Potty Training

Potty Training

Hello everyone on this lovely Sunday. I hope you are all keeping well? I will be putting up a new blog post here every Sunday. Please leave your name and email on my webpage and you will get a notification the next time I post one.

Today I want to talk about a topic that gave me years of hardship. That topic is potty training. With every post I put up I want to clarify I am not a professional, these are my personal experiences. I hope something here will help you or bring back some memories. Warning you will probably see the word urine and poo a lot in this post.

I first started trying to potty train Emma at two and a half before she was diagnosed with Autism. I was pretty sure at this stage that she had Autism; we were just waiting on a diagnosis. I knew that most “normal” children started being potty trained at that age. I was still new to Autism and I had not realised that some children with Autism can find it harder to learn at a young age. They develop the feeling of needing to urinate at an older age. Not knowing this would be the case for Emma I went out and bought her a potty.

I thought this can’t be too hard to do, as all parents have to teach their child to do it. Was I wrong, I tried for two weeks, before I researched why Emma was having so much trouble learning to use the potty. The more I tried to teach her the more she began to hate the potty. If it was in the room with us she would pick it up and leave it outside the room. She would become distressed when I would bring her to the potty.

I decided then that I would leave it a few more months before I tried her with the potty again. I didn’t want her to associate it with something negative. I thought that giving her some time away from it would work. I left it near her toys so it was always around her.

The summer after she turned three I started to try again. She would be starting in the ASD unit preschool that September and I wanted to have her trained by then. I had watched some videos on how get children with Autism potty trained and I took advice from anyone who was giving it.

My mom always told me to just let her run around the house or garden with no nappy on and follow her with the potty. That’s how she had trained all five of her children. Other parents had suggested this too. I tried it but as soon as Emma would start to urinate I would pick her up and put her on the potty and she would stop.

People told me about reward charts and giving praise when they do use the potty but for us that was not possible. Emma had never actually done anything in the potty. I would put her on the potty and she would just sit there. Then she would get up after a minute and start playing with her toys. Five minutes later she would urinate and she wouldn’t notice she was doing it until the floor she was standing on was wet. She would then become upset at the fact that she was wet and dirty.

After two weeks of trying again I decided to wait until Halloween and try again. Every school holiday I would try again to no avail. I felt like such a failure. Parents all over the world were potty training their children at two or three and here I was with a four year old still in nappies. Bringing her out anywhere I used to feel so ashamed. I was not ashamed of her, I was ashamed of myself for not being able to teach my child to go toilet.

I had tried everything the books told me to, every bit of advice I got I tried it. I tried her on a normal toilet with a small seat, I tried her with the step to the toilet, I tried her with a talking potty and pink ones, and nothing worked. It all ended in the same way Emma hating the potty and me feeling like a failure.

After Emma had turned five I started to notice that she was showing signs of being ready to potty train. Signs like being interested in her poo, pulling at her nappy when she would urinate or poo; she would go an hour or two and have a dry nappy. She might be finally ready to start so I pulled everything I knew together and hoped this would finally be it.

I talked to her teacher in her ASD unit and she gave me some ideas they used in the unit. She said to wait until a school holiday and start then. If she had gotten the hang of it after the holiday then they would do the exact same thing I was doing at home in school. Easter came and I was ready to start. I had reward charts, I had let Emma pick out her own potty, I had a picture of the potty for her on her visual schedule and we had watched potty songs online. I made up our own potty training social story using pictures I had taken in the house.

I would set the timer on my phone to ten minutes when it would go off I would tell Emma that it was time to sit on the potty. I would bring her over and she would sit down on it for no longer than a minute. She would get up and I would reset the timer for ten minutes. The nappy was off and I had bought her new knickers to wear and she was excited about it at first. About two hours in she began to get annoyed. She would tell me she was busy playing and didn’t want to sit on the potty. We kept going at it though and giving her loads of positive encouragement.

Three days in and our little girl finally did it, she urinated in the potty. Well there were screams and tears of joy. She didn’t know what was going on at first until she stood up and seen what was in the potty. She got a toy she had wanted for a while as her reward and we started using the reward chart then. That same evening she did a poo in the potty too. She would get a star each time she urinated or did a poo in the potty.

At first, it was that she had to get ten stars to get a surprise. After a week it became she got a star if she had no accidents all day. At the end of the week if she had seven stars she would get a surprise. After a month she didn’t need the reward chart anymore.

Emma only wore a nappy at bedtime as she was still wetting her nappy in her sleep. After a month or two of using the potty she started having a dry nappy in the morning. We explained to her that we were taking the nappy off her and that if she needed to go potty in the night it would be in her room. That first night nappy free she had no accidents. We were so proud of her.

She got a surprise that first time and then we started a star every morning she woke up dry. Seven stars and she got a reward. After a month we didn’t need the reward chart and to this day had been accident free unless she is sick.

Emma for a long time wouldn’t use the toilet at home. We couldn’t understand that as she used the in her unit. I asked her sna one day when Emma was getting off the bus what they were doing differently than me. It wasn’t until she said that the toilets in the unit are kid size that I understood what was different. When we into the house I asked Emma to go toilet in the big toilet, she sat up on the toilet but she wouldn’t urinate in it. She got down and went to her potty and urinated in that.

When I was in with Emma’s Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) later that week I mentioned it to her. She asked “if Emma liked using swings?” I said “No” as Emma from the age of three hated going on most swings. The SLT suggested that Emma might have a sensory issue with having her feet off the ground. When we went home I added a step to underneath the toilet. I got Emma to sit on the toilet and put her feet on the step. After doing that for a few days she finally urinated in the big toilet. When we are out and about she will not use a big toilet even if I bring a step or let her hold on to me. We will work on that.

Things that helped me potty train Emma:

1. Social stories (If you can make your own even better).

2. Potty songs and videos from kids YouTube

3. Knowing and understanding the signs of being ready for potty training.

4. Letting them pick out their own potty.

5. Every ten minutes put them on the potty for less than a minute.

6. Set an alarm this way they hear it go off and say the word potty so they know where they have to go.

7. Positive reinforcement.

8. Reward chart.

9. Visual schedule.

10. Don’t give out if they have an accident.

11. Praise

12. Patience.

13. Get the crèche, preschool or primary school to use the exact same technique you are using at home.

All we can do as a parent is try our best. If we cannot teach our children something that does not mean we are bad parents it just means that we have to try a different way. We also need to understand that our child might not be ready to learn that skill yet. Be more understanding and patient with yourself and them.

Thank you all for reading,

Martina