HNI Info

I/ INTRODUCTION:

Many parents take advantage of their baby’s arrival to reflect on how they will welcome her.
It seemed important to me to address the topic of natural hygiene of babies or Elimination Communication (HNI), to bring you a beginning of reflection on this theme.

I am Christina, mother of four children in HNI, and Artisan of Creative Art of the brand Ecopitchoun,animator of workshops and conference since 2006 on different themes of parenthood: signs with baby, porterage, Faber and Mazlish communication parents-children-adolescents, on placenta, raw food, ecology Elimination Communication and accompaniment to continence. Also founder of the Papoti-Papota association that has been offering parent-child workshops on Béziers since 2009.

I am pleased to rewrite the texts that I put on the site because mentalities have evolved so much since 2004 when I started talking about it! I now see, with this little fall, that you are increasingly questioning, exchanging, informing you, and that ideas are moving very fast. It was a time for the questioning of our relationship with the youngest, and this movement does not seem to breathe So I update, giving more information adapted to new parents.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

You can deepen the subject of Elimination Communication reading these books:

"Tips and tricks to raise your child without layers (or almost)", from Carine PHUNG available here on the site Ecopitchoun downloading and not expensive.
This book is very complete, brings step-by-step, sewing patterns.

“Without layers, it’s the freedom,” from Ingrid Bauer, to the Instant Editions.
It was the first book translated into French on the subject. He inspired many parents and helps you connect to your deep instinct.

And you can complete one of these books by the HNI Guidebook Ecopitchoun of Christina Burjade-Crozel.
Once you’ve read one of the two books above, you don’t necessarily have time to fall back into it when baby is there and you’re in the fire of the action. With this guide you have quick access to a reminder that does not go in all the details, which reminds you of the outlines and you remotive, it is very convenient. Inside quite a lot of tricks that are not in the books, and that allows you to apply daily: practical tools, encouraging phrases, major pitfalls and how to deal with it concretely.
On the other hand, it is a notebook. Keeping a written record of what you've lived with your baby, writing the steps you've spent, also allows a very nice transmission and memory. So you can paste photos, annotate remarks, see all the way through.

“The natural hygiene of the child” by Sandrine Montrocher-Zaffarano, at the Editions Jouvence.
It is a small book of the Editions Jouvence, very concise, and this format is valuable: it allows you to have a first approach on the subject, to present the HNI to the communities, to the family... because it is short to read and scan the main questions that the quidam asks.

II/ What is child natural hygiene (HNI)?

We will first define a common vocabulary to facilitate communication. The ages indicated are used only to facilitate common understanding and are not an indicator of baby delay or advance.

A baby needs support for the continence of the birth until ready. There are several moments and ways to do:
- from 0 to 18 months: we will then talk about Elimination Communication.
- from 18 months: we will talk about accompaniment to continence. I prefer this expression to "learning cleanliness" that refers to a different intention and a different objective of what I will talk about.

The months indicated in these informative texts are only indicative, to facilitate understanding, and your baby does not have to go into these age boxes. There will therefore be no delay, no advance, just that everyone is different and will therefore experience different ways of doing, different acquisitions, and that everything is very well so.

In Elimination Communication, it’s about meeting your baby’s disposal needs.
You can use 6 main axes that are complementary:
- being attentive to his needs: knowing what physiological development is in the time of a baby in HNI (different to a baby with diapers) and where his baby is located,
- by responding to its signals: if a newborn indicates by mimics and sounds when he's going to pee or cocoa, a baby can show him objects, use gestures, stop his game, and when he's still a little tall he will use signs of the LSF (if you use them), words, behaviors. Communication will of course evolve over its development.
- by relying on a timing: there are moments that are conducive to the child’s age.
- by relying on your instinct: after a moment of practice, a form of connection is installed. We think this is the time without really knowing why. A bit like breastfeeding when you have a milk climb while you are away from baby, moving away from home sometimes.
- and using parenting tools: the Dunstan baby Language, signs with babies,
- And above all by respecting its own limits so that communication can be put in place serenely.

These six broad lines allow you to offer him a place to eliminate, and to report that it is time to relax with a sound, a word. Create another communication link that will strengthen the parent-child relationship, a better understanding. Respect the child’s growth, respect his rhythm by offering him at the time that corresponds to him. Baby then approaches the path to continence when acquiring it spontaneously.

L’ Elimination Communication (HNI) is not:
THE' Elimination Communication is not a method, a way to learn continence for a baby. L’ Elimination Communication (HNI) is not to let her baby eliminate anywhere and clean up after her, nor to let her do it all the time and change it. Nor is it a coercive method that would force the child to restrain himself: the parents adapt to the evolution of the baby, so take into account that his body does not have the maturity to retain.

At the heart of the HNI is mainly mutual cooperation, the desire to grow together, to learn in contact with the baby and to evolve with him.

The aim of accompanying towards continence is that baby remains conscious of his body and his feelings and that he acquires continence at his own pace, the intention is communication. We come out of the dominant / dominated relationship in which families often find themselves “learning cleanliness”.

But then, what is the learning of cleanliness and how does it differ from accompaniment to continence?


III/ What is “learning cleanliness”?

