DS with mild ASD and school toilets

[kiwimumof2boys]

Hi, first post, just looking for a bit of advice.
Basically, DS has just started primary school, he has mild autism. Meaning there are just a couple of sensory issues he has. Yesterday was his first day, and it went well, however today his teacher (who we have had meetings with and is aware of ASD) said he refused to go to the toilet as there is a handryer there which another kid was using. Urrgh handryers are the one thing that he cannot stand (the noise and sensory issues) and I was unaware there were handryers in there until now.
Does anyone have any advice what to do over this ? he is generally OK with stuff but He is going to have to use the toilets (no other ones nearby).
Thanks

Ask the school to make sure that he has chances throughout the day to use the toilets when nobody else is in there, so that there's no risk of the hand dryers going off?

(I'm just remembering when my Dbro would actually scale a smooth toilet wall when hand dryers started. He has learnt to cope with them now - he's 22 with Aspergers, he started coping better with them when he was a teenager)

Ds had this exact problem. He HATES hand dryers with a vengeance. The school let him use the disabled toilet which was self contained and his ta would turn the hand dryer off at the wall at the start of each day. It made it a lot easier for him as he thought of that toilet as "his".

If he were a child who was using a wheelchair, reasonable accommodation would have to be made to meet his toileting needs.

TBH I see no difference here. Hand-dryers are one thing that seem to be consistently difficult for children on the spectrum to cope with. IME there is always a switch on the wall, which an adult can turn off before he goes in, surely. as there could be one who will turn it on to laugh at the effect on DS

mine had the same problem. Eventually he got used to them, but we had the problem of other kids setting them off too.

I think you should speak to the school and see if they can find a way to accomodate his needs. a ta outside the door could ensure that he could use them in private wihtout someone coming in and setting it off.

Agreeing about giving him chances to go in when no one else is there, with the dryers switch off at the wall if needs be. When he is more confident, giving him a chance to set them off himself and be in control of when the noise happens might help him. DS1 managed to progress from screaming at them to thinking they were hilarious to just plain indifference.

You need to talk to the school to find a way around this.

DS still has school toilet issues (now 12) and he deliberately doesn't drink much at school due to this. He has had numerous urine infections and a suspected small kidney stone ( scare last summer - blood from his extremity).
Please try to resolve something with the school and nip it in the bud. I don't want anyone else to have the same issues we have had.

I agree re the disabled toilet - or with the TA taking him just after lessons start again so everyone else is in class. Or the TA outside stopping anyone coming in.

We had this.

What worked for us:
Lots of reassurance from us, teacher and TA that it was OK for him to go when he wanted rather than when was suggested - as part of the primary 1 thing the teacher will encourage them to go at break etc, but DS had to ignore this and go in school time when the toilets were quieter.

There wasn't a disabled toilet in his old school but he was taken by the TA who would stand by the door so no-one would use the handdryers.

It took lots of time and reassurance and support, but he got there in the end. A disabled loo would have been infinitely preferable.

The older boys' toilets didn't have handdryers so that was put forward as a solution - however, their urinals were too high for DS so make sure that any proposed solutions are workable!

I thought all schools were meant to have an all access toilet. Our school do not call it a disabled toilet, rather a toilet for children to use if they have any issues.
My dd is not physically disabled but uses the all access toilet at school as she too hates the hand dryer and also has toileting accidents during the day.
It may be worth asking the teacher if there is a toilet similar to this that your ds can use.

DS old school was a nightmare for access. It was spread across 6 floors, there wasn't a toilet on each floor and children did a lot of moving between floors. One little girl in DS old class had CP and had a lot of problems moving around the school, had a TA with her at all times. But a child with any larger mobility problems wouldn't have been able to go there. There was a new school 3 minutes away which was accessible so children with mobility issues went there.

Both excellent schools though. I think (dim mists of time because you don't pay attention to these things pre-DCs) the LA had been challenged about accessibility and the solution was to transport children to the other nearby school. TBF it would have cost millions to put lifts into 6 floors of Victorian building, I suppose.