Toilet/potty training ASD Semi-verbal son

[Mum0i754437]

Hi,
I have began potty training my asd 5yr old son. e have never done it b4.
So this morning I put him in pants and im taking him to the potty every 30 mins. Initially he was peeing with his pants on and wasnt noticing. So i removed his pants and let him be in his birthday suit. I need him to wee on the floor and form a puddle to show him.
Iv noticed hes doing lots of little wees. Is this normal for a 1st day? He does little wees every 10 mins or so. Im assuming its becuase he had no reason not to while wearing nappies. Im basically saying to him....wee wee not on floor, wee wee on potty and point to his potty and showing him the visual aid of the potty. Is this all i can do right now? And just repeating until he learns he has to do it in the potty?

Any advice will help.

Thank you

We used the Oh Crap potty training method for ds (ASD) when he was 3.5 and it worked really well for us. We had had an earlier unsuccessful attempt before we found this. Wees he got fairly quickly but it took a couple of months before he did a poo in the potty. He wasn’t dry at night for another couple of years.

Good luck.

Interesting, thank you, I will get the book. I was first considering working the night routine too. But now I realise he's not ready for that!

If you do use this method just expect each stage to take longer for your ds than suggested in the book. It did for us but we still got there.

I successfully toilet trained my severely autistic non verbal son when he was nine with the help of the learning disabilities team and his special school, it took a long time ,it was through consistency and routine and lots of praise

Hi Mum0i754437, my DD (4yrs4mths) has just started using the toilet. I did find she was going constantly for the first few days, probably on average every 15 minutes but sometimes 2 minutes apart! After about day 4 she starting having longer intervals, I think it's just because they don't need to hold in nappies/pull-ups so something they have to learn.

It sounds like you're doing all the right things.

(In our case she showed an interest in the toilet from copying a friend and started wanting to go on there. I previously tried to toilet train her and we didn't get a single wee in the potty/toilet, just floods, she just wasn't ready until now.)

(She has developmental delay in all areas, language disorder and waiting for assessment for ASD.)

Does your son respond to visuals? We toilet-trained my semi-verbal son (3) using a YouTube video called Tom's Toilet Triumph. It's designed for SEN kids.

We toilet trained our ASD DD a pretty non-traditional route by reading no books whatsoever and following her lead/our instinct 😂 We were waiting for the traditional signs but they didn’t come so at about 2 years 10/11 months we got a potty and started sitting teddies on it for wees etc. We then went quite quickly to nappy free at home as much as possible and after a few wees on the floor she got the hang of that with gentle reassurance - but definitely lots of small wees to begin with. I think they almost cut themselves off as the sensation is strange/different. Or she was trying to get more chocolate buttons! Maybe the latter 🤣

She went backwards a little when we introduced pants in the house, and then later leggings/full clothes, but they were only small setbacks and she got the hang of it.

It was only at this stage we felt confident to go nappy free out and about, about four months in and 3y 3m. I think the problem is, DD is verbal but she doesn’t like to tell me when she needs a wee, and also hates to be asked/suggested - can cause a meltdown (even if she actually does needs one). She just likes to be able to go on her terms; which is hard if we are at the shops/park etc. This has improved but we still have issues in the car - it’s our last place to crack! She can hold it for two hours car journeys but then can wet herself and say nothing in a 5 mins trip from park 🤷🏼‍♀️

Poos were harder work - they really distressed her. She was a stand up poo-er in a nappy, and health visitor said that probably meant it was sensory related as squatting/sitting is easier but a more intense sensation. We were just super patient on this. She learned that she just had to bring us a nappy and that meant she needed a poo, and we let her poo in her nappy. When she needed to go I started taking her to the toilet so she could go in the bathroom, then we would take off the nappy and flush & say goodbye to poo (we read Poo Goes to Pooland 😅) She liked this routine so it continued for almost a year. Then I found Tom’s Toileting Triumph video and that really helped move things forward. She’s now been pooing happily and confidently (and telling me she needs to go, unlike wees!) on the toilet for a couple of months now and she’ll be four in September.

As you have a boy, Tom’s Toileting Triumph will be even more helpful to you I would
imagine - it covers weeing and pooing, couldn’t recommend enough.