DS is 2 months away from his 4th Birthday.
He was none verbal until about 9 months ago and he has a significant speech delay. He is also on the pathway for an autism diagnosis.
We started Potty training about 6 months ago - I should have started earlier but because he was non verbal, we didn’t know if he’d be able to communicate that he needed the toilet so we’re waiting until the speech had improved before trying - but this summer realised we couldn’t keep delaying.
I feel like I’ve potty trained him wrong. We kept him naked below the waist and got a toilet type potty and put in the living room - then when we went out for the day would put him in a pull up to avoid accidents.
At nursery he is in pants and they take him to the toilet regularly. He attends three days a week and typically has one poo accident a day at nursery.
We’ve realised that putting him in a pull up to go out for the day isn’t the right thing to do and have stopped doing this - instead we take a travel potty and ask him if he needs a wee/poo etc but sometimes he says no and then has an accident!
We’ve also stopped having him naked at home and instead put joggers and pants on him, to encourage him to pull them down himself and go to the toilet (he seems to really struggle pulling trousers and pants up though?!)
The past few days he’s been having 2-3 poo accidents at nursery and they told me on Friday he should have this by now and they’re concerned that he is still having accidents.
I know this is my fault. I should have trained him earlier. I should have kept him in pants and trousers at home and we shouldn’t have put him in a pull up when out. I feel awful that he’s almost 4 and not trained yet. I feel like he might never be potty trained! I feel like shit tbh.
In terms of an ASD diagnosis, he is speech delayed (has only just started to put small sentences together and his pronunciation is poor) we attend private SALT - he has a few other traits but nothing significant, he knows the alphabet, colours, numbers and can write his name - but I don’t know whether potty training is harder because he may have additional needs and might not be NT - but what do we do now? How do we crack this?
Do we just keep putting him in pants at home and nursery and keep going? Or is there something I’m missing?
Sorry for the essay!!