Toilet training 4 year old with ASD

[chuckeyegg]

Okay I've got a Mister Maker reward chart and piles of pants and tracksuit bottoms and the vax at the ready! Any other advise apart from a big helping of patients!

He can manage to wee on the toilet but doesn't want to know with poos. As he is already constipated I don't want to make it worse.

Any advise would be very gratefully recieved.

xx

I had this problem with my DS who is also ASD. He was dry at 3.5 but not clean til 4.5. I tried lots of things like putting him on toilet after meals, getting him to sit there by giving him a DVD to watch on a portable DVD player. To be honest, none of it really worked and I found that in the end he suddenly made up his mind one day that he was going to use the toilet!

Sorry if thats not too much help, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that it may be that your DS will just come round to using the toilet in his own time. There is howver a very good book called 'Liam Goes Poo on The Toilet' It has simple stick like drawings of a child using the toilet and it is specifically targeted at autistic children. Theree is also a book called 'Toilet Training for indidviduals with autism or learning difficulties' by Wheeler (can get it on Amazon). You could also try using social stories or a picture timetable showing the sequence of what child does when using the toilet.

Hope that helps

Sounds so familiar! Ds2 is now almost 10 and we still have problems!

To encourage him to stay on the toilet once you've got him there, if he likes sensory things to touch - can he reach the walls of the toilet when he's sitting down, if so stick up some sheets of sandpaper - he can run his fingers up and down them when on the bog.

Also does he have a particular interest - cars, dinosaurs, trains? Then if so, a picture or two (depending on the amount of room you have) stuck on the wall in front of him (at eye level)which he can look at.

We use lactulose and movicol to keep him regular! Oh, and wipes (ones you can flush) - he blocks the toilet with half the loo roll otherwise.

Break the process down into teeny tiny steps. You are not trying to toilet train your son - in one go? - that would be CRAZY!

So - you are trying to encourage him to tell you when he has done a poo.

And then the next thing will be to encourage to tell you when he is doing a poo.

And the next thing will be to encourage him to move to the hall outside the bathroom when he is doing a poo

and the next thing will be to have him stand by the bathroom door

and eventually he will stand by the loo, and instead of using baby wipes, you can use that moist loo paper and put it down the loo and flush afterwards

etc etc etc

who can say exactly what the trajectory is. Always allow the latest step to be really assimilated for a week or so before introducing the next one. And be ready to be flexible about what the next step will be, because he might come up with something you hadn't thought of.

And expect the whole process to take about a year.

And then it'll be fine!!!! :)

Just wanted to add my good lucks. DS1 is 4.2 and I started toilet training just after the new year. He is happy to wear pants and ask for the loo but he WILL NOT go in the toilet. So at the moment we take him into the bathroom, (some times) sit him on the loo, then put a nappy on him, he does his wee and we take the nappy off again.

Actually using the toilet I think is as far away as ever and by george, this is heavy on nappy use, but I do feel it's a good step forward.

Really hope it goes well for you.