As always, you guys came up with some awesome suggestions. People sent me emails, left me comments on Facebook, and left comments on the blog. Tons of them. Because this is a very, very important subject. You wouldn't think that poop could be so all-consumingly important, but when your life has revolved around changing diapers for more than a decade, it's kind of a big deal.
I don't want anyone to think that Little Dude is now 100% potty-trained, by any means. He's not. But we're making progress.
What's working for us is breaking the whole thing down into smaller steps. I thought that after he learned to pee on the potty (most of the time), he'd learn to poop on the potty next. I was so wrong.
The thing is, at least now he's becoming aware of when he needs to poop. And he's running upstairs to the bathroom. Which is a big huge fat win. Therefore, he's being rewarded for it. Yes, he gets a prize for pooping in a Pull-Up in the bathroom. Or for passing gas in the bathroom. Basically, the rule is, that if anything comes out of his butt, and he's in the bathroom, he gets a Lego guy.
And now he's starting to feel like he can do this, which is probably the key to the whole thing. Before, he would just say, "I can't do this." Now, he's feeling like maybe he can.
Every day, Little Dude comes home from school in a dry, clean Pull-Up. He is awesome at "holding it." (Less awesome at letting it go on the potty.)
We've been trying to convince him to wear underwear to school, and today was finally The Big Day. It was a half-day, and since he's only in half-day Kindergarten, it's really more like a quarter-day. By the time the kids are in their seats, it's probably time to start zipping up their jackets again. So it seemed like a good day to try.
He wore them.
He came home in them. The same pair, still clean and dry.
This doesn't mean that he'll wear underwear to school tomorrow. It doesn't mean he's potty-trained.
It just means we're making progress.
I'll take it.
HAHAHAH, you have mad graphing skillz.
ReplyDelete"The thing is, at least now he's becoming aware of when he needs to poop. And he's running upstairs to the bathroom. Which is a big huge fat win"
I couldn't agree more. That's where my daughter needs to be (although from the sly looks she gives me any time she's about to have a bowel movement, I suspect she DOES actually know, and just poops her pants to F*%k with me.
Yay! Way to go Little Dude!! My daughter (3 and 1/2ish) JUST learned to pee on the potty. Pooping? Yeah not even close :/ but this give me hope, and little miss "my mommy drinks because I cry/won't poop in the potty" is neurologicaly so called normal (but with parents like myself and hubs that's a stretch) good luck SRMM!
ReplyDeleteHey, I am 32 and still peed in my pants when I sneezed yesterday. Damn pregnacy.
ReplyDeleteThis is great!
ReplyDeleteAny progress is completely awesome.
I am sure Little Dude is really proud of himself as well. And he should be. :)
You are doing a wonderful job.. :)
Woohoo little Dude! Good job!
ReplyDeleteLove the graphs! My special little guy is now 8, and he's getting really, really good at peeing in the toilet. (Although, if he's playing his DS, all bets are off!) He wears underwear to school, and is also pretty good at holding his poo. He wears Goodnights at home, just in case, and he still pees in the toilet.
ReplyDeleteWe've been able to get him to pass gas in the toilet, and he's even stood in front of the toilet and pooped. I'll take it for now.
It's tricky, and I'm definitely tired of changing pull-ups on an 8-year-old kid, but we'll get there!
Oh my goodness... my almost-six year old with ASD just potty-trained over the summer. I am SO with you on that graph. You're doing exactly the right thing -- as you know -- for rewarding in stages. Let's hear it for passing gas in the bathroom!
ReplyDeleteWOO HOO!!! Way to go Little Dude! Congrats SRMM, steps in the right direction are always worth a lego guy. Love the chart btw. Enjoy your victories, they are well deserved! :)
ReplyDeletethis is fantastic!You have aided him so greatly!
ReplyDeleteNow, if only I can no longer play the role of an enabler, waking my 6.5 yr old in the night to go potty in her sleep, as not to wet the bed...
yep, any forward momentum is a win. And you have to appreciate a kid who really wants to use the toilet, since I'm dealing with a kid who can hold it all in for 8 hours to avoid potty training.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! I'm hoping to return to our potty-training journey very soon. It got put on hold (again!) with a couple stomach viruses my 4yo son picked up from somewhere. He's been holding it at school, and lying to me if he is dirty. Sigh. Someday, I won't be wiping his butt. Someday!
