My 2 children are barely 12 months apart.
Within 1-1/2 hours after eating breakfast my oldest, 4-6 months, could be seen turning red in the face and grunting.
Suffering from acute morning sickness, one particularly bad morning I decided to try the potty approach.
It worked like a charm and we were BOTH happy we did not have to deal with that nastiness. Yes, I repeated the process when/if caught in time or was convenient.
A few months later said child had figured out that not only could the nasty diaper be avoided, but wet ones as well by running to the potty and pointing saying "potty".
Long story short...out of diapers before first birthday except at night, but usually dry in the morning. Continued night time diapers until the new baby was a few weeks old. Once I determined there would be no reversion, to imitate the new baby for attention, diapers were abandoned all together.
Imagine, I did it without a book, or organization, or movement, or "experts" telling me anything. Some folks felt the need to tell me "I" was potty trained, not the child. My response; "Of course! Who cares? My puke time has been cut to less than half."
The American Academy of Pediatrics tells parents that children younger than 12 months have no control over bladder and bowel movements and little control six months after that.
Idiots!
Your experience is like my Mom's -- she had all of her children out of diapers by the time they were a year old. She says that once you get a little girl excited about her new frilly panties, they don't want to do anything to mess them up.
Personally, I think that babies are way smarter than we give them credit for, and just because they can't talk and communicate to us in words does not mean they are understanding and absorbing a lot of what they hear and see. How else do you explain the ability of many children to learn words and sentence structure by the time thy are two years old? They understand what we say to them well before they can repeat it back to us.
Toilet training is probably happening later than it used to because of the use of disposable diapers. The kid feels dry, even when the diaper is full of urine, so there is no discomfort, no feedback, and no incentive to prevent wetting the diaper. Put a kid in cloth diapers, and they'll learn more quickly that going to the potty avoids wetness and discomfort.
It makes sense. If a child under one can relay when they are hungry, hurting, why can't they understand the urge to use the bathroom?
Son potty trained fully about at about 1.5 years old. Daughter at about 14 months.