Toilet situation is out of control! Help?

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My son just turned three and is non-verbal, and I am really at my wits end with trying to toilet train him. To make things worse he can now take off his pants and diaper at will and urinate or poop wherever he pleases

When he was younger we tried unsuccessfully to toilet train him, the only thing which had any effect was his cousin who is a year older peeing into the toilet while my son watched. After this he would go and pee in the toilet, but at some point he stopped for unknown reasons. He never used the toilet for bowel movements, or the toddler potty or toddler toilet seat.

This is the current situation:

In the house he does not want to keep a diaper on, or clothes. He will just pee wherever he is, recently he has started not even stopping what he is doing. The same goes for poop, but sometimes he will duck into the bedroom or his play area and then try to hide it under toys or clothes, once I even found one in a shoe of mine. If it was soft we will have to wipe him, he for whatever reason fights us and struggles to let us clean him up. However if we were out and he went in his diaper he doesn't fight so I don't know what the deal is. He starts fussing and struggling if we take him in the toilet, he won't go if we put him on it and stay there with him and we've given that a good go. He won't sit on a potty without a struggle either.

I mean we spend so much time using old towels to sop up pee or following our noses to clean poop off the floor, it is getting so old. Pull up pants are treated the same as diapers, we wouldn't even mind so much if he would just wear the diapers.

Does anyone have any tips? Our toilet is very small and there is not much room to change his diaper in there(one tip I read about associating the toilet with urination/defecation) it is just the toilet in the room not a large bathroom.

Is it Summer where you are? If so, Let him loose in the yard all Summer, with a potty and catch him every time he goes, scoop him up and onto the potty.

That's the only suggestion I have, I couldn't have a pants less, weeing, pooing toddler running around my home. I would have to "toddler- proof" the nappy, pull-ups, underwear with something and just focus on getting him to sit a little at a time on the toilet/ potty until he can sit a little calmly. If he is struggling to even sit (and I've been there with my ds) he won't do anything. There just seems too much going on.
How are you even coping with this? I'm a bit of a clean freak, this is giving me bad shivers

Looking forward to hearing other's advice, this is tough.

His play therapist made a little laminated booklet for my little boy when he was three, but we've made our own little booklets for other issues since, with paper and stapler. It had illustrations of the different events, (go to bathroom, pull down trousers, pull down pants, sit on toilet, poo, get paper, wipe bottom, put lid down, flush, get soap, turn on tap, wash hands, dry hands). He was delighted to have his own instructions book, and followed it to the letter. Our help wasn't in the book, but he's pretty good about understanding that we get a turn doing things once he's had his turn. So for example, he gets a turn to wipe, and then we get a turn. You could of course include that in the booklet.

Then, of course, he became entirely obsessed with the issue, and is still a bit obsessive about it, but I'd still prefer that to your situation! I've seen other parents who had a big sheet of card, and you pull down little flaps to see what's the next action, instead of a book. The therapist got the pictures off the net, but my husband did a book and did very basic stick people for the next book, and that worked fine too. We had a pee book too! It all worked amazingly quickly. If he's visually inclined, and he likes following instructions, it might help.

This is totally off the wall, but the idea is to start thinking creatively, so maybe it can spark something.

At that age, while my son was still new to using the toilet, we were at a park with no toilets one day, so some of the other moms told their boys to pee on a tree. My son thought that was the most fun idea ever, and for a while even at home he would insist on peeing on a tree (we do have one in the side yard that is private). Now, my son was fully verbal and not one who would regularly ignore his urge to pee until it was too late (my NT daughter did that more), so that is a factor to consider.

Anyway. If there is way to make it fun, maybe he'll respond to that. Some parents use cheerios that float in the toilet and the boy can aim at them. Stuff like that.

That assumes, of course, that more often than not he is aware he has to go and just won't bother. You are likely to have a combination of awareness and choice issues, so you'll have to ferret that out.

