Do kids on the spectrum potty train later than NT kids?

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momsparky
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20 Jul 2012, 7:07 am

Mummy, we had this one - we found a change of language helped. Instead of "do you need to go to the bathroom" which the answer would be literally yes, we would say "I need you to go to the bathroom and make sure you are completely empty, even if you don't feel like you have to go." See if that helps...



ErickaRae
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20 Jul 2012, 1:05 pm

Thanks for the responses everybody. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it seems every experience is different just like every kid on the spectrum is different.

I think I'm just feeling anxious about it because my soon to be exhusband is pushing when I feel like he isn't ready yet. My soon to be ex travels 3 weeks out of the month so he's a drop in dad at best. I don't consider him an expert on our son.

But on the other hand I don't want to underestimate what my son is capable of simply because he's on the spectrum.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm wavering I am!! He was just diagnosed a few months ago so I'm still trying to figure out how to balance meeting his needs vs. making the mistake of thinking he isn't capable of something that he really is. I don't ever want to underestimate him.



League_Girl
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20 Jul 2012, 2:32 pm

I quit wearing diapers after my brother was born. I was three. But I had accidents until age five. I think I still wore diapers but they were pull ups. I also remember wearing these panties and they were plastic but they didn't hold all the pee because it run down my legs. I had thick panties was all. I just didn't wear any babies wore. I also had a fear of the toilet too and always went in my pants and I couldn't always hold it or didn't always know I had to go. The accidents got less and less as I got older and hadn't had one since age five. I was very difficult to toilet train according to my mother.


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ASDMommyASDKid
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20 Jul 2012, 3:52 pm

You could try introducing the subject gradually, through whatever means you think might be effective, if you want to. If it isn't working and you feel it will cause more harm than good, you can always retreat. It does not hurt, I do not think, to gauge his interest. If it doesn't work you have something concrete to tell your ex (He is not ready.)



nostromo
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20 Jul 2012, 4:52 pm

miss-understood wrote:
He will Nostromo! My 13 yr old son (severe autism) just finally started doing poos in the toilet before xmas last year, it was our xmas miracle! We had tried continence nurses and psych help, each and every year for a period of a month or so at a time. There was not a lot of progress on the poos (he was toilet timed for wees at about 9 yrs) but the poos (lots and often) mostly arrived with little (or no) notice. He is also hyperactive so to get him to sit on the toilet for even a minute to see if he would go was near impossible. Then 2 days before xmas, he said poo, got up and went to the toilet himself... it was a miracle! Still going strong, though he still wears pullups as he has the occassional accident, once a month
I had hoped each year as his b'day came that by the next one, he would be toilet trained. It finally happened!

Wow :D :o I bet you were gobsmacked when he went off and did that!



Gnomey
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20 Jul 2012, 5:27 pm

I started her young at 18 months and made her think that potty training was the greatest thing ever. And she wanted to potty train but she wasn't really ready then. :lol: She finally got it at 3 1/2 years. The final phase was 3 months of me taking her to the potty after she ate or drink before she got it. She was ready at this point. Oh and although she is potty trained she has a fear of public toilets.


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InThisTogether
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20 Jul 2012, 7:19 pm

Gnomey wrote:
Oh and although she is potty trained she has a fear of public toilets.


It is probably the automatic flush, the loud echo, and the hand driers. It's a lot of uncontrollable sensory stimulation.



miss-understood
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21 Jul 2012, 7:06 am

nostromo wrote:
miss-understood wrote:
He will Nostromo! My 13 yr old son (severe autism) just finally started doing poos in the toilet before xmas last year, it was our xmas miracle! We had tried continence nurses and psych help, each and every year for a period of a month or so at a time. There was not a lot of progress on the poos (he was toilet timed for wees at about 9 yrs) but the poos (lots and often) mostly arrived with little (or no) notice. He is also hyperactive so to get him to sit on the toilet for even a minute to see if he would go was near impossible. Then 2 days before xmas, he said poo, got up and went to the toilet himself... it was a miracle! Still going strong, though he still wears pullups as he has the occassional accident, once a month
I had hoped each year as his b'day came that by the next one, he would be toilet trained. It finally happened!

Wow :D :o I bet you were gobsmacked when he went off and did that!


Gobsmacked! We still are talking about it! Obviously he was taking it in all that time and then when he was ready it happened. Making me smile just writing about it now. I hope it happens for your DS soon too :)



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23 Jul 2012, 1:04 pm

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
My daughter was 2 1/2 when she was day time trained (which is average for a girl) and not quite 3 when she was night time trained (which is early). Boys tend to be slower anyway, so 3 sounds OK. My friend's NT kids were much later. The eldest is almost 7 and just out of night time pull-ups.

However, my daughter is now 6 1/2 and we have problems with her understanding that she needs to go to the toilet, when there's one available. For example, we can be in a shopping mall and about to leave. We tell her she should visit the toilet, because it will be a while before we are near another one. She says, 'I don't need', and no amount of persuasion will make her go. Then we enter the car park and suddenly she's 'bursting' and may even wet herself. Going from not needing to wetting herself, in 5 mins, says to me that she probably could have gone back at the mall, but decided it could wait. Also, I can tell she needs to go, as she sticks her bum out a bit. Sometimes, even when it looks like she's in obvious discomfort, she will deny that she needs to go. I really don't think there's anything physically wrong with her bladder and she's not afraid of the toilet, it just appears to be her strong will or, dare I say, pig headednesss. So, that's something we're dealing with just now. She doesn't appear to have any issues at school, however.

