I'm a parent of a fully potty trained 24 month old. Mostly potty trained by 18 months, with lots of reminders. It's not easy, takes absolute commitment. The moment you look at your phone your 16-18 month old will be hiding behind then couch peeing (at least ours did).

That being said, it's nearly impossible if you don't have a parent doing full time caregiving. No daycare will do it. My wife used to do it as a nanny, where she learned about it, but that's an outlier. Really not easy to navigate between you and your family or friends who have similar age kids!

There are a bunch of people training them from very young, with baby lead potty training.

It's certainly interesting to see the difference between countries in all baby things, e.g. UK, US, Italy, France and Japan.

- How long kids are in nappys.

- How much food you are recommended to eat when pregnant.

- What foods to avoid when pregnant.

- What foods to give to babies and when.

These all vary massively from country to country.

Sticker books. Just put books that they can't place and match stickers, always leave near the toilet. If you like sticker books, and who doesn't, you know what to do...

Then how do Asian kids do it by age 1?

I assume you're referring to China, since "Asia" is a big and diverse place.

The Chinese use elimination training, or "potty on demand." You place the kid over the potty, make a specific sound they associate with going potty (you created the association previously) and they go. You then repeat this enough times in a day to eliminate the need for diapers.

I don't think elimination training is potty training. In potty training you're teaching the kid to tell YOU when they need to go, in elimination you are telling THEM when to go. Plus in potty training they're doing "active holding" whereas in elimination you're aiming for things to never get to that stage by going "potty on demand" enough throughout a day.

I think elimination training is very interesting and some parents have had great success mixing elimination with diapers to reduce the amount of accidents/cost. But even if they're trained on the elimination technique, they'd still need to be potty trained later, it just might be easier (since, again, you're asking them to tell you, rather than you tell them).

It's elimination communication, not elimination training :) The concept, as you explain, is that the caregiver is alert to cues that a poop is coming, and moves the child to the potty.