Potty Training For Autism
I have a 7 year old son (Tanner) that is diagnosed with moderate autism. He is still not fully potty trained. I have done everything I know to do. I have asked the doctors, not much help there. I don't even think they really care! I have talked with family and friends and gotten lots of ideas but none have helped. I am at the end of my rope with this one! Am I the only one with this problem?! When Tanner was 4 I started training my then 2 year old and would reward him with M&M"s. I Involved Tanner in this as well. They got two M&M's if they peed and 5 if they pooped. It worked for my 2 year old and I got Tanner peeing in the potty though he has some accidents he for the most part does very well. However he still wets at night and he will pee in his paints if he is wearing a pull up. Because of this I keep him in underwear but this make cleaning poopy paints harder and messier. He has only pooped on the potty 2 times in his whole life. One time I caught him in the middle of it and made sit on the potty. The other I started using a sticker chart and that worked one time. I make him pull his own underwear off and dump it in the potty. I have to wipe him though or it gets pretty ugly. I thought this would help but I think it makes it worse because he will dump it in the potty and then say "I poop in the potty". He used to put a pull up on when he had to poop but I stopped that thinking he would go in the potty...no luck! I don't know what else to do and I am very frustrated and sad that I can't get Tanner potty trained. I have trained my other 3 boys so I know it's not something I can't do. I could really use some help and/or advice.
I'm frustrated with this myself. My daughter is almost 4 and isn't potty trained. She's peed in the potty twice. She's also taken her pants off and peed in the floor about 4 times. I just have no idea what to do to help her.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have heard though is that autistic kids don't respond as well to rewards for it. I can't remember where I saw that, but it seems to be the case for my daughter as well.
My son did not respond to rewards much at all, with the exception of food rewards and only when he was nearly potty-trained at almost five years old.
ReplyDeleteBy chance, does your son receive ABA therapy? When we were becoming exasperated by our son not pooping on the potty, we thought we were going to have to add a "poop program" to our ABA training. Thank goodness, he started pooping on the potty and we did not have to do that but I am knowledgeable with the ABA method, as our therapists told me how the program would work, if we should have to implement it.
Basically, the first day, the child sits on the potty until "results" are produced. An adult sits with him and reads books, sings songs, supervises him while he plays a game on a portable game or watches a DVD, whatever. Once a result is produced, the child gets a short break and then back to the potty he goes. This goes on for two days and obviously requires some help, if you can get it from say, a relative or friend. After that, the child's breaks get longer and longer until they are going on the potty on their own.
Again, we did not have to use this program in our ABA programming but I have a friend who swears her son, who also has autism, went from peeing his pants every time to being totally potty-trained (1 and 2) in three days.
WOW! Thanks! I will have to try that. Will be a challage though because I have 4 kids and can't sit in the bathroom all day. I might be able to arange 2 people to help. My son does not have ABA therapy but thanks for sharing that. Like I said I will try anything at this point.
ReplyDelete