Quoting John <jd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > At 03:29 PM 9/11/2004 -0700, you wrote: > > >If anyone wants more, let me know what it is and I will see what I can do. > > Ya know I'm beginning to think that potty-training my > three-year-old son is easier than running this list. Again: There is the difference between our philosophies. We don't "potty-train" our kids but let them make up their own minds. We just offer support and encouragement when they want it. We provide the enabling technology (a reducing ring for the toilet and a wood step they can use) but don't make them do anything. Don't train them. We provided also the diaper technology: Washable diapers that need to be changed when wet and not disposable. Folded cotton cloth inside and wool or special materials outside. And, of course, the labor.. My daughter Davida never liked to wear her diapers and is a strong willed, thick headed, extroverted little girl so once she started walking she started going to the toilet and within a few months-- before around 1 1/2 years old-- the diapers got packed away in the closet. My son Yoel seemed less anti-diapers (boys I guess are indeed slower and less keen at controlling their body functions) and he's now more-or-less clean at a bit over 2. The diapers are not yet packed away but he's not been wearing any for a month.. It seems the control of his own waste and his ability to communicate in language are nearly linked.. I suspect diapers might be an interesting allegory to the issue with these mailing lists, freelists.org and all. Pampers(tm) might be the path of least resistance but it creates the largest trash and kids seem to stay in them for years longer--- and weening them off seems to demand effort--- and, worse still, some suspicions that they increase scrotal temperature with unknown effects (but some rather controversial hypothesis including suspected impact on furtility). Diaper makers such as Pampers(tm) have responded with claimed improvements in their product as now "breathable" but even-if there was no health related problem, trash is still trash. So where is the market(ing) driven trend? Its as-if to encourage children to soak in their diapers untill age 6 while torturing them to be "potty trained" so they can go to kindergarten and then give them a few years untill they are ready for the Tena(tm)s (given the tremendious advertising budget with non-stop TV ads running on German TV they must sell quantity)? Some, of course, may rightly argue that diapers themselves are not really needed and pose only a false convienience for the parent. Perhaps. -- -- Edward C. Zimmermann, Basis Systeme netzwerk, Munich Office Leo (R&D): Leopoldstrasse 53-55, D-80802 Munich, Federal Republic of Germany ============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.