Toilet Training

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My son is 5 in feb
He is verbal (although somewhat delayed)
Seems pretty bright.
All the professionals at school seem to think he is ready for toilet training and me and my wife agree.
He goes to a special school 3 days a week and they are fully equipped to deal with toilet training.
He goes to a main stream school 2 days a week and whilst they are not so well equiped he has a 1 to 1 with him all the time and she is fully on board with supporting our toilet training at school.
We prepared him well. Have the picture cards in the bathroom next to loo showing the sequence of events
We have a big tub of chocolate buttons near by to reward sitting on the loo.

Its been 3 days now and we have not really had much success

He understands what he is supposed to do. He gets it I know he does but it just seems he does not care.
If you turn your back for 5 minutes he is standing in a pool of piss just watching his i-pad as if nothing is wrong.
Similarly every night he has done a poo in his nappy (we are still using nappies at night for obvious reasons) as if nothing has happened. He just does not give a s**t (if you will forgive the pun) about having a s**t on the loo.

He eagerly takes the rewards for sitting on the loo and asks for more. But as yet we have not been able to motivate him to be bothered. Both anger and praise really don't seem to be important to our son. So we are struggling with how to crack this. As I said I know he understands fully what he is supposed to do but he just does not want to do it! Any tips?

Many autistic children train late
I stopped and started so many times


He probably doesn't want to stop something fun
It will probably take time.



Does he like spiderman? or batman? Or big bird
You could write a story spiderman goes to the bathroom?

I could have posted the same post a couple years ago about my toilet training frustrations. Everything you said was spot on to my experience with my own son, except it took us 3 years of trying to get it right. I've never potty-trained anyone in my life before, and to do it with an autistic child nonetheless, was more than I ever bargained for. Getting it in the right order can seem like an overwhelming task for kids on the Spectrum. My son knew what to do long before he ever put it together all together in the right order, just like your son. He finally got it right around Feb. of last year, at age 5 1/2. Your son will get it too, and it may not even involve rewards. Rewards never worked with my son (and we tried all manner of rewards, including letting him pick his own).

If you wanna know what ended up happening, was one day my son was standing behind my wife while she was sitting using the computer, and he ended up pissing all over her back. He'd never responded to anger or praise before, but she got really angry and he got in trouble for the rest of the day. Both of us explained to him why its never ok to piss on someone, never thinking it might actually sink in (given his track record). And what do ya know? The very next day he told us he had to use the toilet, and he went in and did it superbly! We still had to help him with his pants for awhile, and as for pooping in the toilet, that took a little longer to get right (he actually did it once when he was 4, but that seemed to have been a fluke, cuz it took more than a year before he did it again).

We recently relocated, and since then he's been more determined to prove his independence with toileting. Recently, he started having accidents again when he's deeply engrossed in his tablet or some other preferred activity (it's common), but he hasn't crapped himself in almost a year. Oh, and he also had an in-home ABA therapist to guide him through a lot of toileting--don't know if you have those in the UK, probably under a different name--but that was nice cuz I didn't hafta do it all by myself (my wife worked too much to effectively train him).

Anyway, lotsa people have shared your experience, and your son will figure it out in his own way and his own time. It's frustrating until then, but stick with it, it'll all be worth it.

Social stories, books and TV shows might work.

If you write a social story make sure you include something about how your child can return to the fun faster if he goes in the potty, b/c he won't have to wait for the clean up. I always took my time with the cleaning, and made him wait to rejoin the fun activity until everything was clean. This way the time that was wasted was obvious when pointed out. I didn't make him do the clean up, but I wanted there to be clear, natural consequences. I never wanted to punish it per se, b/c I have heard stories about kids hiding poop/pee in corners and such, and I didn't want to risk that.

Dinosaur Train has an episode about everybody having to poop (or something like that) and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood has something like that as well. I don't know what shows your kid likes, but many of the PBS preschool type shows cover it. It is a common issue, we just have it longer with our kids, and the process gets drawn out.