ReplyDeleteHuge win! Congrats to Little Dude!
ReplyDeleteJust a general comment to ASD special needs Moms from one. Many parents have found a daily fiber supplement (like Fibersure) to be helpful in staying on track. Some kids get so use to holding it that unending cycle starts. Fibersure, Benifiber or any of the clear tasteless varieties have worked for us. Evening and same time everyday helps some ASD kids, too. BTDT you are not alone.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness. Your graphs are perfect. My 3.5-year-old, while he can be quite verbal, is seemingly nowhere near ready to go on the potty. This makes me feel so much less alone.
ReplyDeletehoooray! thanks for the graphs by the way. it will save me many days/months/years of frustration knowing how it really works.
ReplyDeleteWTG Little Dude! It may be SLOW going for now but every step forward is still progress! So glad to hear the great news! :)
ReplyDeleteOh girlie - I so hear you. My Aspie guy insisted that he would train when he was four (I blame that creepy Mormon "Today is Bobby's Birthday" video someone gave him) and sho nuff - woke up on his fourth birthday dry and NEVER had a pee accident. Pooping not so much. He would go in the bathroom, shit the door, LOCK the door, poop, flush, wash his hands and come out only to REEK to high heaven; he missed the pull-down-the-pull-up-and-sit-on-the-hopper step.
ReplyDeleteSo I was the meanest of all mean mommies and when he came home from school - now at four and a half - all clean, dry and fresh.....I would take his pants and his unders (skivvies or pull-up) off him.............nakie butt......
Well we all know Aspies are nothing if not logical and since they would rather chew off a limb than poop where they play, I just quarantined him to his play area naked ass and all until lunch moved through and he had to go. I only had to sit through two afternoons of "I want my paaaaaaannnts!", one hour the first day, 20 minutes the next before he discovered the singular joy of deposit-and-flush.
Now I am NOT saying that you should try that with Little Dude - what worked like a charm for me could throw your vortex into literal shitstorm. But people have suggested what sounded like wacky things to me that were lifesavers and if I can pay it forward at all, well, there you go.
Good luck, mama. You rock as always!
Good lord - my typo in line four above was truly unintentional! It should read, of course, "SHUT the door". Oy!
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Little Dude! Outstanding!
ReplyDeletegood job!!! My son was not fully toilet trained till he was 7ish ok maybe 8. He is 10 now and still has accidents, and bright ideas... like this summer when he decided at the cottage, where there is no running water, that he didnt want to poop in the outhouse. Instead he pooped beside the outhouse ... he came in the cottage and I almost died from the stench of poop coming from his hands.. his face... he was covered... thank goodness for lakes :)
ReplyDeleteI do have to say I enjoyed your graph... and good job little dude :)
My 5.5 year old CAN pee on the potty, can poop on the potty. However, the dog does both outside, so he figures that's better and he's going to too. *sigh* Picking up the dog shit is bad enough. Picking up kindergartner shit is the WORST.
ReplyDeleteAlso, he likes to pee on the carpet, because it makes a nice dark spot. Or at least that's my theory. He's non-verbal, so who knows what's going on in his brain.
I like your attitude. You are one durable woman. I try to do the same with my son, one jelly belly at a time.
ReplyDeleteReading your positive posts gives me courage and makes me laugh.
Thanks!
That's great! Hope the upward progress continues!
ReplyDeleteYou are not alone on the potty training path. I could have written your exact note when my son was 5. Some BTDT experiences from our life:
ReplyDeleteMy son was diagnosed at 8 years old with Asperger's prior to the diagnosis we only knew he was brilliant and super quirky.
