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Autism & Potty Training
Hi Ladies,
My DS is 4 and we are having a heck of a time with potty training. He doesn't seem to realize (or maybe he doesn't care) when he is wet and has no interest in using the toilet.
Any suggestions on how to get the ball rolling? I am looking forward to the day when he is out of diapers and will use the bathroom on his own.
Oh and I should mention that his sped preschool will be working with him on this when school resumes tomorrow. I am hopeful that you BTDT moms might have some advice for me.
Thanks!
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Re: Autism & Potty Training
Just went through this with my just-turned-4 year old a couple of months ago (she's PDD-NOS)... very similar to your son- didn't seem to recognize or care about peeing or pooping, though she did have a mild interest in the potty, probably b/c of her big sister- frankly, though, what was interest one day could easily switch to full-blown anxiety the next- you just never knew.
My strategy was to go cold turkey for daytime training... I let her run around naked and expected she'd have an accident, at which point I'd run her to the potty in the hopes she'd make the connection between the sensation of peeing and sitting on the potty. It took a couple of days, and she freaked out during accidents (she doesn't like to get wet- ikes!) but pretty quickly, she got the hang of it... once she figured it out, she literally only had one accident. As for pooping, that was sort of serendipitous... we were in the bathroom right after she'd peed, and she started jumping around (like she does when she has to pee)... I just plopped her right on the potty again, and without having a chance to even think, she just pooped. Like pee, once she understood the sensation, she never had another accident. She was night-time trained within about a week (through no work on my part... I think that's one of the benefits of waiting 'til we did- her body just figured it all out much more quickly than, say, a 2.5 year old.)
We used rewards generously... every time she sat on the potty, she'd get an m&m or something, and every time she actually went, she'd get a lollipop. That was a big motivator for her. I bought her books she could only read in the bathroom, and did whatever I could to make it fun in there. I also found it really helpful to get her teachers involved in the training- I did it during her summer school program, when she only had school 3 days a week for a couple of hours, so it wasn't a huge chunk of time she was away from me, but even those few hours each week took so much pressure off me and enabled me to stick with it...
Someone had recommended this book to me... It wasn't super helpful when we were just starting out, but it was pretty useful when we were "in the trenches" and I was running into situations. I found this book to more helpful in getting started with a whole "plan" for potty training, even though I kind of came up with my own in the end...
good luck!!