10 year old child still in pull ups

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Getting back on track slightly, regardless of elkonabridges unusual ideas, the sentiment he expressed that potty training is the last thing patents should be worrying about for their autistic kid and should focus on foundation skills first - that is one that I have heard before from some educators and autistic people in particular. Conversely we almost made toilet training the entire focus of our families life. We were told if the child is not toilet trained by a certain age then they will never be able to develop the muscle control. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but we were motivated to do the intensive toilet training through that fear primarily. I found the whole process akin to smashing your head against a cinder block wall. And he's still not there.

That whole idea of do or die by x age, really bugs me. I think it really depends on what the reasons are for the delay. It may be (and I don't know) for physiological causes there may be some window where it becomes statistically unlikely b/c of what the cause ends up being beyond a certain point. Maybe as time goes on, the "lower hanging fruits" of causes get diagnosed and then the ones they have left by that point are things that cannot be solved to enable training? I am probably not explaining it right but I would guess on correlation being more of a reason then it being actually impossible.

Yes, I agree there is too much pressure on parents to toilet train. I think in the past, it was worse. Now I think they give until 3 years before they start beating the war drum; although old relatives can get on your case sooner than that. Honestly, it is a pain to change diapers, and most parents want to be done with it, but you always have people in the peanut gallery wanting to say a parent is too lazy to try hard enough or whatever nonsense, if it is not working.

There are a ton of practical issues that pressure parents. Some day-cares and the mainstream pre-ks here won't take kids in diapers/pull-ups. I think this puts pressure on parents also. There is also the cost factor for a lot of people for whom diapers/pull-ups are a big cost center. Pull-ups are also more expensive in bigger sizes/absorbances.

With us, it was rigidity. We were on the way to having him trained for the little home potty and then we moved, and that put a big wrench in it. It threw our son's whole world in disorder and we had to wait for him to feel comfortable and settled before trying again, Then we had to start over. We took it slow, and I don't know, maybe we could have got it done faster if we pushed it. Or not.