to sell diapers. Now, this friend in Asheville, he's still a shareholder in Pampers, so he can't reveal his name.

But he said after talking to me and after talking about, I told him that there's an alternative, that you can potty train earlier, that it's what all babies of all human history have done. And none of them were psychologically damaged. Like, hello, that doesn't even make sense. That he said that the diaper companies have gone too far. And he couldn't talk to me for several days. He's like, I just need to go think about this. And then when we got back together, he was like, wow, my mind is blown. And he's like, I'm not going to say anything because I'm a shareholder, but my mind is blown.

How do you respond to people that say elimination communication is extreme and unnecessary and unrealistic? It's the new old thing. It's what people did. It's ancient wisdom. It's how our babies are wired. It's not a fad or a trend. It's literally what they did before diapers. If you don't want to do it, that's cool.

But maybe you want an early potty train. Did you know you could do it between 16 and 18 months? And it's easier. Like, try that. But usually the people who say that aren't going to early potty train either. They're going to let their child potty train themselves. And they're going to have their kid having problems with bedwetting at 7 and 8 years old. Like, it's all related.

Oh, it is? Oh, yeah. What's your theory on bedwetting? They're born with sphincture control. We're teaching them to ignore those signals from their bodies, to not trust their own body cues. and those muscles, they stop getting used. So they're going to start to become flaccid. And I think that we're physiologically damaging our kids

by making them go in the diaper for so long. And again, y'all are innocent if you didn't know anything. But now that you know the earlier you potty train, the less of a correlation there is with bedwetting. So when somebody, when you have a mom tell you, well, my pediatrician says that my child isn't ready yet, what do you say? If the mom does everything the pediatrician says, there's no help in her.

Okay, I love you. You know, like, we can't help those people. Yeah. Maybe with the next child. Maybe. Look me up because this is going to suck for you if you wait longer and longer. You're going to have a terrible time and you're going to be like, Andrea, I have a new baby. Help me.

I would say, what does your gut tell you? And I would tell them some stories about indigenous people, about our history. I'd give them those stats. Like in the 50s, if 92% were done by 18 months, do you think that our kids are any biologically different or physiologically different than kids? What is that? 70 years ago? They're not.

We haven't evolved into a different set of everything. Like, they're the same. I think the tie here, what I think is interesting, which, you know, I didn't know any of this about potty training. And I don't have children. And so I've never potty trained a child. So this is, I'm hearing all this for the first time. But what I do know is I've talked extensively on this show with different experts about how I mean, even without having kids, just looking at the world around me, I do feel like we are

undercutting children a lot saying that they are not capable of things that they are capable of. And I feel like there is a distinction here. There is a connection. You know, I see that in older kids, but also like, are we doing this? This is actually starting as young as potty training age, as young as infancy, of feeling like, oh, our kids, you know, they're incapable of being able to. tell us when they need to use the bathroom. And we're undercutting them, you know, as young as just days, weeks, months old. 100%. Do you remember a little bit ago in this interview, you said,

you say wait and the baby waits. Yes, that baby is capable of communication, comes out communicating, understands language far before they say their first word. So babies are so much more capable than we, and we really dumb it down. We make them convenient. We make them fit into our lives. And there is a certain amount, like there's a part of me that really believes in the convenience of how do we raise babies in a convenient way that works with our lives. Because I'm a single mom of six kids. Let me tell you how much I need convenience, you know. I'm the one who should have everybody in diapers and who should be doing all the things that are easier, like not breastfeeding, all of that. The way I see it, though, is an upfront investment. Like, I'm going to breastfeed them.

I'm going to give them those healthy. I'm going to try to birth naturally. Like, I birth all my mind naturally. I did three free births with no doctor or midwife or anything. Wow. I am gung-ho about how we start is how we continue on. I want them to have a peaceful beginning where they feel safe and good and heard. What was your free birth experience like? Oh my gosh. I can't even. That wouldn't fit in three hours of talking. It was amazing. They were 75 minutes and like I had no, I was at Starbucks the next day getting a latte. I was like so resilient. That is crazy. And it was amazing. It was so wonderful. But I guess what I'm saying is like, I don't believe what people say about babies not getting it. I think early on in my pregnancies I read Continuum Concept, which is about Stone Age Indians in the 60s. And this woman, Gene Lidloff, she went down there and like spent time living with the Stone Age Indians. And it became like this kind of parenting manual, even though we don't have intact community. So like parts of it don't really work. But like the parts I got from her book were really trusting that that child. is into their self-preservation more than you are.

Yeah. Like they are smart. They're survivors and they are forgiving and loving and resilient. And they are communicating and they get it and they're not stupid. They're not incontinent. They're not dumb. Babies are brilliant and they are learning so fast. And like they go through all of these developmental milestones in the same pattern,

whether the developmentally delayed or not. and they go through and achieve each thing. It's like, it's so beautiful to watch six of my own babies go through all these phases. And my whole goal is kind of Montessori in nature is like to support, to make the environment supportive of whatever milestone they're in. While trying not to hover or helicopter. Yeah. Thank God having multiple children, you can't. So it's like they're kind of on their own.

