Toilet Training Process – Considerations Before Starting the Process - תהליך גמילה מחיתולים - שיקולים לפני התחלת התהליך

תהליך גמילה מחיתולים - שיקולים לפני התחלת התהליך - למאמר בעברית

A toilet training process is a part of children’s typical development. A transition between infancy and early childhood, into the adult world.

Similar to different developmental stages, when everything goes smoothly, it is a transitional stage, quite quick, a little burdensome but also exciting and joyful.

Among autistic children, there are often difficulties in the process and it does not go smoothly.

Despite the parents’ prior knowledge, correct intuition, and advice from the surroundings, something does not flow, something gets stuck and the process becomes very prolonged.

Sometimes there does not seem to be any readiness at all. The child will not alert before or after having a bowel movement or urinating.

Sometimes different habits from what is customary will become fixed, such as having a bowel movement or urinating while standing instead of squatting.

Refusal to sit on the toilet, lack of sensation, when am I dirty and wet and what needs to be done about it, inappropriate preoccupation with bowel movements and urine, refusal to stay in a diaper.

As time passes and the child grows, the gap between him and his peers in this area deepens, and dealing with the subject becomes much harder, much more burdensome for the entire household routine.

Frustration, guilt, anger, and disgust are added. these feelings feed one another, and influence the family’s ability to enter another toilet training process.

With a child who is not toilet trained and uses diapers, the problem is present but relatively easy to manage, and the home is already used to it.

With a child in a toilet training process, every time leaving the house becomes very complicated. Staying in public places, when there is a chance that the child will have an accident in his pants, becomes very embarrassing, and difficult to cope with, and also at home, getting dirty, endless laundry, smells.

The parents are already tired, this part negatively affects the quality of life of the child, but also of the parents and of the siblings.

There is an expectation that the child will already learn, but also despair, that this will never happen and that this problem has no solution.

When approaching building a toilet training plan for a child, it is recommended to adapt the method to the child, and not the child to the method.

תהליך גמילה מחיתולים - שיקולים לפני התחלת התהליך - למאמר בעברית

Building a toilet training plan for an autistic child requires deep familiarity with him.

His habits, his food selectivity, his liking for certain places in the home, his areas of interest, which seem completely unrelated to the topic but are very significant:

• What does he like? To hear, to touch, to do, to see.

• Familiarity with his daily routine and that of his family. What changes is the family capable of and which are they not?

• Familiarity with the bowel movements and urination themselves, constipation, sensitivity, pain, diarrhea.

• Familiarity with his fears and his sensory regulation ability, how is he with the cold of the toilet seat? With the sound of the water, with the splashes that are felt? With the small room, with the lighting.

• Familiarity with his personal pace, in what steps will we be able to move forward, what will make him trust us so much that he will be willing to reduce control and give himself over to a change that touches his private body. To the almost only place, over which he has full control (alongside what he puts into his body, what he eats and what he drinks).

  
  

It is not always worthwhile to enter a toilet training process.

Sometimes we will reach a joint conclusion that the time has not yet come and the timing is not suitable, we will always want to start from an assumption of the child’s capability, the key is to find the right way for this child, and to walk at a pace that suits him/her.

Even if stages take longer than expected.

The parents know their child best. The information the parents provide, their dedication to the tracking processes that need to be carried out, and to changes in the family’s daily routine, help very much in building a toilet training plan, whose chances of success are higher.

🟢 For all updates on autism and events at our center, join our quiet WhatsApp group 🟢