Autism – potty training
Updated with comments below
As many of you know we run a autism page on Facebook called AutismTalk. You can check it out here https://www.facebook.com/AutismTalk. One of the most frequent topics of conversation/requests for advice is on potty training for children with autism.
The aim of this blog post is to provide a space where we can discuss the various techniques we have used to help children with autism use the toilet correctly.
Speaking as a parent of a now seven year old boy with ASD the experience of potty training was a bit traumatic. One of my biggest issues was not the many accidents en route but the occasional smearing faeces on walls and carpets.
Reading the stories of others on the page I realise that my wife and I were actually pretty lucky with our child. In the last year he has very rarely had what he refers to as “an accident” at night and only once during the day. That being said the whole training process lasted nearly three years. So my first bit of news is that it will happen nowhere near as fast as with a neurotypical child.
Our strategy was pretty straight forward.
Firstly we got him used to being on the potty. Though he would occasionally spend the afternoon “on the can” playing with the laptop. This may have been a mistake as we had to wean him off the laptop.
Secondly we used a social story to help him move to the toilet proper. The story took him through the process of sitting down on the toilet, wiping his bottom when he had finished and then flushing the lavatory (he still has problems with this). Finally washing and drying his hands. The picture I’ve used to illustrate this blog is the one we actually used in our bathroom. Apologies if the resolution is not great.
It is worth mentioning that you do need to get everyone to buy into the project. A consistent message is great. This does mean he had a spare set of clothes at school and nursery. And yes they were used. But because he was in a specialist unit for toddlers with ASD when we started toilet training there was no embarrassment from the staff about the situation.
That being said there are loads of great ideas out there to help toilet train kids with autism. One of the objectives of this blog post is to find out how you potty trained your autistic child. It would be great if you could share your story at the comments box below,
To help matters along you might care to think about the following questions:-
a) Did you have any issues with toilet training? If so what were the specific challenges?
b) At what age did you start toilet training and at what age was the process, more or less, complete?
c) What techniques did you use to facilitate the toilet training? How successful were they?
d) Is there any advice you would like to give to parents of ASD children who are about to embark on the toilet training journey?
Thanks very much in advance for your help!
You can read the previous blog on autism and meltdowns here – https://patienttalk.org/?p=2349