To have potty trained 4 children by age 2.5 but

[SloeBerries]

...be defeated by the fifth?

She’s the most articulate and wilful. Three I had a pleasant chat with and the potty excited them, one with some SEN I used pictures cards and it’s a long road but some training by 2.5. This one just say ‘no’. She tells me ‘I poo in nappies’, ‘I don’t like potties’ and literally walks around the house screaming until she gets a nappy. And she is bloody persistent too. Or she eventually wees somewhere deliberately unreasonable.

Please tell me it’s not just me facing this? She’s a tiny wilful dictator that gives no shits, she knew the alphabet and counted to twenty at two.... it’s certainly not comprehension.

I was filling a bit smug super-mum like after the first four 🤯

I'm guessing that you've already considered the possibility that you have another ASD child here? Resistant to change, demand avoidant, sensory stuff maybe?

We're all brilliant parents until we meet the child who teaches us that actually we're not.

Oh I love this!

Sloe I've had the same thing with DC3.

Obviously there were some initial challenges with dc1 - getting the hang of breast feeding, then she was a bottle refuser, she didn't like being put down to sleep. However by a year old I thought I'd got it cracked, a year later along came dc2 who was text book in almost every way as a young child.

Sleep, weaning, eating a wide range of foods without fuss, potty training - everything really before the age of 3 was pretty easy with dc1 &2.

It was easy to think I'd cracked the preschool stage and having a dc3 would be no bother as I knew what I was doing.

He's the cutest, most lovable, funniest, most physically beautiful child and startlingly perceptive - which is bloody lucky as every single thing I thought I knew about parenting from dc1 and 2 might as well have been thrown out the window. Things that worked for them dont work for him.

That's why its annoying to read threads where smug parents claim that what worked for their 1 or 2 or even 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 children will work universally for every child, that night weaning / gradual retreat/ controlled crying will sort all babys' sleep within a week, that just eating a home cooked food together at the table as a family and offering no alternative (or toast as an alternative, dc3 would genuinely love to live exclusively on buttered toast) will definitely without fail create "good eaters" etc. The obvious, well known aporoaches to common challenges work for many kids by not universally.

Slowdown- tbh, I mildly wonder but she’s happy and bright. I figure it won’t be clear for another few years yet as unlike her sister there’s no LD. My other child with asd is a really fantastic girl, so I’m quite relaxed on whether she is or not. I just plan to carry on living, listening and responding to needs and going with the flow really.

Blue skies - if it makes you feel better I weaned her sister into solid food at 4 (milk and then awful meal replacement milkshakes). She eats about 5 foods, I just luckily can squeeze her between 4 other stuffing veg down when we’re out and still do the perfect parent look...

I’m considered straight to The loo as she’s suddenly finding great joy in flushing it!