Autism Therapy: faith

            We’ve had an important potty-training breakthrough!

            After four days of continually wetting his training pants (actually yesterday he stayed dry at school), I think I’ve discovered the solution:  Cars underpants.  At Target a week ago, my husband and I were shopping and I saw some Cars movie-themed regular boy’s underwear, and I decided to get them as an added reward for keeping dry.  This afternoon, after the third or fourth pair of soiled training pants, I decided to put Thomas in the regular underpants with no rubber pants over them.

            At the potty-training workshop at Thomas’ school a couple weeks ago, I remembered that they had mentioned the importance of having your child help clean up after an accident and not making a big deal of it; that mistakes are a part of life and so on.  I was thinking about that and finally decided to just try regular underwear and see what happened.  I’d like to mention here that I’m no fan of messes, especially ones involving bodily fluids.  After the Horrendous Barfing Flu of May ’06, I was ready to rip out the carpeting, buy plastic blow-up furniture and just live on the bare concrete slab until the kids were old enough to give a few minutes warning before some fluid made its way out of their little bodies.  So obviously, it was a leap of faith to let Thomas run around in regular, not-especially absorbent underwear.

            I went ahead with it, reasoning that maybe the unpleasant sensation of pee-pee running down Thomas’ leg would be enough to motivate him to hold it, and helping me clean up the puddle would be a good lesson for him.  So I let him pick out which underpants design he wanted to wear and said a little prayer.

            An hour went by, and his pants were still dry.  Somewhat skeptical, I looked around in the obvious places for any signs of puddles and found none.  I took him to the potty and a steady stream came forth, signaling that he had held it for a while.  I praised Thomas profusely and went about my business for a while longer.  Another hour went by, and the same dry underpants were still going strong!  I took him to the bathroom again where he not only went #1, but also #2!  He did have one accident when he crawled into the kitchen over the counter and was then blocked in by the gate we have.  My husband and I were sitting on the couch with our daughter when I heard Thomas say, “I have to go pee-pee I have to go pee-pee I have to go pee-pee.”  I jumped up to get him, but by then it was too late.  He had gone a bit, but there was no puddle; just some wetness on Thomas’ legs.  So we took him to the bathroom where we handed him a wipe and he cleaned himself up.  That was the end of that.  Then my husband took Thomas to the store where he stayed dry the whole time and still didn’t have to go when he came home!

            The magic behind all of this is that I think Thomas felt like those padded training pants were diapers.  They were bulky around his crotch like a diaper, and they could certainly contain his urine like a diaper.  As soon as I put the regular thin cotton underpants on him, they must have felt different, like something you can’t pee in.

            So as elated as I am about having found the solution to this problem (or so I think; we’ll see how he does in the days ahead), I’m a little ticked off that I went ahead and spent all of that money on the eighteen pairs of training pants and rubber over-pants.  My husband asked how much we spent on all of that and when I told him, he didn’t seem to mind.  I think he would have paid a lot more to get this potty-training thing going.  Maybe we can use the supplies for our daughter soon.

            Thomas has had a better week so far than last week.  Yesterday and today were both “good” days.  He did have another accident on the playground today, but it was nowhere near the monsoon-level accident on Monday.  Thomas has been singing more songs from school too, and our daughter Hayley loves it when Thomas and I sing together.

            He’s been telling us more stories about things that happen at school, like who takes him to the bathroom and what they played with in gym class.  Sometimes I have to get right in his face to get the answer to a question though, especially if he’s enraptured by the spinning wheels on his cars.  Then he’ll answer me very quickly as if to say, “Hey, you’re bugging me!  Can’t you see I’m busy here?”

            I’ve also been noticing the importance of choice in Thomas’ life.  I’m giving him choices more and more often just to see how he reacts, and I think it’s helping him feel like he’s more in control of things, especially the potty-training.  We kind of forced it on him, even though we were pretty sure he was ready physically, but asking him what reward he’d like or what underpants he’d like to wear really seem to help motivate him.  I’m just a little concerned that he’ll want to wear character underwear when he’s thirty.