Like, hey, I hope you're okay over there. Like, I have to do this. And I really want to like set up the environment and then listen. and I do my best, but I am very, very allergic to the perfectionism, the people expect out of moms. I am so imperfect, but they're forgiving. So, like, at least I'm trying. Like, I figure if I'm trying, then my child is going to be way more securely attached than I was, you know, and that, like, you just try to be healthier than your parents were, you know. I like that. I like that. You can't. Not the healthiest, but healthier. Exactly. After a micro-needling session,

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Come to me. And I'll teach you how to do it, whatever age you're at because it's going to be a little bit different at each age. But really, just one client told me one time, take the diaper off. There you've started. It's literally the first step. Just take the diaper off. Don't be so afraid. It's just a baby. It's just pee. You're going to get peed on anyway if you potty train.

Like there's going to be messes. You might not get peed on. But like with a baby, there's going to be mess. But just be curious. Explore. See what's going on. You can do observation over a waterproof pad if your baby's not crawling. And you can see just like what's going on with this creature, you know? And you can notice these shifts and stuff. It's like a little study where you're like learning each other, you know. And you can see if they signal or whatever. So just observe. If you feel like it's too late, just observe and see. And the next time they wake up, offer the potty. Like they don't have to go in it. It's not potty training. If I could leave you all with anything, the EC is not potty training. It is this team effort towards just helping to fulfill their needs until they can do it themselves.

So there's no expectation that you're going to do this one thing and it's just going to work. It is like a feedback loop. So you're going to try something and it's going to blow up. and you're going to be like, whoa, never mind, won't be trying that again, and just be open to what it looks like. But that's why I created the four easy catches. It's like these four things, you're almost guaranteed to catch something in the potty and then you can get started. What is the number one mistake that parents make when they try early potty learning? Expecting their baby to go on the clock every 30 minutes or something. Expecting them to go exactly when offered. I think going off clock timing is a huge.

mistake. I don't go off clock timing. Do you? Like, no. No. I mean, daily, sure, for number two, we've got a daily thing, but that for babies doesn't happen until they're six months old. How do you handle pushback from teachers or pediatricians or family members? What do you tell parents to say when their other family and friends think they're nuts? I say don't say anything. I say keep it to yourself. It's like your own little special thing that you get with your kid. You don't need their approval. I would also say the proof is in the pudding. So, So one woman filmed her child successfully taking yourself to the bathroom at home, showed it to the daycare worker. Look, she's doing it at home.

She's 18 months old. And the daycare worker was mind blown and let her come without diapers. With family members, like if you have a partner who's not supportive, do it anyway. And that child's going to ask your partner or your ex-husband or whoever it is to do it with them too because this baby really wants this. It's not like we're just contriving something to make a baby do like a trick or a game. This is actually like something that they're born really wanting. And then when you finally get it, they're like, oh, mommy gets it. Daddy gets it.

Great. And then they start expecting it from everybody. But in the end, like ignore what everybody says because they're going to go off of this really deeply ingrained diaper culture message that you have to wait for readiness. It's not true. It's just meant to sell more diapers and pull-ups or diapers. It's meant to have you as a customer for sick. years. Tune that out. If anything sounds like that, tune it out and just go, all right, I'm going to do this quietly with my own baby and then maybe somebody might see me doing it and be like,

whoa, it really works. Am I nuts to point out that it seems like on social media, you know, obviously pro breastfeeding. That's huge. It's widely accepted, I think now for the most part. And then you have baby wearing, like baby wearing like everybody's doing that. Everybody's talking about that elimination communication, it seems like this is the last thing. To me, those things all align. It's all about like what a baby naturally is made to do. But elimination communication is still to me kind of like the redheaded stepchild. Right. No offense to redheads. So like what's going on there? Why does it seem like this is the last thing that people want to kind of support? I would say money because they have invested so much into marketing something that parents never, that moms never

wanted. So they have a lot invested into it. The other thing is it's pretty clear how to breastfeed and you've got lactation consultants at every hospital that can help you learn the latch and how to do it, how to pump all of that. I think that formula versus breastfeeding is like a no brain or decision. If you can breastfeed, you're going to do it because it's proven to have more, you know, good effects on your kid. baby wearing easy to see how to do it right oh that's how you just strap them on and then you can easy like it's a low bar entry like there's very low friction you can just kind of get into both of them pretty easily with EC it's like for some people they think it's so complicated that they don't try it you know and I think if you try it just once just when your newborn wakes up your whole belief

system will shift on it it's literally by doing it you'll be like whoa, that really works. And it does give you like a little dopamine spike. You're like, wow, I did it. You know what I'm realizing talking to you is that everybody thinks I would never fall victim to a cult. I could never be indoctrinated. I would never fall for any of that. And we have all collectively fallen for a complete indoctrination scheme when it comes to diapers. Absolutely. We're brainwashed. Alex, we're brainwashed. We need to wake up. And it's like the 99 ninth monkey thing, you know? Like when, what's the tipping point here? How many people need to know about this before we go, wait, okay? We need to change course on this. And I think the first step in changing

course on this whole cultural thing is to start doing conventional potty training earlier. Let's just start there. Everybody doesn't need to do EC. If you're listening to this, you're like, whoa, this makes so much sense. So I'm going to do it, then do it. This idea that pediatricians say you have to wait till your child tells you they're ready to potty train is pseudoscience garbage. It's pseudoscience garbage. Read the thing. It's terrible. Are we culturally addicted to diapers? Absolutely. We know no other way. We've lost that wisdom. It hasn't been passed on. It's gone. So I'm bringing it back, you know? Like, this is why I'm here. This is what I was strangely called to do. You're like the mother of this movement. I am. You're like the go-to person. I am. What kind of tools do you help people like parents are like,

