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Parent of 4 here, ages 6, 5, 2, and 8 months. My oldest two are special needs. Some thoughts from my POV... My oldest wasnt trained until about 4.5 years. It took around 6 months to a year for him to pick it up consistently. Hes still not trained for overnight though. It makes me feel like a failure as a father. We have always used disposable diapers with him. My second (5) has been out of diapers during the day for nearly 2 years. She consistently uses the toilet for bowel movements but fails to urinate in the toilet every time, except when I take her on a timer/regular interval. We aren't sure why she has this problem or how to remediate it. We are very concerned as she begins kindergarten this year. We always used disposable diapers with her, and I feel like a failure as a father on this, too. We just began potty training with my 2 year old. We are 3 or 4 days into it, and he is already independently going to the restroom and following all the rehearsed steps when he needs to urinate. We are having occasional accidents, and he is catching on to the idea that urinating on himself is undesirable. We offer him praise when he is successful, and no praise when he fails (we just walk him through the process of washing off, replacing his clothing, etc so he understands the outcome). He was cloth diapered exclusively until about 6 months ago when his younger brother started using up all the cloth diapers! He hasn't had enough encounters with BMs to catch on to going to the restroom at the appropriate time yet, but I'm confident we will get there soon. My youngest is 8 months and we haven't started any such exercises yet, but it sounds like it may be a good idea. To echo the article's suggestion, possibly one of the most frustrating things is potty training. Or maybe more frustrating, the lack of potty training. I still awake to change diapers for four children every morning, and on average theres at least one guaranteed BM for me to handle. (And let's be real, a 6 year old doesn't poop like a baby.) Although its nice not changing diapers of my 5 year old anymore during the day, it comes at the cost of regular urine cleanup / permanently stained furniture and HEAVY use of our washing machine. If anyone knows any resources for training special needs children overnight (or in the case of my 5 year old...anytime!), I would be super grateful. We had a period of 2 years where both of my older children were in therapy sessions between 20-40 hours/week, and sadly potty training efforts even by trained therapists has been met with limited success. My current plan is to stay the course, just practicing and hoping it all sinks in, especially before my 5 year old starts school, as I don't want her to suffer this embarrassment (and I certainly worry about the way she will be treated/educated as its understandably difficult and even frustrating to deal with this particular kind of problem; for example, we enrolled my then-4 year old in a private kindergarten program last year, but after 2 days the school informed us that unfortunately they cannot manage her and she would not be allowed to attend). |