He wore a diaper full time until he was 4 years
3 months old. He would go to part time preschool and come home completely dry. He would not look at a potty and did not wantanyone to ask him if he needed to potty. At 4 he told me "I
will wear diapers when I am a man!!" omg. Finally after he was 4 I started thinking he might be ready and had a crazy idea that I thought he could wrap his brain around. I took him to our pediatrician for the three of us to have an intelligent logical conversation about potty training sometime before college.
My son and the Doctor agreed that he would use the potty when he was ready. (Again, we did not know about the Asperger's then). After the Doctor we went to Target and he wanted to buy
a Giant PlayMobil Pirate ship. It was after Christmas and he could totally buy it, but I wanted to try a potty training spin (BRIBE) on him. I read the box and said (I am not kidding) "This PlayMobil set is only for kids that use the potty. When you are ready to use the potty
you can get it." He said "let's go home now so I can use the potty". We went home he used the potty and we went back and bought the toy.
He continued to use the potty after that. I know that he was not ready until the day he decided he was ready. Prior to that he would not even
sit on the potty fully clothed. He was totally anti-potty. He continued to use the potty, but it was still years before he was done with night
time pull-ups. If I would have tried the same trick a day earlier it probably would not have worked. On that day in Target the stars
aligned and he decided he was developmentally ready.
For my son he needed help with taking a daily fiber supplement. Fibersure, Benefiber or anything clear and tasteless that I could
sneak into his drinks. Prior to the fiber supplement it was too easy to get constipated and start a cycle of pain from the holding. Miralax would have been my next step, but the supplement offered enough regularity.
At 10 years old my son is fully trained, but must remind him to go urinate or he doesn't think about it. I make sure he does his
business every evening before bath time. He still needs reminders because he doesn't have time for the nonsense of personal care. Until recently I would need to remind him to stay on the potty and not wander away to do something more interesting. Like many things in parenting, especially with special needs, I assume the skill will be learned before college and if not we'll need to choose a local college!
After learning to poop in his pullup in the bathroom, the next step - for US - was learning to poop sitting down on the toilet while wearing the pullup. I think that pooping while sitting and pooping while standing are hugely different.
ReplyDeleteAfter THAT skill was mastered, I learned how and where to cut a hole in the pullup to let the poop come out of the pullup and into the toilet. Then we just cut the hole bigger and bigger until he wore only about an inch of the wasitband of the pullup.
It DID take us a long time to get past that waistband thing, but - I was able to use one pullup for about a week, as I just kept cutting about a 1 inch band off the top of it for him to wear when he needed to poop.
YAY Little Dude!!! My brother has Autism as well and he's 4. We've been working on potty training for a very long time (I'm also his Hab worker) and his progress (and regression and progress again) has been very similar to Little Dude's. But progress is progress in my opinion and you should rejoice in every little bit of it! Revel in it SRMM, be a proud Mommy because you've earned it :D.
ReplyDeleteI usually just cheer you on silently but wanted to send a virtual high five to you all :) little steps get to the goal just the same. Keep rockin it Little Dude and Team SRMM!
ReplyDeleteLittle Dude will have a stellar Lego Guy Collection by the time he is trained. Well played Little Dude, well played. ;)
ReplyDeleteOur Aspie was 5 1/2 and we finally hired a hands-on behavioral therapist to come in over winter break during his kindergarten year of school so that he could finally be potty trained. The things we had to do ... it remains to this day the most challenging period of parenting for us, bar none. She has worked with kids on all parts of the Autism SPectrum and said our son was by far the most phobic child she'd ever worked with. In the course of that week, we both were peed on, beaten, screamed at, and demoralized. But we prevailed!
ReplyDeleteAfter a week, he was mostly using the potty to pee. He had held in his poop so long that he had to be XRayed and given an enema. Still has major toileting phobias but can go at home mostly with no problems.
Good luck. You're gonna need it.
That is awesome progress!! Love the graph....I think that accurately depicts our pt'ing journey as well! My son is now 6, wearing undies full time, and only having occasional accidents....but with a LOT of reminders to go. Some day he will totally be in charge of his bathroom habits, hopefully soon!
ReplyDeleteSo glad for you and for him! WHoo hoo!
ReplyDelete'And, your graphs are always great!!!
