Toilet training and ASD

Hi - Just after some tips on this.

I know you should wait until they are ready and then it will be easier, but I swear Alex would be happy in nappys forever.

He turned three last November and will put undies on but gets a bit distressed when something is about to happen and wants to put a nappy back on. He won't wee in the undies either, or in the pot, it's like he hangs onto it. He won't go anywhere near the big toilet, even with a stool and an insert.

He's not bothered by being in a poo or wet nappy. He likes to watch other people in the loo.

I watched a video from the early intervention centre about TT with a disability, but it doesn't seem to apply to Alex. Charts do not mean anything to him and decorating the toilet didn't help.

Look Matilda wouldn't go near a toilet until she was 3. Than in a few day she picked it up, than again 5 months later she started doing poos. She would hold it at Montessori where they had to use the toilet and then once home she would ask for a nappy for a poo and do it in there. Total control, but unable to cope with the toilet.

I have no answers, but I wish now that I hadn't stressed so much about it with her. I wish I had just tried every few weeks and if it didn't work, than to move on.

Matilda is 4 1/2 and still has accidents, and still asks for a reward every time she does a poo.

I have been trying to toilet train my little miss for a number of years and over the last school holiday I thought we had reached success, but then school went back.

I have made charts but that is more for my record as she doesnt respond to them, all she thinks they are, are pretty colours to look at but doesnt connect the sticker to doing a poo/wee.

I started by sitting her on the toilet for 5 minutes every two hours generally with no success sometimes for days or weeks but I made a huge fuss for the odd occasion she did succeed. With persistance she is now poo continent (only haveing had 4 accidents in the last 12 months) but far from wee continent. She will do a wee almost every time she sits but will also do more in her nappy or she will hold and hold so much she cant let go when she is on the toilet and then eventually when she cant hold any longer she floods her nappy.

Now we have set times through out the day when she sits on the toilet, she wears undies inside her nappy to feel the wetness and i have the charts for my reference to show how many successes. It is working, slowly but working.
We use an over toilet frame which seams to be more sturdy than the inserts. Another option is looking into getting a potty seat through aides and equipment program. Some kids feel more secure sitting on a seat with more support.
Toilet timing rather than toilet training can work well it is just a matter of convincing your little man that it is good to sit on the toilet (I know - easier said than done).


Hope this helps, keep persisting.

Good luck

Sjl

Barb, Jackson is similar in age - he turned 3 last May, so he will be 4 this year. I started trying to toilet train him early because I kind of freaked out that he would be going to school and still not toilet trained and realised he was just not ready.

Then at about 3.5 it was a warmish day and I had just changed a wee nappy and Jackson was enjoying a bit of 'airing time' I was actually in the toilet and had come out to see a mess in the other toilet and discovered he had done a poo on our rug and then it looked like he had tried to pick it up and carry it into the toilet and got some of it in there!! I realised that he did understand that was where it was meant to go so then started being a little firmer with him and making him go every hour, I had an alarm clock that would ring and then I would say "it's toilet time" and take him whether he needed to go or not. He got a sticker on the chart for sitting on the toilet, and one on his hand for squeezing out the tiniest drop of wee. He just got better really fast at holding on once he got the idea, and it took us two solid weeks to have him fully trained. He went straight into jocks at night withought a wet bed which amazed me, am so proud of him!!

We still have to remind him constantly to go but he rarely has an accident. My advice is just to wait until she is truly ready, you will see the signs, and to experiment with different kinds of motivations and rewards until you find one that she responds to.

Min - that's what I thought about Alex - being at Kinda next year and still being in a nappy. I also thought he had a 'thing' about sitting up high with his legs dangling, but he gets up and fine and without the toilet insert. He thinks he's fab sitting on the throne.

Alex did a wee in the potty on Monday and I cried and yelled, until I saw that upset him and I just cried. We rang grandma and my sister and we went to the shops and bought a train - that was his incentive, there is a picture on the toilet door. But for Tuesday, wednesday and thursday, he kept saying no toilet, made wee on potty - like he only had to do it once !! For this wee, he took all of his clothes off, he said he didn't want to get wee on his socks.

At creche on Friday he went and came home in the same pair of jocks and trackies and they said he was great, not even an accident on the way to the toilet. So all friday night, I'm thinking about how I can get a small white toilet like they have in kindas and creche's and stick it over a bucket or something ... and he can pretend.

After tea on Friday, he pulls the potty in front of the tv and plonks himself down and does a wee. Not even a peep about having to put a nappy on ! I bought digger and thomas stickers off ebay and he has the chart on the fridge and he's excited about his diggers. And he loves to carry it to the toilet and flush.

Next day, he does the same thing, potty in the lounge. We took the potty to Phillip Island with us and he wore jocks in the car, even had a nap on the way there ... used the pot all weekend. Except when he wee'd at the beach. Before then, he wouldn't even wee outside.

I put a nappy on him for bedtime. And both Friday and Saturday he did a poo just after I put it on, so we plonked that in the toilet.

I'm pretty happy because once he gets his mind set on something, good or bad, he's pretty stuck to it. He even wants to put the stickers on his chart himself.