Dan's Papers - June 12, 2009 -

The repercussions of the downturn in the economy aren't all bad. (I know - this coming from a person who still has a job). But it's true. People are making more thoughtful decisions about how they're spending money. Craig's List activity must be booming. I know very few people right now who are buying retail - particulary for their children. When you can get a brand new pair of kids' roller blades for $10, why pay $50?

Not only is this good for our diminished nest eggs, it's also great for the environment. There's so much that can be recycled and re-used, and buying "pre-owned" items means less stuff in the landfills.

What does this have to do with kids? Well, they're affected by the downturn too - a topic I've addressed in this column recently. But what made me choose to write about this today was a news tidbit I read last week. In addition to Walmart shoppers opting more for the ground round rather than filet, the chain has noticed a marked drop in the sales of diapers - particularly those interim "pull-ups." Seems parents are going right from diapers to undies.

In this country, most kids are potty-trained between the ages of two and three, with the belief that boys take longer. On average, the numbers are 39 months for boys, 36 months for girls. I remember how proud we felt when my partner managed to get our son diaper free a few months before his third birthday. What an accomplishement!

When we had our son, I remember reading an article about another option to diapering. It said that some parents actually start potty training a baby as soon as he or she is born. Apparently, this is popular in many other cultures, where Americans are considered insane for using diapers on 30-pound children who can walk and talk and follow direction.

There's a website (actually there are many) on this topic. One states, "The process involves observing one's baby's signs and signals, providing cue sounds and elimination-place associations, and can be done with or without any diaper use."

The site goes on to say "Before 1950, most children in the United States were toilet trained by 18 months. And today, most African, Asian, and European babies are trained well before their second birthday."

So why do we let it go on so long? A simple answer: The very disposable diapers that parents are starting to pooh-pooh. They were introduced in 1961 and used widely by the 1980s. Supply created demand. Considering that a baby will go through 2,000 diapers in a year, times three years - that's 6,000 disposables in the landfill per child. But it was convenient and we Americans like convenience.

When we were dealing with our son, a friend strongly recommended cloth diapers - apparently they not only help with the garbage problem, but speed up the training process since the child actually feels the discomfort of the wetness. But we eschewed against disposables with the rationalizations that all that washing would burn electricity, and gas-gobbling diaper service trucks would burn too much fuel. So we contributed to the landfill, and paid the price for diapers, which become more expensive as the size increases.

But now, thanks to the recession, Americans are wising up. When I read the article, it made me happy on one hand that we were stopping the insanity of diapering through pre-school. As a mom, and now a card-carrying worrier, I was concerned that kids would be forced into the humiliation of wet pants before they were ready. But in these trying times, many of us - including our kids - need to buck up for the common good. For info about early potty training, try http://diaperfreebaby.org.