Is anything scaring him sensory wise in the bathroom? When the Sprout had first started using the toilet regularly, I took him to the bathroom in a large store and it was very busy, and the toilets flushed extremely loudly. It was a year before I could get him to go into the bathrooms at that store again, and for several weeks, maybe months it's been a while, after that we couldn't flush the toilet at home with him in the room. If he even thought someone was going to flush it, he'd freak out. We were just lucky he didn't refuse completely to use it at home. He did have a six month set back (before the flushing thing), where he'd been using the toilet for a couple of weeks. I was even taking him out in public in underwear, and then something scared him. I never did figure out what, but he was young and having a meltdown at the mere suggestion of sitting on the potty, so I didn't feel bad backing off on it.

Can he undo or wiggle out of overalls? The ones with the bibs and straps. Or is he physically too big to squeeze him into a Onsie? Or maybe a leotard (they make them in black for boys, my oldest had one in preschool dance class when he wouldn't stop pulling his shirt over his head wearing shirt and shorts). Or maybe footsie pajamas if he hasn't figured those out yet. I've even seen someone take a small piece of duct tape to cover over the zipper pull on those. Easy enough for an adult to remove, harder for a kid. It's not fixing the potty training issue at all, but if he can't get out of the clothes to pull his diaper off at least he's not pottying in the floor.

I know you said you can't change his diaper in the bathroom, but maybe you could dump the contents in the toilet? Even when you find them in your shoe, at least dump some of it in the toilet. I think that helped us. We used cloth, and always had to take it to the toilet like that, so even though we weren't changing him in there, he saw that's where it ended up. (Our bathroom is tiny, too. I feel you raising kids with only one tiny bathroom). Can he go into the bathroom with his dad? He's probably about the age where I wouldn't want a boy in there with me at least all the time, but is kind of a leeway age for myself.

Oh I just had a thought. Is he low muscle tone? My oldest has low muscle tone and at that age he didn't have the strength to sit on a full sized toilet facing forward and hold himself up in a stable way. He didn't like sitting on the toilet because he had a very real chance of falling in, and he hated the idea of a potty chair or one of those small seats that fit over the big toilet. He wanted to do it himself and wouldn't let us put him on it scooted all the back, and wasn't coordinated enough to put himself back there without falling in. We ended up having him face the tank. He just just step on his step stool and be right there. It was much, much easier for him to hold himself up leaning forward (while facing backward) than to hold himself up with his arms behind himself. If that description makes sense? It also made for a lot easier time with aiming. No having to try to talk him into pointing it down when he had a lot of bowl in front of him.

Have you tried a book? Sometimes an official BOOK not made by Mommy will have more gravitas. We bought something called, "The Potty Book For Boys, " or something like that. He thought the picture of the boy in the book looked like him. Even the toddler potty we had bought him, luckily, happened to be the same color as the one in the book! (We bought the potty first)

We still had some rigidity issues after (Not wanting to stand up to do number 1, not wanting to switch to the big toilet), as well as not wanting to miss the fun to do #2, and trying to hold it in, and not wiping well, but the big thing was getting him to go in a potty at all.

It's possible he simply isn't ready for toilet training yet. I don't think I've ever met a nonverbal autistic kid under 5 who was toilet trained.

He might not understand what you want from him, due to cognitive or receptive language/social understanding issues. Or he may not have enough body awareness to notice when he needs to go, or be able to react in time to get to the bathroom.

Personally, I'd recommend instead focusing on making sure he can't remove his own diaper. I've heard duct tape can be helpful. You can also try giving him pants with buttons or a belt, because if he can't get his pants off he won't be removing his diaper.

Hi,

I do not have any words of wisdom for you. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone. We are going through exactly the same thing with our son. When I read your post, it reads like something I could have written myself. I showed it to my husband and he said that this is exactly like us.

Hang in there. I''ll be thinking of you.

