The first thing to do is to look at his developmental level. No all autistic children have delays in cognitive development, but many are a year or two behind in some areas. If evals have placed your child with having a developmental age younger than his chronological age, he simply may not be ready to potty train. If he is develpmentally closer to 2 or 3, you may need to wait 6 months to a year and try again. My son was not developmentally ready to even begin potty training until he was 6.

If you feel he is ready (and the classic signs would be showing a dislike of being wet or in soiled diapers, moving to a private spot when the urge to go happens, staying dry for extended periods..three or more hours..or waking up from naps or bedtime dry) then the first thing to do is work out a menthod that will work well with your son’t primary method of communication. If he is verbal, not so hard. If he is learning sign, find out the sign for “bathroom” and begin using it. If he uses picture or visual cues, download and print out the appropriate image and laminate it.

Autistic children do best with consistency and scheduling. So make going to the potty part of his schedule. Take him as soon as he wakes up. Again after breakfast when he brushes his teeth. Again a few hours later, after lunch, so on. Use a timer if he responds well to transitional cues. Now some kids do not like the toilets, especially if their feet can’t touch the floor. My advice would be to get a potty seat or a stool high enough so that when is on the large toilet, his feet are securly resting on the stool. Start with having him sit down..aiming takes time and can lead to some interesting challanges! At first, your goal is simply to get him to sit on the toilet and stay for a few minutes. Whatever his favorite reinforcers are, lay in a large supply in the bathroom cabinet! Even if he only sits for a few seconds, reward him. Work on ways to keep him there a bit longer…a basket of books or small toys kept solely in the bathroom can work. If he has a stim object…piece of string, beads, toy..you can let him have that for a few minutes while he sits. If he does anything…make a huge deal of it. We had birthday noise makers, birthday hats and even confetti. If he does nothing, give him the reinforcer, praise him for trying, tell him when you will try again and set the timer. Keep this up. You will need to talk to his daycare and/or school about thier bathroom schedule and, if possilbe, provide them with reinforcers to use there if he is willing to try there. I have often found that autistic kids are more resistant to change at home, so don’t be surprised if he is more willing to try for the teachers. If your son does soil a diaper, immediately go into the bathroom. All diaper changes must now be done only in the bathroom to reinforce the connection. After you remove the soiled diaper. again have him try the potty, following the established routine. When he is finished, have him put on the fresh pullup (time to change over to them) and get himself dressed (provide assitance as needed, even if you must do hand over hand). Come back and try again at the time decided on..do not change it just because he has wet. Keep this up. As he gets better, increase the time on the potty, to get him used to having to sit. Always try before you leave the house and as soon as you get home. Until he is more comfortable, you may want to forgo public bathrooms…they are large, have weird echos and many kids simply won’t go near them. If possible, look for a family restroom…the only let in one family at a time and are much smaller. Some even have child size toilets. This is going to take a lot of time and patience..and you have to be consistent. Do not even worry about bedtime training until he has a firm grasp of daytime.

If after all this, it has been six weeks and nothing has changed…and there is no interest from the child or he has begun acting out at the mear mention of potty time…back off for a few weeks and then try again. Many autistic kids need several trys to get potty training.

Here’s what worked for my son who has autism (he was potty trained at 4 yo):

1. Ditch the diapers and put him in “big boy” underwear or pull-ups.

2. Put him on the potty every hour (even if he doesn’t have to go). This may sound extreme but it’s important to be consistent. This will help catch the accidents and the child will eventually learn the sensations they feel when they have to go and link them with the fact that they have to go to the bathroom.