Many adults over the workshops explained how they had themselves lived this period, and the expression contains a lot of tensions, misunderstandings, a relationship of strength, etc. It was necessary to find new terms to consider a new way of doing so, to open up the possibilities and to start on the rhythm of the child and not the rhythm of society or adults.

This expression refers in fact to methods that require baby to learn continence because the adult has decided so. It is so much better if it interests baby, but not necessary to start. We just validate his physical ability: age is an indicator, and succeed in climbing stairs, running. The goal is that it is ready for the kindergarten so continent of the day in a first time, or because the summer season is ready for it. Indeed, the parent is more available, the clothes dry faster, baby will not get cold. The objective of “learning cleanliness” is continence and intent is obedience.
Then we sometimes explain the baby process. If he has a brotherhood or a way of collective custody, he will have to understand by himself what is expected and we will rely on imitation so that he grasps what is expected.
We buy it potty on which he will sit at the regular schedules indicated by the paediatrician. He will sit until he has done something in the potty, but not too long anyway. The system of punishment/reward is intended to encourage the expected behaviour. The parent often gets angry if the child does not arrive relatively quickly to be a continent. The parent does not have the information of baby’s operation and development to help them better understand and interact. Sometimes remarks of discouraging and energizing the parent fusent, which devalues baby, humilia.

This is the expression “learning cleanliness” in the collective imagination of parents. I was able to see by discussing with friends, and during the workshops with parents that many of them had to follow this method being a baby, and lived it as a very unpleasant test that had to be overcome so that everyone appreciates us. Stay on the floor potty 15-20 minutes without knowing what to do, do not understand why we no longer have the right to the layers suddenly, feel rejected and incompetent.
It is far from the coercive methods after the 1950s, but children who became parents find themselves with this single model, and very few information resources that would have evolved.
It is now a question of rethinking our approach, proposing to acquire continence by sticking at best to the baby’s rhythm, to show empathy, with gentleness, calmness.
 

IV/ WHAT IS THE CONTINENCE?

There are many definitions of continence according to parents, the habits of the society in which they evolve.
I put several typical answers:
When the child is able to keep his or her own panties within the framework of the mother? When baby does on potty when you put it on a fixed time, and he doesn't do it outside? Is that when the child will wear panties without peeing in? When he is able to identify his need, to remember, to go from himself to the toilet? When baby asks to go to potty when does he need it? When baby doesn't get on the night or day? When he goes to the big guy's bathroom?
There are many definitions that vary according to our expectations, according to what we imagine, etc.

Hence the usefulness to decorate a little what is put behind this word, to better understand what everyone says.

Although this is not exhaustive, here are different points that underlie the word continence:
- Cleanness: do on yourself or in a dedicated place.
- Physical ability: be able to hold back, and how long.
- Follow an independent rhythm of his own: school for example.
- Stay dry from day and night.
- Baby issues a request to which the accompanying person responds.
- Autonomy: go alone on the potty or need to be accompanied, know how to handle the clothes.
- Acquisition: it is a completely acquired step.

So I left on this definition: Continence?
When a person needs the toilets, day and night, without needing help, and sufficiently masters his or her body to achieve reasonable restraint and to adapt to the rhythm imposed by the situation, for a long time to mean that it is acquired (about 6 months).


V/ But what would be the accompaniment to continence?

From 18 months, because this is when most parents begin to remove the layer. And then what would we say? Up to 3 years? from 3 to 5 years approximately 50% of children are incontinent.. So up to 5 years? After we speak of enuretry but it is not considered a disease. So until the child is continent* and not a date.

*Remember, continence is when a person needs a toilet, day and night, without needing help, and sufficiently masters his or her body to achieve a reasonable restraining and adapt to the rhythm imposed by the situation, for a long time to mean that it is acquired (about 6 months).
 
Currently the society is still in a phase where peeing past a certain age is a problem, probably because the subject is taboo and the story we inherit tell us that good parents (before we were talking about "good mothers", hearing competent mother and socially acceptable) must have a child continent. Only then, when I ask about this age, it’s impossible to define, each one has a different age in mind from his neighbour, and if I ask them to define an age together when they’re in a group then it’s the average that wins. When the word liberates, each one has examples of young people who have peeed later or later, and all testify that the child really did not voluntarily, that the parents tried everything, etc. And at the end of this discussion, if it is the average that wins, it is in any case understood for all that there are many cases of incontinent children (and not only one) and that it is neither dirty nor the fault of the parents, and that no one knows how to determine effectively where it could come except in cases of proven illness. In other words, the discussion frees prejudices, advances reflection, and wins at the end in openness, we leave the taboo to seek solutions. Indeed, it is nevertheless a pity that young people suffer socially because of a taboo that can easily be undone by discussing more. The Youtuber Natoo discussed this topic, and I thank her very much for dedramatizing and speaking frankly.

The accompaniment to continence begins at 18 months and until the child is continent, regardless of age.
The aim is to take into account the rhythm of the child and his physiology, to learn about the development of the child, to prepare environment, clothes and equipment. Then explain to her child, exchange on the subject, and facilitate her access to autonomy. As a result, the child becomes fully aware of his or her body and feels and acquires continence at his or her pace. The intention is to communicate, by positioning itself as a facilitator.