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Toilet training

3 replies

Aug12 · 28/02/2023 21:02

Hi there,

My 4, nearly 5 year old is still uses pull ups when he needs a poop. He uses the toilet for pees and hasn’t had an accident since he was about 2.5 but we cannot master pooping.

He has had a pre-assessment for autism and we were told that he displays a lot of traits - we can have a full assessment when he turns 5. Has anyone else with neurodiverse kiddos had this problem and what things helped? He has deferred entry to school due to not being ready so we thankfully have another year to get this mastered.

We have tried using the poo land app with no success and reading books to get. The health visitor suggested letting him poop in a nappy whilst sitting on the toilet as a starting point but we cannot even achieve this as it results in a meltdown to the point of making himself sick. I don’t want to make this a distressing thing for him as I then feel it’ll make him even more reluctant to try again?

On the very odd occasion we can get him to sit on the loo with his pants and trousers on we praise him a lot and let him blow bubbles etc while sitting there to try and let him see it’s not a scary place?

What age did your child master this? All tips & tricks welcome. Thank you

OP posts:
TheCurseOfBoris · 01/03/2023 02:34

My ASD child learnt pretty quick as they were disgusted by it all! Toilet trained by 3 but I still had to wipe til around 7. Bizarre. Now a teenager and apparently never uses the toilet at school, as it's disgusting. I'd continue to use pull ups and not even try to encourage them to use the toilet for now as it could be too much pressure. Hopefully it will suddenly click naturally.

cravingtoblerone · 01/03/2023 22:54

What's his receptive language like? Does he actually understand what he's required to do?

My DS had poor receptive language and just didn't get the whole potty training thing. However he is a very visual learner and we found a video aimed at SEND kids which really helped explain what we were expecting from him. Watched it for a few days and he went from nappies to fully trained in a week.

Video is called Tom's Toilet Triumph and is on YouTube.

Veebs21 · 08/03/2023 17:45

We had a big problem with pooing with DD but we cracked it last year around 4yo. Look up Tom’s Toilet Triumph. It’s a cartoon that really shows them what is happening - was written for SEN kids.

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