How I potty trained my autistic son

When my son first got the official autism diagnois when he was 3, the dr.'s told us since he was classified as severly autistic he would probably not be potty trained until he was at lesat 9 or 10. We have proudly proved the experts wrong. My son is 6, still totally non verbal, but 100% potty trained. He's been using the potty for almost a full year. These are some of the things we did that could help. We knew his was ready because he hated being in wet or dirty pulls up. He would take them off. The first thing we did was to just start putting him in underwear in the day and a pull up at night. For some reason, my son was terrified of the toliet. He would have no problem going in the bathroom to take a bath, but he wanted nothing to do with the toliet. Since he is big for his age, we could not get a toliet training chair. Instead, we just got a small trash can and put it in the living room. When I would give him something to drink, I'd would wait 15 mintues and take him over to the trash can to see if he'd use it. After a while he finally peeed in it. I wold use one of his favorite foods as a reinforcer each time he did it. It took about a week before he realized he could go there. Each day I would move the trash can closer and closer to the bathroom. Finally, I just put the trashcan in the toliet and he used it. I had to do this for a few weeks until he could grasp the concept that you peed in the toliet. One day, I just alltogether took out the trash can and he was consistantly using the toliet! A lot of parents might not agree on the way we taught him to eliminate his bowels, but this is what worked for us. There was a spot in his bedroom where he would go and take off his underwear and squat and go. Sometimes it was very hard for me to catch him in the act. I'd be cooking or doing other household chores when he would do this. When he would do this, he would go into the kitchen ,turn the water on and try and wipe himself. I had to keep track of the times he was doing this. One day like clockwork I saw him run off to his bedroom and take his underwear off. As soon as he started to squat, I picked him up, took him into the bathroom,put him on the toliet and he used it. It took a few nights before he finally was able to realized you did both in the toliet. He still has a little trouble with wipping, but he has not used the floor for about a solid year now. I never thought I'd be able to say my son is potty trained.