Potty Time Diary...weak stomachs beware! :)

  Gabe is 6 years old and we have been working on #2 potty-training for over 4 years now with no success. I have heard from many parents how they so easily potty-trained their kids and got numerous dirty looks when I said, "oh yeah, tried that already." I'm sorry, but don't you think after 4 years that I've probably at least attempted to do an M&M reward system, sticker chart, book reading plan?  lol



Gabe has been # 1 trained for a few years now, so I knew it was just a matter of getting him to realize what I was asking him to do. He knew that putting his pee in the potty was acceptable, but to him poop clearly goes in your pants. DUH!  Yeah, so that was the issue. How does one get a kid with ASD to associate the "feeling" of going with putting it in the potty? We had several times where we would randomly sit him on the potty and he seemed to accidentally go a little, but then he would stop and wait it out until he could go right upstairs and poop in his pants. The worst part is that he would hold it in sometimes for 8 hours just to wait until he got home where he was comfortable. He had to be just miserable and couldn't function as well at school. I mean, who could?

Mike decided to be super dad and google out of the box things about autism and potty training and found several blog sites where moms had given their ASD kiddos pediatric enemas for several days in a row (like 5-8 days) and they just "got-it" after that. Sounds too good to be true, right?  WRONG! Worked like a charm and after about 6 or 7 days of doing the enemas, Gabe was going on his own in the potty. The most challenging part of this was figuring out when he said "potty" (he is very verbally limited) whether he was needing to go #1 or #2. So, for a while we would sit him down every time he went just in case. He now will say potty for #1 and poop for #2. Hey, I'll take it! I am just so thankful that Mike found those blogs about this because I would have never thought this could work and be so simple. I was a little terrified when he said enema because I figured Gabe would fight and scream about them, but he didn't mind them at all and showed no discomfort about getting them. I think after the first one he realized how much it cleared him out and he probably felt like a million bucks after wards!

I wanted to post our success for other moms and dads who are needing something "non-traditional" because you have tried everything else to no avail! It is so frustrating sometimes and it stinks to feel like you are alone. I hope this helps at least one other family. I know it has made our lives and Gabe's so much better in the last few months!