Gone are days when parents used the wash and dry nappies on their toddlers. With the kind of lifestyle, we are living today, re-usable nappies have come almost impossible to use. Who has all this to wash and dry them? We are too busy for this kind of work. That’s why single-use nappies have made it very easy into the market.

With single-use or disposable nappies, they are convenient and easy to use. All you need is put them on the toddler, and the process has been made very easy. Then, once the toddler has pooed or peed, you remove, throw it away and put on a new one. That’s how easy it is, and you don’t need to wash anything.

But there are several problems most parents don’t seem to understand about these nappies. One of them is pollution. It has been proven that disposable nappies are contributing to the high rate of environmental pollution. First, a big percentage of these nappies is plastic. So, they take many years to decompose, unlike the natural fabric of the old washable nappies.

Second, they are not recyclable. This means the waste will continue piling in the landfills and other areas they are thrown into. Apart from environmental damages, single-use nappies are compromising public health. The used nappies are everywhere. We throw them into waste-paper baskets, streets, wheelie bins, and public rubbish bins. These are areas you couldn’t find human faeces years ago.

Another problem that young parents may not notice is a prolonged toilet training age. Before the coming of the single-use nappy, most toddlers were trained to use the potty by the age of 2½ years if not earlier. But that’s not the same today. Today, the toilet training age is starting at 3½. Even toddlers of 4 years have a hard time to stay nappy-free even during daylight hours.

You might have also seen toddlers’ pull-ups being advertised as ‘potty training’ aid. Please don’t fall for that because it will not work for your baby. It’s just a marketing gimmick to trick into buying more products. Pull-ups have been found to elongate the period the toddler will be using nappies. So, they are not good for your baby.

Experts believe that there are positive things that can be extracted from disposable nappies. The old potty training, though good, exposed kids to stress and psychological problems. That’s because of the too much pressure put in babies during potty training. In some cases, it had a disastrous effect on the growth of the child. That’s a problem reduced with the coming of a new generation of single-use nappy kids.

But that’s not an excuse to use the single-use nappies. Parents only need to create a stress-free and non-competitive environment for potty training. Such conditions will not expose the child to any kind of psychological problems. So, create a relaxed environment for your baby, and you will have no reason to use disposable nappies.

It’s also important to emphasize that toddlers are not the same. So, the age of potty training will vary from one toddler to the other. Family lifestyle, parent’s attitude and the communities they live in are crucial factors affecting potty training age. The issue of health may also determine nappy-free training age. Healthy toddlers will be nappy-free by 3 or even before.

As a parent, avoid anything that would prolong your toddler’s potty training. This includes the single-use nappies and toddler pull-ups. It will save you a lot of money in the long run. Delayed training also robs the toddler the independence they need. This includes toddler activities such as outings, swimming and preschool. So, parents, be careful with single-use nappies.

When James Cook visited Australia in 1770, he found a good continent at the bottom of the planet. The vast land was good for settlement and more so farming. That’s why by 1787, the first fleet of ships sailed from England to Australia. By 1788, the first European settlement was established in Australia. With it came European knowledge, lifestyles, and everything.

But the aboriginal people have been living in Australia for more than 60,000 years. They had their own life and culture, which was largely ignored. The culture we have today in Sydney is influenced by European culture. One of the things that are too common to even think about is the weather calendar.

But did you know that the original Sydney weather calendar is with the aboriginal people? Well, I know you are now trying to guess how it looked like. I was also equally surprised by my friend Frances Bodkin, an aboriginal woman I respect a great deal.

Bodkin has been working hard to make Sydneysiders understands other frameworks in this region and not just the protestant work ethic used today. In her book, D’harawal Seasons and Climate Cycles, she introduces us to aboriginal people’s weather calendar. Forget about the summer, autumn, winter and spring, that’s European weather calendar.

Even today, some of the aboriginals live in a different and a bit sophisticated Sydney. The introduction of her books reads as follows: “we were intelligent people”. She then goes ahead to say that the aboriginal community had a complex system of protecting the knowledge from being lost. Considering they were illiterate, and survived thousands of years, we can’t dispute it.

In the aboriginal climatic calendar, Bodkin’s book starts by explaining a typical day. To her community, a day started with the Kookaburra laughing or Gugagara’ djanaba. It ends in the silence of the night, also called Nguwing’kapo in aboriginal language.

For the seasons, a cycle for the Sydney aboriginals started around September and October. This season is called Ngoonungi. At this time, winter or the cold season is ending, and it’s getting water. What follows is the Gooray’ murrai season (October – January), which is a warm and wet season. This is part of the spring and summer in the European calendar.

The third season is Gadulung Marool (January and February), which was hot and dry. This is again part of the summer in the European calendar. It is also called the time of Kangaroo. What’s interesting by this period is that most people in Sydney eat a lot of bbq. In fact, it’s part of the bbq season. But for the Sydney aboriginals, they were not eating meat or fish during this season.

What follows is another long season called Bana’ murrai’yung (March, April and May). It’s a wet and cold season or what we call autumn in Australia. During this time, people would move from the highlands to the coastal areas to avoid the cold season or winter.

This season is followed by Turagarah Tuli, which is characterised by cold, frosty and short days. The sixth and last season of the aboriginal weather calendar is the Tugarah Gunya’ marri, which was cold and winder. So, the aboriginal community in Sydney had a total of six seasons.

But that was not all thing that the book covers about the season. According to Bodkin’s book, there was a bigger cycle at the top that ran for 12 years. It would sometime shift the small seasons and overall weather pattern. The larger cycle was also used to determine aboriginal people age. A grown person would go up to 6 of these bigger seasons.

This is just one weather calendar by one community. So, you can imagine how many permutations of original weather calendars we have in Australia. The bottom line is that there is a lot to learn from the aboriginals in Sydney and Australia-wide.