By NICKY CHAMP
Prepare yourselves.
Parents are letting their babies, some as young as newborns, roam freely about without nappies on.
Scandalous, I know.
The method, known as Elimination Communication (EC) is gaining traction among “hipster” parents in Brooklyn (NYC) and has been the subject of several articles from The Times, Mail Online and Slate magazine.
The Elimination Communicated Simplified website define EC as “a gentle, non-coercive way to respond to a baby’s natural pottying needs, from birth, which enables her to follow her instincts to not soil herself, her caretaker, or her sleep space”.
Parents using EC encourage their babies to learn how to signal when they need to relieve themselves thus reducing the amount of nappies required in the first few years of a baby’s life (think of the money you’d save!) and cancelling out the need to toilet train later on.
The strategic placement of several bowls around the house helps to avoid near misses but as one parent, Adriane Stare, the owner of Caribou baby store in Brooklyn that hosts EC meet-ups, admits it can get messy (geez, didn’t see that one coming).
“The hard part is simply getting clothes off of the kid quickly enough to catch a pee or poop before it goes in the diaper,” she told DNAinfo.
Fans of the method cite reasons for doing it such as saving the environment, saving money, protecting their offspring from the evils of nappy rash and wanting to be in touch with their infants most “intimate needs”.