Potty Party Progress (Part 3)

Potty Training Background

Before talking about our potty training progress, I have to say how nervous I was last week about it because it took me to the moments when Tommy was learning to go potty when he was about 30 months by the end of 2010 an the beginning of 2011.

This time period was very emotionally for me because I had a miscarriage in progress when I was expecting Francis right before Christmas in 20110, and then, just a month later I had to face Tommy being rough to the emergency room. Then right after, he began to display Autism characteristics and his development stopped, including potty training. A new issues, leaky gut, appeared that directly impacted continuing with potty training. Over the last 6 years, I have been fully dedicated to heal his gut, and finally, I got the right specialist who has helped enormously so Tommy now can have regular bowl movements. If you read my old post, Tommy had the reediness for potty training when he was a toddler, but he lost everything after the hospitalization in January 2011. His overall muscle system was affected, which it could be due to mitochondrial function affected by the medications and the virus at that time. It was a completely mess, but now, it is time to retake potty training! This makes me to face how much Tommy has lost because of AUTISM, but it has also made me stronger because I am fighting back against Autism.  

This is why I like about blogging— below are old post about our potty training experience when Tommy was a toddler: 
Toilet learning is fun!
Hip, hip-hurry!Toilet-learning is fun!
Potty training is going well

Day 1 (September 9, 2011)

It was a completely mess. There were two occasions where he was not happy about our potty party. So I got armed of patient. Nothing was working to make him to comply. But after many tries, he complied to sit on the toilet.  He had many, many accidents and one success.  But I feel still is a success because he had a lot of practise on important steps to potty training, such as: taking his understands by himself, cleaning his accidents as well as working on other skills while we wait for the timer to ring. 

Day 2 (September 10, 2011)

Not much progress on going potty. But he had a huge progress on washing his hands by himself. If I offered a spoon of ice-cream, he roughed to wash his hands all by himself. I also noticed more communication. For example: I showed his rewards and he purposely requested Grober and big bird, the were not on sticker shit I was showing him. But I had them on the sticker book and he saw them before. He also had and accident and he said: I went potty!  He also told me "potty", but we couldn't make it on time to the bathroom. He even told me: I want to watch a movie. I saw a lot of verbalization today with a purpose! He definitely had a lot more fun on Day 2. We made our potty party super fun. 

Day 3 (September 11, 2011)

I encountered a lot more behaviors. I think it has to be that Tommy struggled to fall asleep last night which is out of the norm and he may not felt good in the morning, but he bounced back to his normal. The hole morning he was not into our potty party. But, he told me "potty" again. He wanted to pee, so he got a big sticker as a reward and he was very happy with his bog sticker. We also sang "celebrate" from the Potty Time CD by Rachael Coleman. He sat on the toilet and 10 minutes passed, the timer went off so It was time leave the toilet, but he refused. Then, I let him to stay for 10 more minutes. But he kept holding it. Then, we had another struggle about washing his hands. Finally, he washed his hands, but he didn't get his spoon of ice cream as a reward because he had a bad behavior. After a great success yesterday in washing hands, today was a struggle. He didn't care for the ice cream anymore. After, we finished, we went upstairs to get my notebook, so I can revise what I am doing. Then, he when to my bathroom and shot the door and he went potty in the bathroom, but not on the toilet. Around 11:10 am he got hungry, but he didn't eat all his food. Then, I noticed that he wasn't feeling good. I checked and he had a fever. So he took a nap and our potty party was postpone because after nap, he had another fever. But I feel very happy with our first Potty Party Boot Camp. 

I know understand why Mrs. Hickey says that she enjoys to potty train kids. You can see their developmental growth in matter of days. When it is about kids with special needs, you can see how capable they are of leaning this important life skill and makes you even more proud of working on such a task because it is about humanity because it helps them with self-confidence and independance.

I enjoyed this time with Tommy because it was just the two of us in the house. So my full attention was dedicated to him and we connected in a very meaningful way. I wish I could do this more often, because it was not about potty training, we also had fun and worked on so many skills without forcing anything and we were doing these by just being a mom and a child, there was not a disability. You can see it on our  videos when we both enjoy singing "A todo pulmon" (Full-throated) like we say in Spanish. It has changed the perspective of what I had before Friday. I was nervous about this boot camp, but I will do this again.

Blowing strengths the abdominal muscles. 

So I thought this could help on getting those muscle ready while we wait.

Tommy has learned the songs of Potty Time Signing DVDs

 including the signs  for wake up, sleep, eat and drink. 

he doesn't sign them, but he understand them when I singed them

when I stopped so he could fill in with the word that

 follows in the lyric of the song. 

I also noticed that even when repetitive behaviors has decreased a lot, they are still on the way interfering with Tommy learning new skills. I noticed it in the video of washing hands while I was editing the video. He was stemming during the transition form one step to the other. He was a able to do it with minimal physical intervention from me, I just intervened by passing the towel to him because he got cut up on verbally stemming and flapping hands, which makes me think that he was proud of himself. However, decreasing receptive behaviors should be priority at home as well as school because it is interfering with the leaning process, but I will have to figure out what it is the most appropriate way to address it based on neurodevelopment.