Pookie has been very good around the house with making sure he goes to the bathroom to go pee or poop.
There are a few noticeable exceptions.
- When he is watching too good of a cartoon
- When he is reading too good of a book
- When he is listening to too good of music
He fairly frequently has refused to go to the bathroom when the entertainment was too good.
Over the weekend, I took a stand.
He pooped on the floor because he wanted to finish reading a book instead. I took the book away. He screamed like I’ve never heard him scream before and ended up getting sent to his room to calm down. We did a lot of talking about why the book was taken away. Then he got mad because I was not going to give him the book back for the rest of the day.
Yesterday, he picked out his own video to watch. About half way through, he peed on the floor. I took the video out and he screamed like I’ve only ever heard him scream one other time before. We did a lot of talking about why I took the video away. He ended up needing to go to his room to calm down. He did not seem entirely shocked that I was not going to put the video back in.
Pookie complains about so few things it is pretty shocking to see him that upset about anything. It is amazing to see how upset he can get for somebody with such little practice.
I am sure it will all settle down before too long. I’ve already noticed that he is calming down more quickly from some of his milder complaints.
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Instead of taking things away. May I suggest that you encourage him to go to the bathroom. When he is watching tv/a video, every 15-20 minutes remind him to go to the bathroom. If he is watching a video, remind him that it can be paused, or even rewound for that matter.
And the remind his to go isn’t a choice, he has to go to the bathroom and try, whether he has to go or not. He will soon learn that he really isn’t missing out on anything to go to the bathroom.
Going to the bathroom is not a punishment, and IMO should not be treated like it.
Those are good tips. And we do all of that. It normally works perfectly. We also give him two M&Ms each time he goes and asks for them afterward.
The only time I have taken things away is when he is clearly refusing to leave the situation to go to the bathroom which is not frequent but has been occurring more over the last week. Accidents are fine. Peeing on the floor because he refuses to go to the bathroom is not.
I might also add, that with Pookie, we need to be careful of asking him the same thing over and over again. Children with ASD are “chunk-learners” . We say do you have to go to the bathroom? He says ” I do not have to go to the bathroom right now.” Everytime. Without even thinking about the question, he searches his mind for the rote answer and spits it out. Just like we ask him every day, “did you have fun at school?” And every day he responds “I had fun on the bus.” There is no other right answer, in his mind. That is how an ASD mind works. Everything is 1=1.
It took us a while to learn that he was giving us canned responses. But now, we try to avoid those situations and provide him with concrete and tangible situations in which we do not lead him into an answer.
Ever since we put him in charge of his potty training, he has done great and made progress. We only get involved in situations like this.
I enjoyed this post – my children are the same way. When they are entranced with an activity…no time for poopy! I am learning all the time about fatherhood. Keep on posting!
- JohnnyO http://fatherhoodmatters.blogspot.com
We went through this issue with Little P. It lasted maybe two weeks and he suddenly stopped doing it. He will still dance around if he’s having fun (and squeeze and all that stuff), but he’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t like accidents. One thing I did was make him clean it up afterward (after he’d been doing it for almost two weeks and I was sure they weren’t accidents). I don’t know if that’s an option for Pookie. The only semi-bad thing was that when he had a “real” accident one day, he immediately started to clean it up (I was glad he had learned something but felt guilty because it was truly an accident so I helped him clean it up).
I agree, accidents are fine, but intentionally not going to the bathroom is not. Hang in there; as you know, he’ll be through it before you know it!
He is definitely a boy who knows what he wants! LOL! Consistency is the key. Keep up the discipline and he’ll get it eventually. Until then, keep smiling!
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