I recently made our first attempt at potty training Josh. After 7 hours, 10 outfit changes and 26 trips to the bathroom, it was clear that Josh is not anywhere close to being ready to use the toilet. I put him on the toilet every ten minutes after he got off and sometimes he sat on there for 10-20 minutes because I let him have the itouch every other time he sat on it. The other times I read to him all sorts of new books from the library.
It was not the most pleasant of days.
First off, I didn't anticipate Ben being such a pill boy. He was NOT happy for me to be spending time in the bathroom with Josh and not letting him run around in there too. His screaming added that special little bit of eye-twitching to the day.
Twice during the day I actually timed it right for Josh to pee in the toilet, but even as he was doing it and I was acting like a crazed-enthusiastic-nothing-could-possibly-be-more-cool-than-this mama, Josh pretty much ignored everything and wouldn't even look down to acknowledge that his body was leaking fluids. This, added to the fact that he wet himself five times in an hour after drinking a full cup of juice makes me think that perhaps he lacks the muscle control to keep urine in and it just leaks out after he drinks.
We did simple star stickers after each time he sat on the potty and the two times he peed into the toilet he got to use a bunch of big foam jungle animal stickers. He was every enthusiastic about it, but it still made no difference. As far as I can tell, Josh doesn't care if he is wet. Even when wearing underwear he wouldn't acknowledge that he was soaking wet unless he happened to be standing and it ran down his leg. Then he would start sobbing and it just about broke my heart to see him so upset about something he can't control.
It would be nice not to have three children in diapers (not to mention cheaper, yikes) come September, but I'm not getting my hopes up. We'll try again monthly to see if there is any improvement. His therapist told me that most ASD boys aren't fully toilet trained until age SIX. Double yikes. But I've come to the conclusion that there could be worse things to deal with.
On the lighter side, every time the timer on the microwave beeps, Josh says "Time to use the potty!" since that was what I used for our timer that day. Of course it doesn't translate into any action on his part, so that's another sign to me that he was just going through the motions I put in place, rather than having any control or feeling over what his body was doing.
I should have bought stock in Huggies years ago.
3 comments:
I'm SO sorry it didn't go well but it was a good try. You never know until you try. It would be nice to have a child out of diapers, but you have a great attitude about it and he will get it eventually. Just keep it up Momma!
How does that work with ASD boys not being trained until age 6? Like with school and stuff, or is it just at night they mean. Juliet still uses a pull up at night, she could just care less about wet britches, it's still a battle during the day but at least accidents are pretty rare these days. My mistake with Juliet was being half hearted with potty training several times and so when I really tried for it she was already bored of it.
Six is the average age for being fully potty trained day and night without even a pull-up. Because ASD is considered a disability, I'm allowed to send him to a preschool that normally doesn't allow un-trained kids. He should be trained fully by kindergarten, because his sixth birthday will be in October right after school starts. At least I sure hope he will be, because even before then I'm worried that kids will start teasing him.
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