When my oldest reached five years old, I was feeling pressured by the community to have my child potty trained before he started school. I had tried a bunch of different strategies and it was just not happening. I was blessed in my research on the topic to find out that I needed to lower my expectations EXTREMELY with my autistic child because on the average kids on the spectrum are fully potty trained between the ages of 6 and 9. You can simply "google" something to that fact now, and walla you have a statistic and plenty of information, but ten years ago I had to scrap for that valuable resource.
Obviously, that is much later than most kids, so I had to let go any fantasies it would happen before kinder garden. Quickly, I had to learn how to be an advocate for my child educationally speaking. I will perhaps talk about that alone in another post. Let's suffice it to say, that I had to make it an IEP (individual educational plan) goal for the teacher to support my efforts to potty train since after first grade she had him most the day. I am thankful for Grant's first para or teacher's aide, Nicole, who made it her "goal" to get him potty trained that year. As wacky as it sounds, she sat him on the potty chair all day long till it naturally happened and then had a "potty party" for him. She pumped him full of juice so it was bound to happen at some point. I tried this method at home but it was a different setting so he didn't cooperate for me.
So, at age seven, my oldest was finally potty trained during the day. I chose one weekend to do the same where I required him to do all his activities just sitting on the potty. Oh, the drama! It was awful. Once he naturally went at home, then it was yesterday's news. He just had to do it that one time and we were good after that....but it was not easy!!!! I think I reached a point where I just have had it. It took TWO of us to hold him down, clean him, and change his pull up. A seven year old is much stronger than a toddler. A year later, he was also dry during the night, so technically age 8 it
was official.
The trick for him in that last year to stay dry, it was
putting him in these padded underwear looking night pants that www.onestepahead.com offered. By this time, my second autistic child was 6 years old going on 7 soon, since they are only 16 months apart. It was a tender mercy from God, that once my oldest child did it, that he noticed and virtually overnight was potty trained through the day himself. I was so relieved. However, it took him a while to stay dry at night. The pants that worked for his older brother did nothing for him, and I believe it was due to several facts: 1) he had sleep issues that his older brother did not, so once he fell asleep he slept pretty sound, 2) he has more sensory issues as well, so it was a matter of getting him to sense it at night, and 3) his personality is far more different than his brother so the same strategies never seem to work for him, as it was. All in all, I figured out, that by having him wear boxing shorts instead helped him sense it was time to go.
My daughter was so much easier to potty train, although, she was a stinker and wouldn't initially do it for me. I took two different ideas from my sisters for her, and it worked like a charm. First, she ran around the yard in a summer dress and no undies for that entire summer before school began in the fall after her Aunt was able to get her to sit on the potty and try. It helped her to "sense" the need by running so care free and she rarely had an accident. My youngest, who is five years old this year, he is also on the spectrum...and he has yet to be potty trained. Ultimately, I have learned that you can't rush it, and they know when they are ready. Also, each child is incredibly different. What an adventure!
