Toilet training

[Samantha'smom]

I have a 16 year old girl who refuses to go to the bathroom when she needs to. At school she is taken on a schedule and we try to keep it up at home. But there are times that she'll have a BM in her pants while playing and then tries to remove it from her pants. This is very troublesome, as she knows she should not do this, but she does it anyway. If we catch her at the right time she will use the toilet, if told to and taken to it and she has great success. Any ideas of how to get her to use the bathroom on her own?

[peglem]

Well, I don't know what all you've already tried, but how about some kind of chart where she gets a token everytime she gets it in the toilet and some kind of reward when she collects enough tokens. (you decide how many is enough, since you know her). When it ends up in her pants just clean it up w/ as little fuss as possible, so as to give that behavior as little attention as you can. Of course, first I would rule out medical problems- is there a reason she can't feel the need to go? Stuff like that. I mean, at school they have her on a bathroom schedule, so she doesn't have to monitor if it feels like she needs it...so my question, I guess is can she monitor that herself? If she can, then the chart may work for you.

[Samantha'smom]

We are now working with reward system for behavior and have incorporated that into the toilet training, which works most of the time. She is non-verbal but understands most everything that is said. I think your right that it is an attention getter for her. It is difficult to get her into camps and other fun things because of this behavior. I think she can feel the need to go, because she'll go to the front window to color and go in her pants, I believe it is all a control issue for her and we are stumped on why she is feeling the need to be so controlling over this. I know it is frustrating for her since she doesn't speak, but she does communicate through other means, like,sign,gesturing or showing us. We'll keep plugging at the rewards thing. Thanks for your fast response.

[Margie1959]

I raised two boys using the bribery/rewards method. I would take the boys to the store and buy them a toy of their choice. Then we would put the toy up high, but where it could be seen, in the bathroom. If, at the end of the week, there were no accidents they would get the toy. I had originally tried rewarding them with stickers but those ended up all over the place and are a pain in the rear-end to remove! Toys were much easier and was something they really wanted. Once they went for 2 months with no accients, I would take them to the store and buy them "big boy pants" that they would pick out and we would make a big fuss over how grown up they had become! We would even take the pants to grandmom & grandpop's house to show them the wonderful new undies and they would make a big fuss also. When we stopped the toys, we went to "trips to the soft ice cream store" , or trips to Rita's water ice, the movies, etc., etc. so they didn't have anything they could actually hold in their hand, and it made them use to not getting the toys any longer. (Hope that made sense!) Good luck!!