Potty Training: A lesson in futility?
So, I'm going through my first potty-training experience. Seeing as how the only things I've potty trained previously are my dogs, this has been a new experience. Considering that the first day this student was on our campus, I wrestled with him in the bathroom floor for about 20 minutes (in slacks), we have had tremendous success with him. However, it was be awesome if we could potty train him. His family's life would be made so much easier; his long term outcome improves by leaps and bounds. So, we put him into big boy underwear today. We've gradually been increasing his sitting time in the bathroom (I'll never feel the same about the song Who Says You Can't Go Home by Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles) and he's been tolerating it well. Today we listened to that song 52 times. Fortunately, there are two of us who tend to this throughout the day, so I only heard it about 25 times. :) Anyhow, we did have one success--after 12 songs. Then he got dressed, got his reinforcement immediately after that--a walk, and not 1o minutes later, he wet his britches. Sigh. He then proceeded to wet himself 3 more times during the next 75 minutes or so. We had a dry spell while he ate, and then while taking him back to the bathroom, he went again. This time it sort of surprised him--he was wearing shorts and it just ran down his leg. We got him in there quickly and sat him for another 5 songs. He got dressed again, went to our other room across the hall, and it happened again! I wanted to bang my head against the wall. Really hard. Bless his heart (and ours). I really feel like he can make this connection, and I know it was only the first day. But.....I have a call into our behavioral consultant. We'll try again tomorrow. Oh, I should add that food isn't a good reinforcer because he is orally averse and only eats a small number of baby foods (though eating issues are the other big thing we are dealing with).
I will say that today's occurences solicited a lot of laughter from myself and my TA. You just have to laugh, ya know?
2 comments:
So how is it going now?
I know it's totally different, but I potty trained Abigail by putting her in her underpants and dealing with it. Good Lord, those first two days I had to do so much laundry! But after a few days she decided that she really didn't like to be wet and it just clicked for her. Hopefully if you keep it up, your student will eventually "click".
Good Luck!
Well,we did have one success today, and no accidents! I did cheat and put him in a pullup during PE because we were short handed. We'll stick with it...
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