I do believe babies are born potty-trained. They're born knowing and are able to give subtle signals that become very prominent if you reinforce them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The advantage is I have my family with me all the time. When your daughter takes her first steps or says her first words and your son is going through potty training, I'm not missing any of those things.
Before I was a year old I walked and talked and I was even potty trained. When I started going to school I think I got on everyone's nerves because I used to ask adult questions rather than settle for the stuff usually fed to kids.
One thing I've very quickly learned is that if you wake up every morning worrying about what's in the press, you would go completely and utterly potty.
If you just casually look at a baby, it doesn't look like there's very much going on there, but they know more and learn more than we would ever have thought. Every single minute is incredibly full of thought and novelty. It's easy as adults to take for granted everything it took to arrive at the state where we are.
The level of communication you can achieve with an infant is really profound.
A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves.
Watching a baby being born is a little like watching a wet St. Bernard coming in through the cat door.
Almost nobody believes anymore that infants are insensate blobs. It seems both mad and evil to deny experience and feeling to a laughing, gurgling creature.
A baby's existence for the first three months is a one-way street. One person is doing all the work and the other is crying, sleeping and pooping. So the first moment when you're actually able to do something and they acknowledge your presence, that's a big deal. A very big deal.
It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.