Well for the last, what seems like million weeks, but is only really about 6 weeks, I've been doing some toilet training with Ben. It started purely on a whim when I had a whole day without any volunteers. We had had a long play session and I felt that I should use rest of the day to do something more useful than just letting him wander around the house getting into mischief!
Now heres what usually happens - I hide all the nappies and tell Ben 'oh no, we've run out of nappies you'll have to wear these underpants like a big boy' He then throws a massive tantrum and secretly wee's anytime I'm not looking. By bedtime I fold and give him the nappies back.
So this is what I was expecting, but after 10mins he was happily wearing the underpants and I had idea what I was going to do next. I'd never got to this part!
I had to send my mum out for more underpants as I only had about 3 pair and in the first two hours they had all been weed on! Then he decided that only trunk style ones would do so Amy, one of his volunteers, got me some from next. As buttons are the devil (according to Ben) boxer shorts are also out of the question!
During the first week I think I lost the will to live and was very close to a nervous breakdown. Every time I moved away from him he weed on something and while I was cleaning it up he would go and wee on something else.
My fabric couch smelt like the animal house at the zoo and the hall/stairs/landing carpet wasn't far behind.
I pleaded for help on facebook and luckily a couple of amazing teachers from the Autism Treatment Centre of America posted very helpful comments. So the plan was to catch the wee and get it in the toilet so he knows that wee goes in something!
So to cut a very long story a bit shorter :) At the moment Ben is getting closer to being toilet trained. He crouches on the floor to wee so it has proved very difficult to catch the wee in anything. So we have these little plastic boxes! Like tupperware!
If I prompt him when I think he needs a wee he will now take his underpants off ( He crouches so low if he doesn't take all his bottoms off he wees on them) and wee in the tub. We then have to do comedy hiccups to throw it into the toilet! Then when all the wee is in the toilet we have to cry because it's gone, again in comedy fashion :)
I even have to do this when we are out, We use the disabled toilet because Ben is terrified of hand dryers, but can you imagine what people must think :)
He is dry of a night and is mostly great when we are out of the house as long as we make regular toilet trips. In the house if I'm on the ball all the time then he is great, but if I'm a bit dozy or not paying attention then we end up with accidents. He's not great in the playroom yet but he has done a few wees for Amy and Jade.
I've re-covered the couch with vinyl and bought lino offcuts for the landing so I'm not as stressed about accidents.
The biggest learning I have taken from all this is that if I want to be really comfortable with the accidents I have to really believe its ok when he wees on something. When the couch was fabric and the carpet was uncovered, even though I pretended, I wasn't really comfortable when he had an accident and started to get really snappy and irritable. As soon as I solved that problem I immediately relaxed and so did Ben. Pretending to have a belief doesn't work!!
Hoping when Holly visits in September she will get us going in the right direction so we can help him to move on and eventually be able to wee in the toilet!
More updates soon xxxx
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