Potty Training Nonverbal Kids

Potty training requires immense amount of patience and effort from parent’s side. As the child goes through varied changes in lifestyle as he grows up, he is expected to adapt to the same. One such change in his daily schedule includes the way he eliminates. As the child grows, he is shifted from diapers to toilet. To parent’s dismay, kids find it quite unaccommodating and refuse to cooperate. The situation can become quite grim in the case of autistic children as it becomes very difficult to communicate to them. Thus, potty training nonverbal kids require real hard work and patience from parents. Given below are some tips to help you in potty training nonverbal kids.

Tips to Train Nonverbal Kids

Though many of the people do not find the idea agreeable enough, some people are comfortable in letting their child follow them to the toilets so that they can be potty trained by watching their parents.
In autistic children, speech delay is a common problem, which hampers effective communication. For this, sign language can be used such as PECS, Picture Exchange Communication System.
In PECS system, cards carrying bold images are used, which serve as the medium of communication.
For potty training make several potty training cards and make them available to your child.
Tell your child that he can make use of these cards whenever he needs to go to the toilet.
One should remember that autistic children rely on visual communication. For this, you can mount a board in the bathroom illustrating the various steps that the process should include. For example give step by step description starting from, pants down, sit on potty, toilet paper, flush, pants up, wash hands, etc.
Do not make your child rely too much on diapers. This is because diapers prevent the child from using the bathroom. Make your child wear disposable training pants at home, which would prove to be the best at the time of potty training. In effect, the child will feel uncomfortable from the wet feeling and will try to go to the toilet to eliminate.
Another way of encouraging the right kind of toilet manners in your child includes ABA - applied behavior analysis. This is a kind of technique wherein you reward the child for his efforts. Whenever your child follows all the steps of the process, give him something as a reward, which will actually encourage him to continue with the same and even make him receptive to other things you say.
For an autistic child social stories also work well in sending the message across. Work out different social stories and read it out to your child. After this, leave the child alone with the stories, giving him a chance to know things better with the help of simple language and pictorial illustrations.
You can even get some books and movies for your child based on the topic, which he would enjoy and may also understand the underlying meaning.

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