how do you get a child with special needs to go to the bathroom?

Answer 1

lots of time and patience. it took us 7 years to get my autistic child potty trained

Answer 2

A friend of mine posted this for me. This is the issue:
This is a case of a physical disability rather than mental, such as autisim, although I have another daughter with PDD. My 8-year old daughter with SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) subjected to a wheelchair, due to her disability, she has difficulty getting up at night and going to the bathroom, let alone lift herself up on the toilet, so consequently there are many times she will wet the bed. This doesn't trouble me as I know and understand how difficult this can be. No child wants to wet the bed.
I am a single father with 2 disabled daughters. What troubles me is that my 8 year old daughter will wet her pants when she is absorbed in watching television or playing a video game, however, she rarely has a problem at school, which leads me to believe this is an attention issue in that when she is absorbed in a television program she doesn't even give her need to go to the bathroom a thought. Whereby, she will wet her pants. I have tried many things without success, I am now employing restriction to her watching tv or playing a video game, i.e. if she is watching tv and wets her pants she will be restricted from watching tv for a week, same with video games, etc. I'll see how this fares. But it would be interesting to hear how other families deal with the same issue with a physically disabled child.

Answer 3

Tough issue but many different things must be tried before you find something that works. Easiest thing to try is ask the child to go potty every two or three hours. Another suggestion is find out why they won't go to the potty. Mine do not and will not go to the potty alone. They need me, a brother or even the cat to stand being in the small space alone....

Depends on age, sex and disability........please elaborate and we might have more suggestions.....

Look for a book called Steps to Independence: Teaching Special Needs Kids Daily Living Skills by Baker and Brightman. Reviewed in this link: http://specialchildren.about.com/od/longtermplanning/gr/independence.htm

Please be patient. It will not happen quickly. Special needs children are usually not potty trained at same age as normal kids. That is perfectly OK. It would help you to get realistic expectations by talking to other parents of children with the same disability. That will help you get a better perspective....so join a local support group. You will learn to appreciate your child rather than worry.

Answer 4

If your child is a boy try putting a ball in the toilet, You can place a large ball in the toilet (so it doesn't flush) and make a game out of it. If your child is special needs enough that he/she can't speak teach them the sign for bathroom. They have to understand the concept first, and again it makes it fun to communicate without words.
You can also try the rewards chart in the bathroom, have a pic of the toilet or your child on the potty and when he/she does this they get to choose one toy from the "treasure box".
This seems to work best for both genders and for most ages. Good luck!!!

Answer 5

As the other answerer suggested, it depends on the age and sex of the child and also the disability. For both sexes, sometimes it's more of a "training the trainer" - when I taught students with moderate-severe mental retardation, my aides and I would take the students to the bathroom every hour and verbally praise ANY success lavishly. My students were non-verbal so I taught them the sign for "toilet", using it to tell them where we were going every time. Both girls, ages 6 & 8, got so they were having an accident maybe once a week but this took about 6 months of consistent bathroom trips. The boy, age 10, was also generally successful and he seemed to have fun "sinking the cheerios" to teach him to aim for the toilet.

We would sing to the children while they were on the toilet, to the tune of ""Row, row, row your boat": Tinkle, tinkle (child's name), tinkle, tinkle (child's name). A few repetitions of that and there were usually results. It actually got so we could get them to go to the bathroom "early" if we needed to by singing the song. (I used the same trick on my own children and it still works today, decades later!)

Answer 6

Follow the tips in the book below. Adapt to the special needs of the child.