Potty Training

[Spinosaur]

Hello, I have a 4 year old boy with ds. I would appreciate any ideas on how I could start potty training him. He can wee when he wants and can hold his wee when caught weeing where he shouldn't! I need to start somehow as he is off to school in September and I am hoping they will support any plan in place to help get him out of nappies. Thanks for any input.

The advice I was given for my autistic boy was to make the loo a "destination of choice" ie put lots of fun toys in there, or posters on back of door. Then get him just used to sitting on loo, maybe while you're running the bath? Then give him choc rewards if he actually does something in loo, plus big praise. It can take time and I seem to remember a lot of waiting around in the bathroom for something to happen, but it did work for my boy after a while. NB - try and get him used to pulling and then tearing the loo paper too, as I think the earlier you start that the better, even if you are actually doing the real wiping for quite a few years! Good luck!

bump.

Dear Sickofalltheexperts, thanks for the ideas, I might talk to nursery about one of the cubicles being turned into an art gallery of the kids'work, that would entice him in to do more than spread loo roll around!

My 2 boys needed completely different approaches to each other:

With ds1 we started with a very simple social story about going to the toilet. After about a week of reading it with him a couple of times a day we made a start. Ds1 was motivated by stickers and so was given a sticker every time he sat on the potty chair (he wouldn't use a toilet to start with). Once he started weeing in it (several days later) he was rewarded for that instead. He then tolerated using child-sized toilets and eventually normal-sized ones.

Ds2 also had a social story but wouldn't tolerate wearing pants and wouldn't sit on either a toilet or a potty. For him we had to build it up very gradually. He started wearing loose boxers for literally a minute or two to start with and slowly built this up to several hours.

He eventually started weeing into a potty while standing up, and later a toilet. The pooing aspect was a lot more difficult though as he wouldn't sit. Pooing in a toilet is a very recent development for him (he's now 6).

One thing that helped with both boys was telling them "Toilet time" (or whichever phrase you want to use) rather than asking them if they wanted/needed to go. They didn't cope well with being given a choice and would either get upset or give a default answer of "no" before wetting themselves.

Hello coppertop,

My son does not like the toilet either, I think I may have to get a potty seat as many potties seem to have a big lip at the front that he finds hard to negotiate. He has very short legs and not much control on how he sits down, it tends to be with a thump so I need to source a comfortable, throne-like seat for him, I think. I think, like you found, that he will sort out the wee thing reasonably well but the poo aspect is always a bit more difficult. I am not in a hurry really I just want to make a start soonish.

spinosaur,

how is his language? just wondering whether the whole "big boy now" encouragement thing is available to you.

Hi Lingle,

his language is getting better, he might respond to that encouragement as he knows that babies are smaller than him and that he is not a baby now. I think I am going to try a combination of every idea so far and then see which he responds to best. I think the comfy potty may have to come first though, getting up to the toilet and then managing the toilet might be too many demands to start with.

we are able to use the "big boy" approach with DS2 at 3.7 in a way that we couldn't at 3.2 and this time we are cracking potty training when last time we couldn't.

To see if this is likely to be a motivator for him, perhaps try to find some other small aspect of behaviour that you would like to change and work on it with him using the "big boys do X" approach. With me it was "big boys get out of the back door of the car instead of climbing through mummy's door" and it took a while but the "I'm a big boy" thing clearly motivated him (as it had not previously) which is how I knew it would probably work for potty training too.

having a favourite colour of potty has also helped us.