Toilet Training and Autism

Normally, you would expect someone to toilet train their child between approximately 18 months and 3 years.  And you’d go through the normal process of them learning what wet, dry and dirty is and how everything can be sorted in the bathroom.

I knew one of the issues we would have was with his sensory attitude to being wet.  ANY drop of liquid near him brought INSTANT demands to be fully changed “because I am ALL wet” even if you couldn’t FIND the tiny drop.  So I knew he wouldn’t find the sensory side of things easy to handle. 

For Kevin and I, with our disabilities, it was not possible to change him in the bathroom because even if we DID manage to get down to his level and change him, there was not much likelihood of us being able to stand up again or walk around safely for a few minutes or even longer when we got up.

So we ended up having to change him on the bed.  And that wasn’t so bad.  By the time he was beginning to get too heavy to lift up there, he was able to climb up himself.  I knew already we were looking at autism, so I was prepared to be later in toilet training and not too worried about it.  It was just par for the course.

Or at least that was what I tried to tell myself.  From about 4-6 months he never peed outside his nappy/diaper.  So I was surprised to find that as we began to move towards potty training he had terrible problems with his stools.  You see, they were never normal and he would hold onto them for days.  I think the longest he managed was 11 days.  Now I knew this was unusual and we had all sorts of laxatives, but he would just hold on and on.

So, one day Kevin and I were talking to him and we discovered that one of the major issues with his toilet training was the fact he was TERRIFIED to hear the sound of his toilet hitting the pan.  So I took Johnathan to the mobility store and he chose a commode to use.  We set it up in the bathroom and he found this much easier to handle.

Eventually Johnathan was fully trained by the time he went to school.  But it was a long, arduous road we took to get there.  I will admit, if he had never told us about his fear of the SOUND of the toilet hitting the pan we would never known how to help him with learning to use the toilet.

And one thing I have learned (well, at least I would say am TRYING to learn) is that when we are looking into the reasons for difficulties with something like using the toilet, the important thing is to LISTEN to the child and LOOK at the sensory issues that are there.