Potty training an autistic child

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My autistic son is 2 1/2 and he's growing fast. The time is going to come pretty soon that he's going to have to ditch the diapers. What are the best ways to go about this? Any suggestions?

Turn it into a game.

I think that my grandmother pottytrained me.
I had a wind-up musical potty that made going to the bathroom fun.

Everything that she taught me, she taught me through singing to me, I think...

It might be why I am so song-oriented.

my autistic nephew is 4.
he is doing ok with it.
my sister has helped him with potty training by simply being caring and not admonishing him.

i would put a ping pong ball in the toile bowl. i did this with my son and he couldn't WAIT to aim at it. If your autistic son is not afraid of ping-pong balls this may work.

it has worked well for us.

My parents kept me in diapers till I was three. My mother tried potty training me before but I just didn't get it she said because I thought I was supposed to go in my pants.

Well think about it. You have worn diapers your whole life, you poop and pee in them and the grownups clean you up and put you in a new diaper. Then your mother buys a chair one day with a bucket that slides under it and a tray that goes over it on the arms. She always puts you on it with your pants and diaper off and you have no clue what she is doing. You're confused about the change because you have never had it before.

So I kept going in my pants and she gave up after a while figuring I wasn't ready and put me back in diapers. She even tried having me watch her go to the bathroom so I would figure out I'm supposed to go in my chair, not in my pants and it didn't work.

Then I stopped when I was three. My mother told me a funny story how I would be wearing pull ups and she would have me on the chair and then I would pull them back up and then back down and say "a done" and sit back down and my parents would see the pull up was wet. She told me another story where I used to put a diaper on and poop in it and thank goodness I stopped when my brother was born. I was three and already knew how to put on a diaper.

But my dad says I liked wearing them. Maybe I was a diaper lover at a very young age.

My HFA son and I both have an obsession with trains. When he was about 2, we made a game where I would let him thumb through my train magazines and books only if he was sitting on the potty. I'd hold the book and explain the pictures or make up stories about the trains to entertain him. He looked forward to it and it was one of the few times I could get him to sit still long enough to try hold a conversation (he has really bad ADHD). We'd do this several times a day to get him in the habit of sitting on the pot.

I didn't try to make him do #1 or #2 but if he did we put a sticker on a chart and when the chart was full he got a trip to the toy store.

We showered him with praise whenever he did something right and really tried hard not to be negative when he had an accident.

Eventually - maybe 3/4 of year later, he decided that it felt better to be clean and started going #1 on his own. With #2 he still wanted company, someone to read a story, since it took much longer. By age 3 1/2, he started doing everything on his own, including picking out a book or two to bring with him. At that age, he also learned how to hold it all night.

My mom says she tried to pottytraining me when I was 1 1/2 years old. She just memorized the time I pooped (frequently after eating), and she sat me on the potty exactly when I have to poop or pee.

After a short time I didn't poop or pee in the diapers, even at night. I continued using diapers at night, but I rarely had an accident, so my mom eliminated them. My mom thinks I felt very uncomfortable with the poop touching my skin, that I prefered holding until my mom took me to the potty.

But this didn't work with my NT siblings. They didn't want to use the potty, and my mom had more problems with them than with me.