Potty Training A Child With Autism

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. For my daughter’s second birthday I bought her a bunch of really cool panties in characters I thought she’d love. She’s a girl, girls were easy to potty train I was told. One day we decided to go for it and put her in panties. At first she peed while sitting in her highchair eating breakfast and didn’t seem discomforted by it. So we put on a fresh pair of panties and a little bit later she was walking across the house with pee running down her leg and seemed absolutely oblivious to it all. I told myself “OK, she’s not ready, we’ll try again later.” Subsequent attempts ended in the same thing – a completely oblivious two-year old. My son wasn’t potty trained until 34 months of age so I’m definitely not one of those “rush to train” types. I figured I’d take her lead.

Flash forward 10 months or so and we realize that there is more to this potty training thing than we originally thought. Not only is my daughter developmentally delayed she also has sensory processing disorder and is of the sensory seeking type. The reason why she was oblivious to the messes she made was because she probably couldn’t feel them. If you can’t feel the sensation that you have to go then how can I expect you to make it to the toilet? If you can’t verbally, or non-verbally, express that you need to go then how can I expect you to make it to the toilet? The answer to both of these questions is I can’t. I have since taken a much more laid back approach to potty-training (or potty learning as I called it with my son). My daughter is on her own schedule, as she is with everything in her development, and when I see the signs in her we will go for it. Right now I’m thinking she’ll be day trained by about 4.5 – 5 years of age just based on where she is now.

There are a lot of resources on the web and in books with methods to potty training children with autism and other special needs but some of them just seem like an absolute chore for both the parent and the child. Check out these Potty Training Guidelines; in step six you are to keep the child on the potty until they are successful and that it could take 1-2 hours. I could certainly think of more productive things to do to help my child than sit on a potty for 1-2 hours. I’m not totally knocking the method because I’m sure its worked for many people, its just not the way I’d like to go about things. Talk to me when my daughter is 5 and not day-trained yet and I might be singing a different tune, but as it stands now this just seems like too much.

There is a book out there written entirely on this topic: Toilet Training for Individuals with Autism and Related Disorders . I haven’t read this book yet because my daughter is not ready for potty training – her bowel movements aren’t regular – heck she doesn’t even notice that she has them half of the time. She has no desire to sit on the potty. For now we’ll take our free diapers from the state and use them until she gets to a stage, developmentally, that she is aware of the pottying, can communicate the needs via words or her picture board, and is motivated to learn.

One of these days we’ll wake up and know its the day to start potty learning with my daughter. What I’ll have to remember to do is have some panties around that actually fit her, the little 2Ts that filled a beautifully decorated gift bag on her second birthday just aren’t going to cut it.

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