No personal experience with this, but I did come across a book on toilet training that was specifically addressing autism:

Toilet Training for Individuals with Autism or Other Developmental Issues, 2nd Edition by Maria Wheeler and Carol Stock Kranowitz M.A. (Sep 1, 2007)

Ready, Set, Potty!: Toilet Training for Children with Autism and Other Developmental Disorders by Brenda Batts (Aug 15, 2010)

Go to a Dollar store and have him pick up some "cool" pails/buckets and disperse them around the house. Using the toilet may be your long term goal and your short term goal is to prevent further damage to your belongings. For whatever reason, he does not like your toilet.. so don't force him. Sounds crazy, I know, but you've tried so many things to convince him, he's not latching on. If you try the pail/bucket method, eventually you can move them closer and closer towards the bathroom. You can even make it into a fun game where he gets to chose which pail he wants and in which room. The objective is to have him use the pail vs just anywhere. Eventually the objective is to use one room only (bathroom) even if it's still in the bucket.

Just an idea.

Do you think he'd use the bath tub?

If you have a garden, could you spare a part of it, for him to officially peeing and pooping there? I mean whyever, he seems to avoid the artificial way of peeing/pooping, we nowadays have, while he is able to pee and poop on will and does so in your living area. So I think the easiest solution for the start would be, to simply move the area, where he pees/poops, instead of changing the habbits he has about. I know from normal NT mums too, that their kids actually had no problems peeing on will in the garden and were perfectly fine with it, while they still were unable to use a pottyseat or toilette, and so still needed pampers inside.

I wish I had answers for you but I don't. I do however sympathise with your situation, my son has severe constipation and incontinence problems. That might sound contrary, but constipation can cause the child to become incontinent as a result. Three years ago he had to go into hospital for severe soil impaction (it was literally pushing up on his lungs it was so bad) the consultant dropped the bombshell that his toileting problems were likely the result of being Autistic.

He is just coming up to seven years old and is only now beginning to show any sign of being ready to toilet train. We have had to replace all the carpets in the house with lino because they were rotting from wee and poo. And even now it can smell like a toilet in our home at times, its all very depressing. But he cannot help it so we try not to get angry at him for it. According to the incontinence nurse, he has no feeling in his behind as a result of the severe constipation, so is incapable of even knowing the poo is there.

Like I said I wish I had answers for you, but I can at least tell you that you are not alone.

_________________
Autistic dad to an autistic boy and loving it - its always fun in our house

I have Autism. My communication difficulties mean that I sometimes get words wrong, that what I mean is not what comes out.

I know the original post is from a while ago, but I thought I'd add my five cents for anyone reading this thread for ideas. My PDD (verbal, but at the time with a moderate pragmatic speech delay) DS was 3-1/2 when I finally managed to potty train #1 and 4 for #2. Both rounds of training involved about 2-5 hours per day for 5 days in the bathroom. It was hellish, but nothing else was working. He's now 4-3/4 and we've only had two #1 accidents while out and about, and never a #2 accident.

For #1 I would take him into the bathroom first thing in the morning and wouldn't let him leave until he'd peed into the toilet. If he had an accident on the bathroom floor, we waited until he had to go again. We had drinks and snacks and toys in the bathroom. After he came out I took him back in every 1.5 hours and didn't let him leave until he went again. There were tantrums and tears but I said he couldn't leave until he went in the toilet. The first day we spent about 5 hours in the bathroom and had lots of accidents, day four was about 4 hours, and he improved a lot after that.

#2 was tricky because he had sensory issues around pooping into an open space (potty or toilet) - in short he was terrified. He would sit, then get up, then cry, then bash on the bathroom door. Eventually I ended up hugging him while he sat on the potty. The first time I had to hug him for about 45 minutes before he finally 'let it out'. After that the time became less. Within 5 days he was 'trained' but still required a hug to poop. Two months later he just needed an audience - someone to sit in the bathroom with him and watch him grunt and groan, and later (as his language improved) listen to his detailed descriptions of the pooping process. By 4-1/3 he was finally toileting independently.

Good luck!