It's official: Brad is day-trained. He's been in undies for a week, with only one accident. Here's how we trained him:
Every weekend since the Countdown began (about 6 weeks ago), we gave him two hours of underwear time. On Saturday, I would make sure he had a success, basically by keeping him on the potty at the right time. I figured out that he pees at around 8:45 AM. When he "succeeded", I gave him an M&M. On Sunday, I would give him underwear time, but just let him do his thing, which caused him to have an accident, in which case, no M&M. Also, during the week, we started doing potty time after breakfast.
For the first four weeks, his weekday potty time (after breakfast) consisted of him sitting on the potty for a few minutes and not peeing. By week 5, he must have figured out how to hold it in because he started peeing in the potty after breakfast.
So that's pretty much it. But every kid is different, and certainly spectrum kids have body awareness issues that typical kids don't - what worked for Brad might not be the answer for everyone.
There's also a normative parenting issue embedded here - some believe any form of potty pressure or self-imposed timeline is wrong. I see it the reverse. I feel as though independence is a great gift to Brad - indeed, he smiles ear to ear when he potties - and as a parent, I feel obligated to at least give him that chance.
7 comments:
Congratulations! M&Ms worked for us too. In fact, the boys continued to expect M&Ms for months. (small price to pay)
Thanks! Yeah, that's the problem - you have to wean them from the M&Ms. With Brad, I'm only giving him one M&M every third trip. For the in between trips to the potty, I say "next time", and he smiles and seems to understand. Eventually, I'll phase them out completely. I don't think it'll be too bad.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!
Way to go! Yeah, independance is a great gift! Think some kids might not acctually get that there is a next stage, if you get me. They might just be set in the nappy routine and not know that they can go to the toilet.
I think that some typical kids can have trouble training if the parent exerts no influence or pressure. Those super sized diapers and pullups take the pressure off but it can have negative consequences.
Go Brad!
This may be too many M&M's but when we were further along with the toilet training, we gave R a marshmallow for staying dry as well.
I agree with you on the independence thing. We have a seasoned speech therapist who claims that she's seen kids really take off in their language and social development once they were potty-trained.
Keep up the good work, Brad!
Congrats Brad!! Chee is finally (finally!!) poop-trained - will go in the toilet rather than preferring pullup - and she is extremely proud of herself and states "I went all by myself!"
I agree that the independence is a gift.
Great news!!! How are you dealing with poops? We're working on that for the new year. It's time .. :-(
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