forcing an autistic child to use the toilet at school

[legohurts16]

I am a 1-1 to a non verbal autistic girl in year 2. She is very happy and smiley but locked in her own little word. She is a different child at home and although she has an EHCP applied for in reception at another school her parents are quite in denial and still believe she will grow out of it.

At school she will not use the toilet and now her mum has told us that we need to force her ie take her to the toilet pull down her tights and pin her down until she goes because she is holding it all in and she then goes in the car on the way home - however distressed she gets she must go at least once in a day. I am not comfortable doing this because even the sight of the bathroom freaks her out. We have now had this in writing from her dad - the class teacher is off with covid so we have a stream of different supply teachers who really through no fault of their own are no support. I am so not comfortable trying this. Surely this isn't the best approach for an autistic child??

To do what the parents want is assault. Of course you can't do it.

What strategies have you tried so far to get her to use the toilet?

Is it the handryers?

Can she use the staff toilet if they don’t have hand dryers? Or can they be turned off?

Absolutely not. It's abusive.

You have to get to the bottom of why she won't go in school. Something about going in school scares her and you can't fix it until you know what she's scared of.

I'm autistic and wouldn't go at school because I didn't feel safe. I didn't like cubicles with gaps at the top and bottom where people could hear (and I feared see) you. Even now as an adult I won't leave the cubicle if I think there's someone in the handwashing area.

We eventually found out that the reason my autistic DD kept wetting herself was because she was scared of the aligator who lived in the sink near the toilet. As the water ran down the drain it created a bubble just under the plughole. For some reason she thought this was the eye of an aligator and so avoided going.

Then there's the hand dryers, the cisterns refilling, the detergent smells, the other smells etc.

Senior leaders at the school should have said No to this straight away. It’s abusive and worlds away from gentle encouragement/finding out why she doesn’t want to use the school toilets.
No staff should agree to this and it’s a safeguarding issue that parents have requested it - report as a Concern using your school’s system.

Does the school have a disabled toilet she can access?
Would taking her at specific times help, such as before/after she has had her lunch, so that she gets it in to her routine.
I wouldn't be forcing her on to the toilet, I'd be taking it very slowly, showing her the disabled toilet, reward for going in, reward for sitting on it (clothed), and so on until she gets it.
If she is using the toilet at home, then hopefully she will eventually use it at school. Doubtful it'll be any time soon if her parents want you to use force.

Agree with all the other posters but wanted to add, speak to the SENCo if there's no class teacher at the moment or even to the head. They should back you up on this

My dd also ASD was never able to use a toilet in school either, we've had some near misses in the car on the way home as well. You can't do what the mother wants you could though advise them to use piddle pads on the car seat in case of accidents as we used to.

Does she have now and next boards etc? I’m assuming so. Could you start putting the toilet picture on her timetable every 1-2 hours, she may not be willing to cooperate straight away but every time it’s scheduled take her but obvs don’t force her, just make it part of her normal routine to visit at set times using her visuals. Can she use the staff toilet or disabled toilet so handryers can he turned off and show her a picture of a hand dryer with a red line through (we got ds one of these) (If handryers are the problem of course) Or put her some ear defenders on for the toilet visits.

Must be so uncomfortable for her to hold it in all day my ds did this for a good 6 months in year 1 and wet his pants like a waterfall as soon as I collected him (before we got back to the car) you could see the relief on his face when he was wetting his pants letting it all out. Poor kids!