What if one of the most powerful things you can do for your child’s attachment, nervous system regulation, and resilience starts not at the dinner table or the sleep routine but at the diaper?

This week on the Livin’Sky Podcast I sat down with Andrea Olson, founder of Go Diaper Free and one of the world’s leading experts on elimination communication. And what started as a conversation about toileting turned into one of the most profound discussions I have had on this show about connection, attunement, and what it actually means to raise a resilient child.

What Is Elimination Communication?

Elimination communication and attachment parenting are more connected than most parents realize. This week on the Livin’Sky Podcast I sat down with Andrea Olson, founder of Go Diaper Free and one of the world’s leading experts on elimination communication. And what started as a conversation about toileting turned into one of the most profound discussions I have had on this show about connection, attunement, and what it actually means to raise a resilient child.

EC, as it is commonly called, is simply responding to your baby’s natural elimination cues the same way you respond to their hunger or sleep cues. It is helping your child do something they cannot do by themselves until they can do it by themselves. And it is something parents have done for all of human history.

Disposable diapers have only been around since 1961. Commercial cloth diapers for about 200 years. Before that, parents listened to their babies. They observed their cues. They responded. It was simply part of caring for a child.

Andrea shared something that stopped me completely. A third to half of all baby cries are actually a baby communicating that they need to go to the bathroom and they do not want to do it on themselves. Most parents have no idea. And when they learn to read this cue, fussiness often resolves dramatically.

How to Start With a Newborn

The two easiest starting points for elimination communication with a newborn are wake ups and after feeding.

When a baby wakes up the antidiuretic hormone ADH shifts and the bladder fills. This is true for all mammals. We all need to go when we wake up. Offering the potty at this moment, holding baby gently by the thighs leaning against your chest over a sink or a small top hat potty, is the simplest way to begin.

The second easy catch is about five to ten minutes after feeding. A baby who is well rested and just ate has literally nothing else they need. If they fuss at that point it is almost certainly a pee signal. Offer the potty. Say the cue sound. And see what happens.

Andrea says once you catch something in the potty you will be hooked. Because you suddenly understand that your baby has been trying to communicate something important and now you can actually respond.

How Elimination Communication and Attachment Parenting Are Connected

This is the part of the conversation that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

Andrea is not anti diaper. She uses them as backups herself. But she is honest about what happened when they became a replacement for parental attunement rather than a tool.

The Diaper Industry

The diaper industry, she explains, hired pediatricians to influence parenting advice. Parents were told to wait for child led potty training. They were told potty training before age two or three would psychologically damage their child. Studies with no real scientific basis were circulated widely. And we accepted them because they came from authority figures we trusted.

In 1957 the New York Times reported that 92 percent of American toddlers were completely potty trained by 18 months. Not as an average. As a norm. Babies have not changed. But the information we receive about them has.

What Andrea believes, and what I think is worth sitting with, is that the disruption of this natural attunement cycle between parent and baby has contributed to the attachment struggles so many of us are working through as adults. The anxiety. The avoidant patterns. The difficulty feeling secure.

She put it plainly. Is it possible that being in diapers and being ignored for two or three years played a role? What about formula being pushed when breast milk was the biological norm? And being separated from our mothers at birth and placed in incubators unnecessarily? I think we could pick apart all of it and go, no wonder why we are so struggling. I think we could pick apart all of it and go, no wonder why we are so struggling.

This is not about blame. It is about understanding. And about choosing something different for our children when we can.

The Connection Between EC and Picky Eating

I would not be doing my job if I did not bring this back to feeding. Because the themes here are identical.

Connection. Attunement. Cue reading. Responding to your child’s biology instead of trying to control or override it.

These are the exact principles that underlie everything I teach in the BLOOM Framework. When we learn to read our child’s cues around food, when we stop trying to force or override or control and start observing and responding, something shifts. The child starts to trust us. And a child who trusts us is more open to exploring new foods, new textures, new experiences.

Andrea also said something that resonated deeply. When parents do EC they often notice other symptoms in their child that they would have otherwise missed. The same is true in feeding. When we slow down and actually observe our child at mealtimes we start to notice things we were too busy or too stressed to see before.

Observation and attunement are the most underused tools in both feeding and parenting. And they cost nothing.

Potty Training, Tantrums, and Why Boundaries Matter

Andrea mentioned something that I think every parent of a toddler needs to hear. Potty training normalizes behavior.

When children are potty trained in the developmentally appropriate window of 12 to 18 months, they have fewer tantrums. This was documented by Maria Montessori. It is also the age when children developmentally want to take care of themselves. It is their work. And supporting them in that work helps them feel competent, capable, and seen.

Andrea’s potty training method takes seven days on average. And she says it works in part because it establishes clear boundaries and a sense of structure. You are the guide. They are looking to you to lead. And when you show up clearly in that role, something settles in them.

I see the same thing at the table. When we have clear, developmentally appropriate expectations around mealtimes, when there is structure and predictability and a sense of safety, picky eaters do better. Not because we are controlling them but because the boundaries help them feel safe enough to be curious.

Raising Resilient Kids

When I asked Andrea what one piece of advice she would give parents who want to raise healthier more resilient children, she said something simple and profound.

Just try being present.

See them with fresh eyes. Ask who is this being in front of me and what are they wanting. Be curious instead of anxious. And understand that resilience grows out of connection and also out of letting children do hard things.

She said she lets her kids struggle. She waits to see if they can figure it out before she steps in. Because doing hard things and bouncing back is how resilience is built. Not protection from every difficulty.

And she closed with something I want every parent reading this to carry with them.

Stay present and everything will be there once you are through this. Just do the best you can. You will make it through.

About Andrea Olson

Andrea Olson is the founder of Go Diaper Free, author, podcaster, and one of the world’s leading experts on elimination communication. She has helped hundreds of thousands of families learn to communicate with and respond to their babies from birth. Find her at godiaperfree.com and tinyundies.com and on every platform at Go Diaper Free.

About Lena Livinsky

Lena Livinsky is a speech language pathologist and holistic pediatric feeding specialist and the founder of Livin’Sky Kids. She helps overwhelmed moms of picky eaters understand what is actually driving their child’s food refusal using the BLOOM Framework. Book a free Clarity Call

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