Do cloth babies toilet train earlier?

Over the past 40-50 years in Australia, the general advice towards toilet training has been to let children decide when they are ready. That by doing so, they will have fewer accidents, will train faster, and because they are mentally and emotionally ready, the child won’t experience any anxiety from the process.

But more recently, health professionals and parenting experts, such as author and childhood nurse Robin Barker, suggest otherwise. “The average age of children being trained has slipped from two to 2 ½ years to three or even four in the United States,” Barker says.

When I read a statement like that, all I can think of is how many disposable nappies a child would go through in 4 years. 6,000 nappies in 2 ½ years is bad enough!

To my knowledge, no research studies have looked at a comparison between the toilet training age of cloth wearing babies compared to disposable wearing babies.

Barker believes that the convenience of disposable nappies means there is less incentive for parents to train their children. There is also less incentive for children to learn because disposables keep moisture away from the skin, meaning tots no longer know what it feels like to be wet.

Despite modern cloth nappies such as CushieTushies being lined with stay-dry fabrics such as microfleece to draw the moisture away from babies’ skin, we must also bear in mind that a cloth nappy has a finite level of absorbency and once that is reached, the microfleece will not be able to keep drawing more moisture away from the skin so the baby will start to feel wet. Perhaps it is this sensation that teaches the baby the link between their action and feeling uncomfortable.

From my own personal and highly scientific research (on my own three very different children), I can say this: my eldest son was day toilet trained at 2 ½ and was completely trained by 3. He really didn’t care whether he was wearing a wet or soiled nappy, so for him it was more about socialisation and not wanting to be the only kid at pre-school not in undies!

My second son started training at 18 months and was completely trained by 2. I have been told this is an unusually early toilet training age for boys… But he just wanted to be like his big brother.

My daughter is only 20 months old and doesn’t much care to sit on the potty, unless I hand over wads of toilet paper so she can pretend to wipe! She can identify when she has done a wee or poo in her nappy though, so I think she is well on her way.

So maybe the motivation comes more from the parents of cloth-wearing babies not wanting to continue washing them for 4+ years?