"...the prospect of supervising 20 deposits a day in the first busy months of infancy is daunting."

This is the NYT on early-bird toilet-training. The new parenting vogue (amongst rich folks in New York City, naturally the source of all enlightenment) is for getting kids out of diapers before they're old enough to crawl, well before the first birthday. (For those of you for whom childrearing is a foreign practice, the more typical age for toilet-training in these parts is more like 2-3 years.) Now this is coming from the parent of a 20-month-old child who has never once sat on a potty--the other side of the changing table, as it were. But this article and some of people it describes are both totally fucking meshuggah. Let's plunge in.

"It's just so simple," said Lamelle Ryman, who recently attended a support meeting at an apartment on the Upper West Side. Ms. Ryman, the mother of 7-month-old Neshama, added, "I feel like it's been such a gift in our relationship."

Words fail.

With early toilet training, there is a broad body of knowledge and experience to draw on. Parents in at least 75 countries, including India, Kenya and Greenland, embrace the practice, with Chinese babies often wearing pants with split bottoms for easy squatting (available for $1 in Chinatown, according to savvy mothers in New York).

When did "savvy" become code for "rich, white"?

From birth, the reasoning goes, infants are aware of their needs to eliminate, and although their muscles are not developed, they can soon learn to go on cue.

"The reasoning goes"? Whose reasoning? Anyone with real scientific credentials willing to go on the record that "from birth infants are aware of their needs to eliminate"? I haven't observed that kind of awareness in the time I have spent with very young children. But in NYC, who knows.

With practice, parents learn their child's rhythms; some parents sleep next to their children and keep a potty at arm's reach, or diaper their babies overnight.

Because there aren't enough interruptions during the night, now we're supposed to wake up when an infant has to pee or poop? And we're supposed to figure out that that's what's going on how?

Most important, [families who favor this practice] say, is an increased emotional bond with the baby, forged by the need for the parent to pick up on subtle signs and act on them quickly. Proponents of the practice use the phrase "elimination communication."
...
"It is enhancing that interaction and closeness, the intimacy between baby and mother," said Thomas Ball, a psychologist in California who is helping develop a documentary about the technique. "Here's another set of cues the child is giving that may be ignored or may be responded to."

Note the gendered language, the "mother" talk that pervades a dominant strain of the parenting-advice industry. Woe betide the mother who fails to pick up on her child's cues.

Another mother in Toys "R" Us, who offered her opinion but wanted to remain anonymous, was aghast at the notion. "Have you read Freud?" she asked, worrying about the method's long-term effects. "I imagine it's going to come out in sexual ways."

That's really dirty, especially for an article about babies. That line might be my favorite.

At two recent meetings of support groups, mothers and one father shared signals their babies gave: kicking, nose-rubbing, getting loud, getting quiet, hiccupping, feeling warm to the touch, shivering.

Ms. Boucke, the author [of "Infant Potty Training" (White-Boucke Publishing, 2002)], noted that many fathers really enjoy infant potty training. "They can't breast-feed, but they can work on the other end," she said. "Some dads get really good results."

Way to go, dads! I know I'm planning on really enjoying toddler potty training, but now I'm a bit miffed that I missed out on the enjoyment that could have been mine for a year or more already.

Now I must stop typing and head over to USA Baby to buy a potty. If you're trying to track me down over the next while, try looking for me "on the other end."