Potty regression

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I potty trained my 4 year old back in August, only to have him regress back into diapers as soon as school started. I chalked it up to the change in routine and left it at that. We took a break and I potty trained him again this winter. He has been in underwear for 2 solid weeks without any issues, but now he is starting to have accidents all of a sudden, only we have not had any change in routine or anything like that.

My question is, is this normal, for newly potty trained children (autistic or not, I suppose) to have accidents after becoming potty trained, or am I looking at another regression here? He's been having 1-2 accidents per day for the last 5 days, but he is also still using he potty the rest of the time.

If this is a regression, what should I do? He's concerned about whether or not he's still potty trained, so that leads me to believe that he's ready to take this step. He's fairly high functioning, by the way, but he is more delayed in the areas of self care than anything else, so I would consider him to be moderate functioning in this area.

Thanks!

This happened with one of my twins (both on spectrum, now 4.5). We finally got them potty trained at 3.75, but a couple months later, one of them started wetting his pants again. This happened mostly at home, although it happened maybe once a week at school as well.

We went back to remind in him to go every 30 min or so, but that honestly wasn't very effective. He'd say no, but then have an accident 5 min later. I think once he got the idea of the potty, he got over it really quickly and started to consider it optional.

The only thing that worked was giving him an incentive. For every day that he stayed dry until bedtime, he got a bowl of ice cream. It took a couple of weeks for him to realize that he had to actually be dry to get the ice cream, and there were some tantrums, but he finally figured it out. I hope this helps and good luck!

My NT son did this when he was three. It was intentional because he knew how to use the potty but would choose to go in his pants again after he had done it in the potty. When our washing machine went out of order, I told my son that if he wet his pants and pooped in them, he will have no more clean underwear yet because the machine is broken. He did good for a week using the toilet even if he was doing it all the time and then when the machine was back in order, he regressed. This would happen off and on where he would move forward and then go backwards and then when I had my daughter, he stopped regressing and moved forward again and never regressed again. He saw what a baby was and thought the mess in her diapers were disgusting. I can't really help you with the regression part unfortunately because we struggled in it too and bam our daughter cured the issue.

My kids are 8 and 6. They were potty trained around age 3 and 4, respectively. The one thing that I would change my mind about, is on their potty training age. Looking back at it, I wouldn't mind postponing it for another year.

Potty training is about the least important thing in a child's development. We have an issue only because our society is not set up for accommodation (namely, schools). My point is, Bill Gates wearing a diaper is still Bill Gates. Developing your children's intellectual skills is so much more important than getting them potty trained.

In my view, potty training consumes too much energy from parents, for no good reason. If I have to do it all over again, I wouldn't start potting training my children until they are age 4, and would only be worried after age 6.

In contrast, I would say if your children are not reading books by 18 months, I would get worried. By reading books I mean reading full sentences, not just isolated words. Not being able to read books by 24 months is a higher concern to me, than not being potty trained by age 6. Heck, if my children can do quantum field theory by age 6, I wouldn't mind them wearing diapers their whole life.

After all these years, I would say parents should put zero effort into developing their children's verbal and social skills, in their early childhood. It's a waste of time. These children are not sick, they are not damaged. All the wiring for their verbal and social skills are there, intact. Instead, visual-manual skills must happen first. The more you postpone the development of their visual-manual skills, the more verbal and social skill impediments they will have later, and children may end up wearing diapers for the rest of their lives, too. If I have to do it all over again, I would focus 100% on my children's visual-manual skills (including reading, writing, drawing pictures, playing with building blocks, etc.), and forget completely about their verbal/social development and potty training. Parents turn the lives of their autistic children upside down, and then complain about their children's tantrums, anxiety issues, not talking, lack of eye contact, no social skills, etc. Parents need to accept the fact that their children have a different route of development. Parents need to realized that their children are completely problem-free, but are simply different.

Let potty training happen at its own pace. No need to agonize about it. But teach your children to read, write, draw and play with building blocks. And if you are a techie like myself, teach your children to write computer programs and build electronic circuits as well. Join their favorite activities. I still take my son to elevator rides. He learned everything he needed to learn in life from elevators, including math skills and socialization. You need to remember though, that every single fun event in your children's life, is a good anchor point for teaching them additional skills. I don't just take my son to elevator rides. I have made tons of cartoon videos to teach him other skills, from his passion on elevators and other gadgets.

I am not kidding: children on the spectrum should start to read letters around 12 months, and full sentences by 18 months. If the child is pro-video/hyperactive, stick figure recognition should be taught between 12-18 months as well.

YouTube videos such as this one and others (many others) shouldn't be exceptions, or described as "amazing" or "child prodigies." Rather, they should be the rule: https://youtu.be/b3y0ahkVfaE

Are you serious?

I'd like it if my kid could read by 18 months, but I'm certainly not going to get worried if they don't. I think that's just way too high of expectations for the majority of kids. I am actually planning on trying to teach my kid to read young, but if they don't take to it, I won't stress out about it. I learned to read at 6 years and ended up being a voracious reader who gets As in English classes.

Anyway, OP, it's pretty common for autistic kids to be slower in this area. My guess is he probably has a harder time feeling the sensations of when he needs to go, so if he's paying attention to something else, he's likely to miss it. I'd recommend trying to remind him more often to go potty, and make sure that he knows it's not a really bad thing if he has an accident - but it's an awesome thing if he doesn't.

This is an absurd expectation. Some children on the spectrum are dyslexic -- it occurs in a very specific area of the brain used for reading and is completely independent of whether a child is autistic or not. I personally know 3 who have the Aspergers/ADHD/Dyslexia combination.

I have never known any child that could read at 18 months.

When my daughter was between 12 and 18 months, we were in the car, and I pulled up next to a tanker truck while we were stopped at a traffic light. She pointed to the tanker, and said, as clear as day, "Get-ty".

Word recognition is a little different than reading, I think, though.

This applies to many hyperlexic autistic children, and not even all of them. There is variance even in that subset.

Nobody should be worried if their children are not hyperlexic, and even if they are hyperlexic, their timelines may be different than those of your kids.

Regarding potty training: I don't think it is at all uncommon for potty training to slip when there is a big change. We moved when my son was almost trained, and we had to take a break and then start again.