toilet training ASD lad. any tips

[chubbymomie2012]

hi. im hoping to toilet train my little boy in the next couple of weeks. he has little speech and his understanding is limited. my plan is I have been going over and over the word potty and we have all been taking him to loo with us.. pls give a new ASD mummy some hints pls

[SallyBear]

Don't use the potty. Too confusing. Buy a family style toilet seat and a step. Just get him on to the toilet and take it from there.
I would also prepare yourself for being housebound for at least a week if not two while he cracks it. Also if you are finding that he is having more accidents than successes I would step back for a while as he might not be ready. I got my children to drink loads and took them frequently, making a massive thing of when they were successful. I didn't make a fuss about the accidents just cleared it up. I trained three of my four this way - one of them has Aspergers.

My youngest has non verbal ASD and is 6. He is still in nappies but will be taken to the toilet. He has no understanding of when he needs to go.

m.johnlewis.com/mt/www.johnlewis.com/the-family-seat-toilet-seat-white/p230742068

[sickofsocalledexperts]

I will pm you an article i wrote about toilet-training my (then) 2 year non-verbal autistic boy

[chubbymomie2012]

Thanks sickof... got the article. very helpful.

thanks sallybear. good advice

[Yarnie]

We basically did a variation on this with my ASD son:

dcautismparents.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/ABA_4.9255817.pdf

Very intensive. If you have other children, you'll need an extra pair of hands while training. If your son doesn't understand when he needs to go, he needs lots and lots of opportunities to work it out. The advantage of using a method like this means you don't need luck to get rewardable successes. He will go in the loo, and eventually start to recognise the sensation.

Everybody is different, but my son had basically cracked wees and poos in 3 days.

Other less intensive methods work too, I'm sure. I used this because I didn't want it to drag on for ages and I had a young baby.

[salondon]

Well Done Yarnie.. Mine is so scared of the toilet.. I have made a step by step plan...



Open the toilet door
Take pajamas down
Take pants down
Climb on the step stool
Turn
Sit on the toilet seat
Wee/poo
Wipe
Throw wipe in toilet
Get off the stool
Flush
Pull up pants
Pull up pajamas
Wash hands
Open door
Hooray!

[Yarnie]

A step by step plan is a really good start. I posted a visual step by step outside the loo a couple of weeks before we started and talked about going to the loo a lot. We also used a PECS card to reinforce the word "toilet", although we phased it out once he had the word (he was semi-verbalish when we trained).

[Yarnie]

Oh, and although the step by step is useful, when we started intensive training, we just concentrated on making the connection between needing a wee and communicating that/getting to the bathroom. Once that was sorted, we added in the routine, bit by bit.

[insanityscratching]

Ds resisted all attempts at training even though he undoubtedly had control as when he was angry he'd go and wee on the bed of the person who upset him One day he took himself to the toilet and that was it, trained himself. It coincided with our preparing him for a new baby and I think it clicked that babies wore nappies and so he used the toilet.

[salondon]

My daughter needs to connect "need to wee/poo" = "go to toilet". But also, we need to desensitize her. She screams blue murder.

[Yarnie]

My son refused to go on the loo and screamed the house down if we put him on the loo. We have an iPad and we severely rationed it in the week before training and than - somehow - managed to entice him on the loo with the iPad and a new app, at which point he got mega-praise. After that, we were good to go. Is there anything similarly rewarding you can try?

[salondon]

yes, the iPad and cheerios:)

[Yarnie]

Hope it works for you!