Potty Training Non Verbal 2 Year Old

He wants to use the potty, let him. Yes it's frustrating, time consuming and challenging with his limited communication skills. Training pants (thick cotton underwear) or pull-ups coupled with elastic waisted pants, easy down and up efforts for him to have some control over when he needs to go to the bathroom.

May I suggest Child Speaks, it was formerly called Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders. They are mircacle workers, their speech therapists, teachers of sign language... giving kids a means of communicating. I can't begin to sing their praises loud or often enough. They have offices in Seattle, Spokane, Yakima and Portland that I know of for certain.

Take good care.

We have an autistic four year old and a somewhat delayed in verbal skills two year old (this happens sometimes when the older one has a delay). My problem was I had had enough with all the diapers. We daytime trained in two months with both of them, but I did teach them a phrase that helped a ton. Poo poo and pee pee go in the potty (I even said this while changing diapers and taught them to repeat it back to me - usually they can pick up phrases if you work with them to). We got them underwear as a Christmas gift which they were soooo excited about, set a timer for every 15 minutes and set them on potty every time it went off with a book (we kept a stack in there). We rewarded succeses with a sticker on a sticker chart we posted in there and accidents we just did our phrase with them. It was several weeks of messes, but now they don't want to ever wear diapers and it has been two solid weeks of no accidents.

However! Every child is different (I did this b/c we have a new baby coming and couldn't imagine changing that many diapers). If you do it expect messes to happen - any kid of any language level has accidents for awhile - be patient as it will take awhile - and when he gets it the first time make an enormous scene. I am glad you are talking to your pediatrician b/c they should have at least a small working vocab by now. I wold suggest waiting until after that appt. to start anything with him. Best of luck!

I can't help on the potty training issue, since my 3.5 year old daughter is fighting it. "It's not fun," she says. She is getting there, but the whole control issue (this is one area where they can use their control and nothing you can do about it). My daughter is very verbal and is hasn't helped with the potty situation.

What you can do is work on sign language. It often helps kids with autism and other verbal problems. My son was signing at six months. He didn't really know what it meant, but he would repeat signs.

He is now 18 months and has well over 100 signs that he can use. His verbal skills have improved greatly due to signs, as well.

I recommend Signing Time. It is entertaining and educational for you and your son. Have fun with it, play games while signing, etc.

Good luck to you.
D.

I think you are right that your non-verbal son is communicating with you in his own way. You will need to really pay attention to what is going on at the time etc. to be sure of just what he is trying to communicate with you. Playing with themselves is normal for children to do when they are on the potty and will also be normal when he gets older and enters puberty. Playing with himself on the toilet is certainly alot better and cleaner then it could be were he to do it else where and also a lot less embarrassing to you because he isn't trying to do it in public; he is doing it in private. Leave the room for a bit and give him some privacy; tell him that you will be back in a few minutes when he is finished. If he is going to insist on taking off his diaper I would encourage that he only do that in the bathroom as it will make things a lot easier for both of you.

My own youngest son is 27 years old, non-verbal and is still in diapers due to his physical and mental disabilities but we found this worked best for all of us and sure saved our sanity. It was really annyoying when he entered puberty and would take his diaper off to play with himself and then get BM etc. all over the bed, carpet etc. so we encouraged him to do all of this in the bathroom. Now he will go in there whenever he feels the urge to masturbate and we assist him to get his diaper off if necessary and then leave the bathroom and let him have his priacy for a little while; sometimes he doesn't need our assistance at all to do this but if it is a messy diaper I insist on doing it.

I would also encourage you to start using sign language with your son. A lot of times sign language helps to break that non-verbal barrier and they eventually do learn to speak. If they never learn to speak then at least they do have a way to commmunicate with you and others. My son can understand 99% of what is said to him but he just can't communicate back. He uses some sign language and some modified signs to express himself. We and the people in the home he now lives in plus his work site have learned what he is saying when he does certain actions so that helps all of us. I know only a few signs in sign language but my son knows quite a few of them since he is around others who need it more then he does. I'm not sure that he always likes the fact that he understands both speech and sign language especially if some one is saying or signing "no" which is word that most of us don't like to hear. All in all he is doing very well now and I'm sure that your son will do well also; just give him the time he needs.

I am working on potty training with my 17 month old. I have found this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Start-Potty-Training-Linda-So...

to be useful. It dispels some of the mythology about needing an older kid to potty train, but remains realistic that this process will take time.

I also liked the advice for specific teaching in 'Potty train in one day', but i had no luck with the one day part, in part because my girl is young and preverbal (and in part because i didn't spend the whole concerted day on the effort).

At any rate, i'm guessing you can make progress towards training your son, even if you can't expect to finish up soon (and you may have better luck than i do with that part, too).

One of the biggest things that i did from an early age was allow my daughter to watch me potty, and talked her through the process. I let her sit on the potty, and talked about when she was wet or dirty. All this stuff added up so that at 16 months she could pull up and down her pants, let me know when her diaper was dirty, sit on the pot, and pee and poop on the pot.

I really recommend those steps because i think there is nothing to lose.

It does not, however, appear to make headway in getting her to be reliable about only using the potty.

Hi M.,
My little 2 year old is the same way. I am focusing in on his skills with talking, he is almost two and a half and has delayed speech so he gets to be in school. What I found helpful is buying the onsies for his size and letting him wear that. He can't get it opened to pull his diaper off! Good luck

I say that he's probably too young to potty train. If you start now you will likely just end up frustrated for a long time. I started potty training my son too early and it became a year long fight. My son was also a late talker (said mama at 2), I started training him at 2.5, but it wasn't fully trained until 3.5 (no matter what I did!). He did start using the potty at 2.5 about 50% of the time, but the rest of the time he didn't stop what he was doing and would wet himself. He's 5 now and still holds it to the last possible moment because he doesn't like to be bothered with peeing. It's just his personality. It's an inconvience for him to go to the bathroom..

I realize now that it's not worth trying to force something that a child isn't ready for. If I had just relaxed and let him do it on his own it would have been much easier. You should probably wait until he goes on the potty by himself on a regular basis. (have the potty available at all times just in case). If he's ready to potty train full time then he will tell you in one way or another (maybe sign language) Good luck!

We had a friend who's son liked to put his hands in his diaper all the time. I don't know if this would work, and it is kind of a pain, but she put her son in overalls all the time. I have also seen onsies that are in larger sizes that I thought might help. I don't know what size he is, but Gerber makes 24 month white onsies that you could easily put under most clothes. I have also seen 36 and 48 month onsies at babies r' us that are more decorative.

Hope you figure something out. My son is not there yet so I don't know about the potty training, but this might make things easier until you can get to the potty training part.

AT 26 months my daughter has about 5 words and she decided to start potty training. We are taking it slow but I see progress. I taught her the sign for potty and she tells me when she wants to or needs to go. Signs both actual signs and ones she's created have helped tremendously in her being understood.