"Babies and You" or "The Worst Place to Ask for Advice Ever"

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

So, I know a few of us are parents. Some of infants, some of school-age kids, and some of grown stature.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with Elimination Communication and Baby Sign Language.

My wife and I will be using these two things to make sure our child can express its needs to us before it actually learns to talk, and among other things, BabySL also helps cognitive development and a whole slew of other things.

Anyone have any advice? I know it's sort of a "crunchy" hippie topic, but who cares. This could be useful for others!

[Heylel Teomim]

My first reaction is that this is some dumb new age hippy bullshit.

It's a baby. It turns food into shit for a few months before developing self awareness. It's only method of communication is crying. If we needed to know any more in depth information from our little crotch fruit, we'd have long ago developed the instincts necessary.

Fuck I hate kids.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

I always wondered why they call it "new age" when really it's just going back to the stuff that was around before this "current age." Diapers cost money, we are cloth diapering anyway, and if at all possible, we'd appreciate not having to do laundry. Thrift is a virtue, amirite?

If we needed to know any more in depth information from our little crotch fruit, we'd have long ago developed the instincts necessary.

We had the instincts, we just lost them when we started putting diapers on them so we wouldn't have to pay attention to them. I'm looking for people on this board who may have experiences with that.

[Heylel Teomim]

Fair enough.

But I still fucking hate kids. :P

[James]

Dude, it's a fucking baby, it's going to shit and piss itself. Man the fuck up and change their diaper, Jesus Christ.

[Sharmai]

I know what a child learns and experiences in the early stages can affect them throughout life but I am not sure how much this makes a difference. My parents exposed me to spanish quite often (dad was pretty good in it) when i was a baby but I don't speak it now and my attempts to learn it haven't made it any easier then say french or german.

My two cents.

[James]

I'm not sure having Spanish spoken around you as an infant will make a difference either way. It's being exposed to it while you're developing basic language sk1llz or whatever it is they're calling it these days. A friend of mine had a Mexican house maid while he was growing up that spoke it to him every day from like 3-8. He was billingual by the time he entered elementary school, completely fluent in both languages as much as you could expect a 5-6 year old to be fluent in a language.

The maid eventually quit because one of our other dipshit friends knocked on the door and then pointed a BB gun at it like a fucking retard while she opened it, and she just couldn't handle that. As time went on, my friend became less and less fluent in the language (despite living in fucking Houston of all places), and now has trouble speaking it on anything but a high school Spanish level.

Anyway. TMYK I guess?

[Aamina]

I don't do it with my sons because I think being a child is hard enough without stressing them out with bizarre communication regimens. But, I do know several couples around here that have done it and one of the little girls is like...12 or 13 months old and she totally signs. She does the sign for thirsty, wet, hungry, and tired. Its pretty cool, but I don't have problems reading that in my own kids without sign language anyway.

Really!? I haven't fed you in 2 hours and you're crying!? WTF COULD BE WRONG SOMEONE TEACH THIS KID SIGN LANGUAGE

[Haus]

OK, let's take this into terms and technology you might better understand.

Set up a system with a good cron tasking set up. This should be a decent starting point.

0 1,4,7,9,11,13,15,17,20 * * * /usr/scripts/feed_baby.sh

30 1,4,7,9,11,13,15,17,20 * * * /usr/scripts/check_diaper.sh

0 12 3 2,4,6,8,10,12 * /usr/scripts/Take_baby_in_for_checkup.sh


Make sure to remember that caution coders leave the "Get immunizations" call in the Take_baby_in_for_checkup.sh

Also, the baby may make an interrupt call with the cry() function. Just run check_diaper and usually check system temp readings, and output bins as needed to clear the interrupt.

There's more but I don't have the doc files up here or man pages handy, google it.

[BigMovieBuff]

What's to communicate? If it cries it is:

1) hungry
2) dirty
3) tired
4) injured/ill

Fairly easy to troubleshoot...

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Originally Posted by James

Dude, it's a fucking baby, it's going to shit and piss itself. Man the fuck up and change their diaper, Jesus Christ.

Yes, I'm aware of this. No, it doesn't *have* to wear a diaper. If poor folks in Africa and India can save mondey by using this method, so can poor people in America (and then China).

It's almost like you want me to waste money.

I don't do it with my sons because I think being a child is hard enough without stressing them out with bizarre communication regimens. But, I do know several couples around here that have done it and one of the little girls is like...12 or 13 months old and she totally signs. She does the sign for thirsty, wet, hungry, and tired. Its pretty cool, but I don't have problems reading that in my own kids without sign language anyway.

Well, it's not like it stops at infancy, you can carry it on into their earlier years; it's supposed to help with vocabulary development and expressing emotions and thoughts earlier, and to cut down on crying.

Apparently, a lot of frustration as a young child is because they cannot communicate their needs. We wont be bottle feeding (unless she has pumped that day), and any sort of cues and signals it can give me will be helpful.

Really!? I haven't fed you in 2 hours and you're crying!? WTF COULD BE WRONG SOMEONE TEACH THIS KID SIGN LANGUAGE

It has more uses than just the rudimentary biological functions.

OK, let's take this into terms and technology you might better understand.

Nope, don't understand. Abort, Retry, Fail?

[James]

It's too late to Abort, homie.

EDIT: Also I'm pretty sure you don't have it any rougher than my parents had it when I was born, where their dinner consisted of 30 cent pot pies and they couldn't afford a fucking stick of butter. They were driving around a black 76 Datsun pickup that had no air conditioning in Houston, and half the time it was broken down on the only hill in town, where they pushed it uphill BOTH GODDAMN WAYS. Then they had ANOTHER baby 15 months later because one just wasn't enough!

And they still used cloth diapers. I have NFC how you expect to save money here, cloth diapers are about as cheap as it's going to get.

[Tullaeniel]

Originally Posted by GrobbeeTrull2.0

Yes, I'm aware of this. No, it doesn't *have* to wear a diaper. If poor folks in Africa and India can save mondey by using this method, so can poor people in America (and then China).

It's almost like you want me to waste money.

If you cant afford diapers for your child then maybe you shouldn't have fucking had a kid until you could afford it. You aren't in Africa or India take care of your baby.

[Tenks]

If the baby knew what he'd be getting into he'd do that himself

[Etwynn]

Lol at heylel claiming that babies are incapable of communication before they suddenly learn to talk. What the fuck do you think they're doing the first two years of their life? It's a process, not a switch.

To the OP, trying to communicate to your baby: good parenting. Doing it for the sole purpose of not wanting to clean up shit: bad parenting.

Edit: also you're going to seriously fuck your baby up if the first thing you teach him is controlling bodily urges. It's a baby. Let it shit when it wants to without having to worry about telling you. You're going to stress it out.