This will be long - I apologise in advance!
Have absolutely no idea how to help my 10 year old daughter.
As a brief bit of background, she has special educational needs and suspected autism - going through a diagnosis process now but I don't really have any doubt.
She's also extremely gentle and sweet and it's so difficult to see her this afraid and anxious.
She was late toilet training (only just managed to get her out of nappies before she started school) but since then largely used toilets without fuss.
However, when we came out of lockdown and started going to public toilets again, she started showing a severe phobia of using any toilets except ours at home. She will use that by herself without any problems but has huge anxiety about any other toilet - school toilets, hotels, cafes, train station, everything.
She will scream in terror, cry, cling to me, absolutely refuse to go near the toilet. I can just about get her to use them in an emergency by letting her cling to me for dear life, crying with fear. Even then, it can easily take 30 mins to get her onto the toilet. Without me there it is impossible - she has a Shewee to use at school, because she'd had incidents of trying to hold on and wetting herself in class. She would rather do that than use the toilet.
Obviously this has a huge impact on our lives, and I'm very conscious that she may be starting periods in a relatively short time... and I have absolutely no idea what to do.
Most people I speak to for help (school and GP) really struggle to understand what I mean and the severity of her fear. Anyone who has subsequently witnessed it (my parents have both heard the screaming) are shocked by how bad it really is; they thought I must have been exaggerating because it 'seemed so odd a thing to be so scared of.' It isn't 'reluctance', it's terror.
I've talked to her a lot to try to determine the cause. It's definitely not a hygiene/germ concern. Some of it is made worse by the sounds in public toilets - flushing, hand driers, other people banging doors. But ultimately it's the part where she has to turn around and sit back over a hole - she finds it terrifying, imagines monsters or hands or rats reaching up out of the toilet and grabbing her. She says there isn't a thing that happened to make her afraid, she just started imagining these things and now it's 'just so scary.'
I've tried taking her into toilets when she doesn't need to go to get used to being in there - no anxiety at all being in the cubicle if she knows she won't have to sit on it. She'll sit on it with the lid closed. I've tried singing songs and jokes to distract her. I've tried stepping back so she can hold my hand or have me present, but not cling to me; and each time she will launch herself off the toilet to grab hold of me, screaming as though she's being eaten alive.
I've researched links between autism and these kinds of phobias but can't really find much that's useful...
What do I do?!? Just don't know what else to try and nothing is making any difference.