I'm interested, but I'm overwhelmed and I'm scared. Yeah. I say just do the four easy catches. Just try the wake up. Try the first fast after feeding. Try when you see the poop face. Why would you wait for the diaper to fill up with poop and then clean it off your baby's crevices? Do you do courses or anything?

Instead just like stop. Say wait and then catch it in the potty. Like just start there. Yeah. And yeah, of course I have courses. I have lots of courses. Little ones. But my main things are my books because they break everything down.

And I start with, I don't start with a history and all that stuff. I'm like, this is how you do it. That's how the beginning of the book is because we're moms, right? Right. And there's an audio version. So, like, who reads books anymore? If you're having any more, you can't hold a book. I think that and I also include, like, a video library.

I've always included that because there's, how do you hold the baby in this position? What does it look like? What does the signal look like? I have examples of all of that that come with my book because it's not black and white and two-dimensional. EC is, like, a lively thing that they have always done, but that's now lost. So, like, how do I bring it back? I made it really in like here's all the different ways to wrap your mind around it. And my goal is to get you just to try to catch one.

See how you feel. And then just know that there are options. Like if you've, so many people are like, wow, where were you 13 years ago? If I would have known about this, I would have done it. I just think like, if it's not for you, tell somebody about it. And then they can try it. But I think the bigger cultural shift is going to happen when we start to give ourselves permission to potty train earlier.

So if you do know EC and you're just like, okay, I can't, I can't imagine, even though it literally makes mothering easier, even though it literally takes so much off your plate and makes it so much easier to parent your children. Like I have six. I am doing a good job as a mom. Like I feel like I know them so well from doing this. I feel like we've got this super strong thing. And like, I feel like I've succeeded. Like I've got amazing kids who are great in public. They're wild at home. But like, we can start as a culture just by lowering the potty training age by one year. Now, the diaper company will lose, I think I estimate, like, $11 billion a year. If we lower it by one year, they lose a lot, $2 billion, a lot of money. They're probably going to start upping it.

They're probably going to be like, don't even worry about potty training until kindergarten. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, diaper companies, if you're listening, you can partner with me because this is going to happen whether you like it or not. So I will help people potty train earlier and we will use your diapers, but for less time. You know, and then you'll be the good guy in this whole thing. But seriously, like, if we bring it back from 36 months average to 24 months average, it's going to be easier for parents, easier for daycares. And our kids are going to be more well-functioning grown-ups. Like, we're literally, I think we're really psychologically damaging our kids by waiting until three years old.

Why do you say that? We're forced, we're giving them no other option, but that. to soil themselves and ignore their own bodily sensations and to hush. And no, you don't need that. I know what you need. You need to go in this diaper. And not that we're doing it on purpose. It's because what we're taught, but we're literally like telling them to ignore their own body. And that is, that's not the thing these days. We want our kids to honor themselves, protect themselves, and be as healthy as possible, you know, their brains or bodies, everything. So putting them in diapers and just basically forcing them to go on themselves, I think that's damaging. How do you work with a kid to

go to the bathroom and they need to go to the bathroom and not like ignore it, go in their pants because they want to keep playing or they don't want to leave the situation they're in? I see that a lot. Absolutely. So I actually wrote a board book about that. Oh. It's illustrated. It's called Tiny Potty Board Book. And it shows the kid feeling the sensation and then bringing the teddy bear with them to go to the bathroom, going to the bathroom, and then going back to play. Because if I'm working at my computer and I need to pee, I'm going to pause, then I'm going to go pee. Right. So I think that it makes sense to model that for children. You can go and maybe the tractor has to go potty too. And then they dops over the toilet. Oh, my kids do that. It's so cute.

And then it's their turn to go. And then they go back to play. So we want to teach healthy habits from the beginning. Where can people follow you on social media? Go diaper free everywhere. go diaper free. And if you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be? I would say we start with birth. Natural, undisturbed as possible birth. I feel like the way we come in matters. And then obviously potty your babies at least once a day. Andrea, thank you for coming on culture apothecary. Thanks for having me. What do you think? Your newborn baby is just going to say poo poo to diapers? I couldn't resist doing that.

please leave a five-star review. If you enjoyed this episode, you learned something new. Even if you totally disagree, I want to know your thoughts in the Keep Servant's Facebook group. We post new episodes with different expert guests, giving their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays, 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.