Potty Training

So per the request for a feeling of not being a freak I decided I would reach back into my bag of horror stories and blog about potty training Racer. Its actually not that far back because he's only been trained for less then a year....so here we go.

Being the mother of seven, and having previously potty trained four kids already I knew that there would be some issues in training him but never at the age of 3 did I think it would take two and a half years to finally get to where we are today.

For the longest time the issues that we're blocking him the most was his lack of speech, and his water sensory issues. At three we had to sponge bathe him, we had bags and bags of baby wipes for his hands and face. When his speech finally caught on, we then had to face that he was still very much on the baby side of brain function. I think that was the hardest part of it all. I adored his Special Ed preschool teacher but she was very blunt and honest that she didn't think he was aware of the need to use the toilet and that he was still very much a baby and it would probably be another year before we should even attempt it. So we waited, we tried pull up but his skin couldn't handle those. We tried no diapers and just underwear and that didn't work either. I read everything I possible could on every autism website about potty training a special needs child and none of that worked either.

Then we moved, we changed schools and everything that I had been trying got put on hold. Now here we are at age four to four and a half. The new school was less then half day and the class they put him in was for severely autistic kids. He seemed to be doing well when he was there but seemed to release all his stims when he got home. I got glowing notes of him using the restroom, he was training for them but not for me. What I came to find out was that at 7:30am when he was there for three hours of course he was dry and of course he would sit on the toilet for them. But that didn't equal trained in my eyes because when he was at home he would still wet the diaper.

Then summer hit and he wasn't going to a summer program and he would then be going to kinder in Sept and I freaked. I knew that he needed to be trained but nothing was working. I wrestle with myself at night, feeling like a horrible parent, wondering who the heck has this much trouble after two years of trying. All the articles I read made it seems so simple, and when you are this low you start to question your parenting skills lol I was a mess and Racer wasn't trained. Then I woke up one morning and I was faced with three poopy diapers to change, Racers and the two baby girl YM's and I screamed at no one in particular ENOUGH!. I counted back to realize that I have been collectively changing diapers for 13yrs and if I didn't get Racer trained he never would be.

Now I can't tell you what changed or what was going through his head or even mine but Racer started peeing in the toilet! Then he was pooping! It was amazing that here after all these years he gets trained and I didn't really do anything other then get fed up with diapers.

lol but now that he's trained we are dealing with a whole other set of issues...but that my bloggers is for another time!