3. When potty is made in the toilet, give lots of praise!!!!

Consistency, consistency, consistency… with a ton of patience. My son was not potty trained during the day until he was 5. He still has accidents at 12, although daytime incidents are extremely rare now. I honestly had to “force the issue”. I took away the diapers and training pants because it was too hard for him to tell if he was wet— not that he particularly cared or was even always aware that he was wet. I had potty chairs all over the house. I know this sounds terribly unsanitary, but so were the accidents. I would have him sit on the potty every 20 minutes no matter what. Eventually he made the connection between the urges to urinate or pass a bowel movement and sitting on the toilet. Outings were limited to right after he had used the restroom, kept extremely short to prevent accidents, and I always kept spare clothing, baby wipes, and ziploc bags in the car and my purse. The situation was complicated by his immature bladder and his inability to understand why it was necessary to use the toilet at all. Please feel free to e-mail me if you need encouragement.

Ok,

I can totally relate to this.

We’re trying to potty train my 3 yr old brother.

What we do is.

For about an hour or so in the evening [around 6pm] we take off my brothers nappy and put on a pair of real ‘big boy’ pants. This is to get him used to wearing them and then if he wets himself, then he can see and feel it.

It he does wet himself, then someone will lift him and place him on the toilet [with adapter inset] and my brother will stay there for a minute.

We do this every night, and have been doing so for around a month. The results take a while to show, but they are coming, as my brother will now lead me to the toilet door after he has wet himself, so we know that he is learning =]

After a few months of this, we hope to progress to wearing pants all day, and then perhaps by next summer, make it through the night.

It’s going to be a long process, but with family support, I believe that this, and anything else, is possible =]

If you need any more help on anything, don’t worry about contacting me =]

Shonagh x

This is the website I used for my son with a PDD-NOS Diagnosis I was done potty training in two days.

TACA: Autism – Potty Training Guidelines

Potty Training Guidelines for Autistic Babies … Autism Spectrum Consultants for their Potty Training information and Potty Chart. …www.tacanow.com/behavior/potty-training

Hope this helps!

What we did for our autistic son is place a paper or flush-able wipes in the toilet, shaped in a circle and draw a giant bulls-eye on it. It will float in the water. He will then be happy to “aim” at it. Reward him every time he makes an attempt. It is like a game but the only down fall with paper is you need to retrieve it before you flush…sorry. Good Luck! 😀

You should receive potty training assistance for your son with the help of his therapist. Check into it.

Peer pressure can be an amazing thing. Right now, the toilet is a battleground. Being with other kids in school might make him want to fit in. I’m not sure how autism fits into that, though. I don’t have experience with it. I have seen plenty of toilet training efforts that have turned into battles of wills with neurotypicals.

With lots of patience and understanding. It took me almost 3 years to potty train my youngest autistic son. Good Luck!

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I taught a child with Autism from the age of 3, til he was 6. It took us nearly a year to train him.This particular child absolutely loved singing and books. So basically we sat him on the toilet every 1/2 hour to 1 hour. I would pull up a chair and simply sit with him, and sing to him, or read a story for about 5 mins to start with, then 10 mins, then 15 mins, as his tolerance to sitting on the toilet became greater. Basically we were just hoping to get the timing right, when he would need to go, then we made such a big thing about it (he was a big fan of high fives), and we just repeated this process over and over, then gradually lessened the frequency of when we took him, and basically he gradually started to hold on, and his nappy (diaper) was dry for longer periods of time. Once this started occuring, we put jocks on him, over his nappy, to get him used to this concept, and once he seemed comfortable with this, we put him just in jocks, then returned to 1/2 hourly visits to the toilet. I would still go in and sit with him, but every day I would inch my chair further away, and try not to sing/read for the whole time, until gradually he was happy to sit on the toilet without having an adult with him the whole time. My absolute joy came one day, when I was observing him in the room, then suddenly he stopped what he was doing, and took himself into the bathroom. I hovered out of sight, and he put himself on the toilet and had results! Something finally just clicked! I was just about in tears, I was so proud and excited for him! He never looked back from that day onwards!

By using the books/singing songs etc, it made it a more enjoyable experience, and he could feel more relaxed, not stressed by the experience.

Good luck, it takes a lot of time and patience, but keep it routine, with slight variations as time goes on, and you will eventually see results!