Compliance. Is your child currently compliant with most reasonable requests made of it?
If your child will come to you when you call, and follow a basic request like “pick up the spoon” or “put kitten down” on at least 50% of occasions, you can accept your child is at least averagely compliant. This will certainly help the toileting process, as requests to stay on the toilet or to wipe their bottom will be made by you and you will have your and their stress levels greatly reduced if you have reasonable compliance. If you currently have little to no compliance from your child, these strategies will be difficult to implement. If you feel that your child complies with little to no requests you make of it, more common with children with moderate or worse autism and other developmental delays (though not unique to), we suggest you refer back to the chapter on obtaining compliance (Chapter #) before you begin on using any of the toileting strategies. However, do not rule out toilet training at this time if you feel your child is far from compliant, you may still have success using the strategies supplied as they are designed with the most challenging child in mind.
Which of the three strategies should you use?
This is really only a question you can answer. The strategies all follow the same basic principles of scheduling (whether it be fixed or to responses observed), and reinforcement. Yet one child may respond quickly to one strategy and not at all to others, where another child may respond to the others but not to that one. We suggest you read through each of them, discuss with your partner or fellow support person, and decide on which one is more likely to succeed taking into account your day-to-day demands of life, and your child’s challenges. Though there is no reason you can not try one, and then another if you appear to be having no success, we do recommend you give some thought to the one you try first, because if it backfires and turns to disaster this may influence your child’s future thinking about using the toilet and make other attempts at training more difficult. Also, strategy three (‘Sit and wait’) is more aimed at children who may be having some trouble with identifying the bladder full sensation or the sensation before a bowel movement. If you really can not decide, and feel this really is going to be a mission, we suggest you trial strategy One (using the ‘Dior Method’), as this uses some extra principles to the other two, that in most cases will see quick success – though a little more energy draining for the parent or support person!
Strategy One – Nappies Off
This strategy relies on your powers of observation, and more importantly on how well you know your child’s behaviours, and behavioural cues. That is, being able to recognise what your child usually does just before they void. This may be a certain facial expression, total silence and/or stillness, taking themself to a corner of the room, holding their groin area, a certain movement or posture, etc. If you do not already have an idea of what your child does just before voiding, you will need to carefully observe them over the period of a day or two, taking mental (or written) note of what they did just before they wet or soiled their nappy.
This strategy is one that needs to be run over two or more consecutive days until you have reached success. It is not recommended for just an hour or two now, and another hour later – maybe tomorrow. So plan what two days (maybe more) you will have your child at home with little to no distraction. Preferably days where you do not need to rush off at some stage, and have to put nappies back on the child before you have reached the stage where you want to be that day. In saying that, you can plan for an outing that day as long as you have finished the work for that day (nappy off time) with a success, voiding in the toilet.
Or purchase 'Toilet Training Using The Dior Method and other strategies' from thye above link, or for people in New Zealand via Trademe