When it comes to potty training, should parents push their children or wait for them to make the first move? Just to make things clear before I start- I’m no expert on potty training. My total experience comes from my two sons, one who is autistic and the other who is neuro-typical. My experience with each child was very different as they are different people, but I think I am part of the ‘wait’ school of thought when it comes to potty training.
My elder son is neuro-typical, and we started trying to potty train him during the day when we was about 22 months old. I remember sitting with him in the bathroom while he sat for what seemed like hours on the toilet with his iPad. But he would only actually go to the toilet after he got off the toilet!
For his second round, my elder son was aged around 2 and a half. We had a sticker chart, candy and fizzy drinks (which he still refuses to drink as he only likes water) at the ready. We had underwear with pictures on he liked. We ‘lived’ in the bathroom for a few days. We turned the tap on so he could hear running water, played games in the bathroom and ate snacks. We had a little success, but I had a life outside of the bathroom that needed to be lived ,and more importantly I was getting frustrated with him- that was never going to help him to be successful.
Our last attempt was just before his 3rd birthday. He had shown signs that he didn’t want to be in pull-ups anymore and he would remove them when they were wet. I remember talking to him about wearing big-boy underwear and this time he mastered potty training within 2 days, really having no accidents after that. Two months after being dry during the day, he was also dry at night. We had just started our vacation and he refused to wear a pull-up to bed that first night, so we had no choice but to try him without them. He never wore them again or had a night time accident after that. For him, I think being older, and understanding what we were asking him to do, made potty training ultimately successful without all the need for bribes.
My second child needed to be potty trained by 2.5 years to attend the pre-school his brother was at. We started trying to introduce him to it around age 2, and he really had no interest in it. If he followed a schedule and someone took him to the toilet regularly, he would pee on the toilet, but without being taken to the toilet, he was not able to tell us he needed to go. This pattern continued for years. We learnt to find the toilet in a new place as soon as we arrived. We carried multiple items of clothing with us at all times (we continued to bring extra clothing until he was about 6 years old). I’ve read that the average age for an autistic child to be successfully toileting is 3.3 years, compared to between 18 – 24 month for neuro-typical children. I definitely felt bad for pushing him maybe too early.
We are still working on my son being dry at night. He is 7 now and wears pull-ups to bed. He doesn’t love them and he takes them off as soon as he gets up in the morning. I think for the most part, he is just peeing in them as he wakes up in the morning. I spoke to him about it and told him that if he doesn’t want to wear a pull-up anymore, he has to go to the toilet as soon as he awakes up in the morning. SO, the first couple of days of this week, that is what he has done, and we had 3 days of dry pull-ups- yeah! But then his sleep was thrown off and we had a wet pull-up again. I know my son is capable of mastering this skill, but just like his brother, he will master it in his own time. If I push him too hard- or stress about the age at which I think, or society thinks, he should be dry- is not going to help him. Instead we will continue to talk to him about how his pull-up can be dry and praise him when they are.
The Pajama Gang 