We have our first autism assessment appointment next week and I'm hoping they can offer some advice then.


I explained it to my children like this:

I took a small balloon and turned the water faucet on slow. I explained our bladder is like this balloon and the urine is constantly emptying into the bladder. At first you don't feel it, because you only feel it when it begins to stretch. After a while it begins stretching a little, but sometimes you don't notice. Then when you do notice and there is hardly any room in there so you have to go NOW. I explained that if you go and let your bladder empty even when it is not totally full, and you can't feel it, then you don't take the chance on it getting to full and having an emergency. That's why we go to the bathroom when we get the chance, even when we don't feel like we have to go.

I did have to spend a little more time explaining to my AS son that the bladder really has two openings at the top for the urine to come in and one at the bottom to empty out and that it is highly unlikely that our bladder will ever get full enough to pop like a water balloon.



momsparky
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23 Jul 2012, 1:49 pm

Eureka-C wrote:

I explained it to my children like this:

I took a small balloon and turned the water faucet on slow. I explained our bladder is like this balloon and the urine is constantly emptying into the bladder. At first you don't feel it, because you only feel it when it begins to stretch. After a while it begins stretching a little, but sometimes you don't notice. Then when you do notice and there is hardly any room in there so you have to go NOW. I explained that if you go and let your bladder empty even when it is not totally full, and you can't feel it, then you don't take the chance on it getting to full and having an emergency. That's why we go to the bathroom when we get the chance, even when we don't feel like we have to go.

I did have to spend a little more time explaining to my AS son that the bladder really has two openings at the top for the urine to come in and one at the bottom to empty out and that it is highly unlikely that our bladder will ever get full enough to pop like a water balloon.


LOL. This is totally brilliant, but one does have to file it under "conversations-NT-parents-don't-usually-have-to-have-with-NT-kids." (I can completely see where DS would have reacted identically to your son.)



Mummy_of_Peanut
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23 Jul 2012, 2:18 pm

Thanks Momsparky and Eureka-C. I think the biology talk would probably go down best. She's really into that and I never thought about explaining the mechanics before. Momsparky, my daughter's particularly defiant and telling her what I need her to do usually has the opposite effect of the one intended, but thanks for your insight nonetheless. It's another move up the learning curve.


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BobinPgh
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30 Jul 2012, 12:20 am

One thing I have noticed generally is that is seems like all kids are taking longer to potty train. One reason might be all the Pampers, Huggies and Pull Ups out there. One day care worker told me its harder to train kids with disposable diapers because "they want paper". Turns out they hold so much the kids don't know what happened. Try cloth diapers and training pants, I wonder if that will help the kids on the spectrum train faster. It will also help the environment too.



sheree108
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31 Jul 2012, 4:16 pm

My son was 4-1/2 before he finally potty trained completely. He is an aspie. I started trying when he was 2-1/2, because he was consistently staying dry every night. It was a looooonggg two years, but it finally clicked. The weekend he finally started going, I let him go naked in our apartment. (It was the second time I attempted this. Had tried it a couple months prior with no luck.) I had tried bribes, threats (out of desperation), having him sit periodically throughout the day, reward charts, etc. Never spanked him, though, because I'm not a fan of spanking and certainly do not find it appropriate for potty training. Hang in there! It will happen eventually.



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30 Sep 2013, 7:51 pm

Sometime around 3 they watched a Bear in the Big Blue House episode about learning to use the potty over and over and over again on DVD. And it was done. All transitioned in about two weeks.


Thank you Bear!



LouHusky
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26 Oct 2013, 1:33 pm

I can't speak for everyone on this, and I'm not a parent I'm still just a kid, but I have an opinion on this that some of you may be able to relate to.

I am an aspie and was potty-trained at around 18 months and out of diapers at night by 30 months. My little brother Levi (7) is very similarly placed to me on the spectrum but he was much much later to potty train, and still wears diapers at night, though he's getting much better at waking up when he needs to go now. When I was a toddler mum and dad were still together and we had a very settled and structured family life, when it was Levi's time to train mum had left dad and moved us back to the US, she was always stressed and life was very chaotic. I think this had a far greater effect on his training than any of the traits of our aspergers.

Louis


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LizaLou74
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26 Oct 2013, 5:06 pm

My son has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS. He wasn't potty trained until he was 4 years 2 months old!! !! It was a matter of him not sitting on the toilet! He has a lot of sensory issues so I am not sure if that was part of the issue with the toilet seat. He would scream, cry, kick, hit if I even put him near the toilet. Finally it took me reasoning with him for him to do it. He was starting to get really bad rashes from the pull-ups and was in a lot of pain. I sat him down one day and told him that if he started going on the toilet he wouldn't get those rashes anymore. He was also always constipated and had to get suppositories...so I told him if he started going on the potty it would help with that too. It was like something clicked that day, and from that day forward he was completely potty trained...no joke it's like he was ready and he was old enough/smart enough to get it easy without all the training. I worried for years when was he going to be potty trained, so it's like I was given a gift that once he was ready it was a done deal...no real work on my part. I had similar experiences with him walking and talking too. It's like he was delayed, delayed, no sign of these things and then bammm, it happened. A lot of worrying went on, and I try to remind myself of those times when I am worried about things he isn't getting yet now and that he will get it eventually in his own time.