Oh the drama of potty training. We are very casual about pee and poop in my house and yet, my (then) 2-yo flipped her wig about the idea of getting poop on anything - to the point that one day I caught her desperately trying to wipe her clitoris off thinking it was poop. Yes, that was also the day she subsequently learned all about clitorises. She then proceeded to tell everyone and anyone about her clitoris for the next 3 solid months. But the idea of poop - the horror, the horror. She is 3.5 yrs old now and wet the bed last night - I found out by hearing her wailing in heartbroken despair at 2am "Oh, no!! Not again!" She was totally devastated. Again, we are totally casual about this kind of thing and make no big deal about accidents at all. Where does all the poop/pee anxiety come from?? Is she just wired that way?
ReplyDeleteI totally love your graphs, and that last one is SO accurate. My daughter is 4 and 1/2, not on the spectrum, no anxiety issues, no other complications. I started trying to potty train her at 18 months, with the naive first-time-mom expectation that I would have her fully trained by 2. Yeah right. We're still working on it, 3 years later. I think we're somewhere in that really squiggly part of the graph. She knows what to do, how to do it, and has done it on plenty of occasions in the past, even for nearly a week straight several times. And then somehow we just go backwards and have accident after accident for several days in a row. I'm thinking we're going to be homeschooling next year just because she isn't going to be fully potty trained yet...
ReplyDeleteMy daughter finally fully potty trained at 5 1/2. Like to the day 5 years and 6 months. I thought it would never happen. It took her occupational therapist who she ADORED to get her to stop wearing pull ups and lots of rewards. She was "time-trained" at age 4 1/2 but that usually meant it was good for #1 and not #2 having her go every two hours. Thankfully she wasn't in kindergarten last year because she missed the age cutoff by 1 month. I was so terrified she would be in pull ups going in to kindergarten but last April, totally out of pull ups, going poop in the potty too. I have a niece who finally potty trained just when she turned 5. I have another niece who was potty trained like at age 3 1/2 but not the #2 and she would put on a pull up or one of her sister's diapers to go poo until she was close to age 6. I love how the chart is all over the place... that was us... there was like this one time we thought our daughter had it down and she did for like a week and then she just refused... and oh man... lots of criticisms from relatives and friends.
ReplyDeleteForgot to add... some of the presents for pooping on a toilet, especially in a public place (that was our hard spot)... one time in a Toys R Us, my daughter had to go and I told her if she could go on a toilet in a public restroom and do the pooh (that she'd been holding in for 4 days) that I would buy her a Strawberry Shortcake radio control car toy (ended up spending like $20 I think it was). We were so desperate to get her out of pull ups... and then the rewards slowly got longer to earn with a rewards chart. First was a one time deal. Second prize took 5 times going. Third prize took 10 times going poop. At some point we had to tell her you have to be good for an entire week with no goof ups and then it was 2 weeks and then it was a whole month and then we were done with the rewards.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll just copy and paste this anytime someone asks me how it's going with potty training and my almost 5 yr old Aspie son. Oh, and I totally plan to borrow your realistic chart too. ;)
ReplyDeleteTruly, even though this may not sound so great, I am glad to read these comments and know that my son isn't the only one going through these exact problems. Thank you for being open, honest, and willing to talk about this for us who feel we are alone in this.
I love how you are able to approach such a frustrating situation with humor and optimism. You say that you are stark raving mad but I think that this approach allows you to keep you sanity despite all the obstacles you are faced with. Kudos!
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh at your graph...the, "Sometime before 18, I hope" sums us up to a T. I think I have said that, with the addendum, "After that, it's his problem". A friend of mine, when mine was much younger, said, "I've never seen a child go to school in diapers." Hahaha...wait. Mine did (pull ups, of course). I have 2 others that trained just fine by 2 and 3. This one? Well, he's 12 now, and still needs to be reminded on a regular basis to go or there will be poo. And/or pee. *shrug* such is life for some of us, I guess. Congrats to your little guy for making headway, and congrats to you, mom, for retaining your sanity through what is probably one of the most exhausting processes known to parents.
ReplyDelete