Dominic and Potty Training

Mention potty training to a parent who has been through it or is currently in the midst of it and I'm sure you will hear many stories and opinions. My mom told me once she had to hand me over to a neighbor to be trained. Guess I was a little stubborn, huh??  While Dominic has made progress in a lot of areas, the potty training has proved to be much, much slower than we anticipated.  There seemed for years to be a disconnect between him knowing where to do the #1 and #2 and actually having him doing it.  I would ask him "why" he didn't want to do it, but he really couldn't fully verbalize his reasons. Anytime we even attempted to train him in the past, he was super anxious and stressed, so we kept putting it off.  Believe me, I have read just about every book ever published about potty training, both for typically developing children and ones with special needs.  There was no physical reason why he couldn't do it, so it made it all the more frustrating. With most typically developing children, when they reach the age of about 2 1/2 or 3, if they are wearing a wet or soiled diaper, it would most likely bother them enough to speed up the potty training.  Dominic is hypo-sensitive.  He has been perfectly content to wear a diaper for years and not really care when he got changed. It finally reached a turning point last October with Dominic when he had his annual IEP (Individualized Education Program) and we were told that him not being trained was holding him back.  Dominic's teacher spent a lot of time coming up with a plan on how to approach the potty training. He even made a book about the #1 with plenty of pictures.  Since Dominic is such a visual learner, it worked great.  When he went back to school after the holiday break, we started with the #1. Dominic is a pretty stubborn guy, so there was lots of resistance on his part, both at home and at school.  He had some accidents at school and some at home, but after a little while he got the hang of the #1. The #2 has proved to be a bit harder to master.  His teacher made a book about the #2 and just this past week, he had success at home and at school!!  I have to give a lot of credit to everyone at his school who spent tons of time getting him trained.  I can't say enough about them.  They are and continue to be amazing :)  We are so proud of Dominic, we knew he could do it and now he knows he can too!!!