5 yr old Son and Bathroom accidents!!
My son who is 6 had pretty much the same problem, although, luckily poop does bother him and virtually all his accidents were wet. Being wet does not bother him at all and although peer pressure does work pretty well at school, he still had accidents at home during the evening or weekends.
He is not very aware when he has to go to the bathroom and I also think he doesn't have very good bladder control. He knows he shouldn't go in his pants, and he tries not too, but it still happens. His problem seems to be if he is concentrating on something (like TV or a video game, or the computer) he becomes oblivious to his bladder and holds it until he can't anymore and winds up leaking some out. After we notice it, he still needs to go empty his bladder. I think his ADHD plays a role in the lack of awareness about when he has to go. His brain doesn't seem to process the "I gotta go" signals very well.
A funny story, a while ago we were riding in the SUV with 3 of his friends and some adults and all of a sudden he yells out "I gotta go potty", "Hurry I really have to go". My wife was driving and this got her all uptight because we were in the middle of a lot of traffic and there was no where to pull over. My son was giving out updates (screams were more like it) about every 5 seconds about how bad he had to go. Everyone in the car was trying to figure out where we could pull over and what to do. After about a minute we pulled into a church parking lot and we turned to our son who very red in the face said "too late, I couldn't hold it". We told him it was all right and everybody did the best they could. His friends didn't rib him about it and we pulled in a gas station in a few minutes and he changed.
We weren't thrilled with our son's accidents, but we gave him the benifit of the doubt about it. What we did about it is, remind him to go every hour or two. We had to repeatedly talk to him and tell him even if he doesn't think he has to go, go anyway. We made him understand that he doesn't always know ahead of time when he has to go, so he has to just go regulary whether he feels it or not. It took a while, but he accepted this and with some effort on his own and a few reminders from us, he has made big improvements. He would say "I don't have to go" and we would say back "Remember our talks about going regularly to prevent accidents" and he would accept it and go.
The other thing we did was convince him to tell us as soon as he had an accident and get a change of clothes. He felt guilty at first, but after he realized he wasn't going to get yelled at anymore, he was a lot more willing to admit he had an accident and ask for a change of clothes. We tell him we understand that sometimes he can't tell and accidents happen.
He has gone from 1-2 accidents a day to about 1 a week now. My wife and I have it in our heads now, if we haven't seem him go for a while, we remind him and he is good about obeying, most of the time. We are now working on nightimes without accidents. Until recently he wore a pullup. He now stays dry through the night about 3/4 of the time. I usually carry him in and out of bed to go potty just before I go to bed and that works almost every time. If I don't do that, he will have an accident about 1/2 the time. We figure we have to get him to not drink anything about an hour before bed before he will have completely dry nights. He always says how thirsty he is before bed, so it will take some effort to change that habit. We take the one step at a time approach.
My son (5) is adhd and mildly Aspergers. He takes ritalin twice a day which helps with his behavior and with school. The problem is toileting. He was a bear to potty train and he was 4 before we considered ourselves successfull. Now he's almost 5 (2weeks) and he's having accidents left and right. They mostly happen when he's playing on the computer and sometimes when he's involved with other activities. He'll just wet his pants, or worse, and just sit in it until I notice!! He doesn't seem to care that he's wet or poopy and doesn't seem to get what the big deal is. He has had a few accidents at school and hasn't told the teacher and when she confronted him to change his clothes he didn't get what the big deal was about. Peer pressure doesn't seem to affect him (that's the Aspergers) and when he wets at home on the computer we take away the computer for the rest of the day, which he hates, but he'll just do it again the next day. Any suggestions!!My son did that a few times at school but he alos hates the feeling of wet so he told right away. WE decided at the school he was just dripping on himself and that got me to come to the school so I ended up leaving a pair of clothes with the teacher.
If he doesnt like getting hte computer taken away, maybe that can be used for his reward... if he goes the day with out an accident than he gets to use the computer, if he wets his pants or poopys at all take the computer away for the day, try to reward his big boy potty skills wiht something that he enjoys and maybe make a big deal that he didnt do this potty in his pants for the day.. like you would when you were potty training him.
my son did that a few times when he was about that age, i was told it's because he's so into what he's doing, he doesn't feel the urge to go to the restroom, or recognize when he needs to go. i just asked him frequently if he needed to use the bathroom, and he'd say oh yeah, or no. that worked for me and it eventually went away.My son is 4 and like yours he has been a bear to potty train. Rewards don't work and neither does disaproval from others he sinply doesn't care if he poops in his pants or pees in them when we tried Pull-ups ay school so he could get through school with out constantly bring up clothes he looked right at the teacher and said "I don't need to use the bathroom I've got a Pull-up on." He would sit in his mess all day and never say a word. I used to change him right away because getting poop out of underware is hard enough without giving it a chance to set in finally his doctor told me to leave him in it for a few hours. I did and he ended up with a terrible rash he could hardly sit down it hurt him so bad and when he complained about it I told him that thats hat happens when you don't use the potty. I of course put a diaper cream on his bottom afterwards but it's helped out. He had to have an extreamly uncomfortable situation to sink it home with him but it worked. Also since he's been on his meds he's seemed to have a better realisation about his body functions as well.it can also be because of AD/HD because AD/HD affects the same parts of the brain that controls the bowel and bladder
Your kid sounds like a typical child on the Autism Spectrum. I never heard of a little Aspergers. It's like being a little pregnant---you have it or you don't. You may want to google Tony Atwood and find a bunch of excellent books on Aspergers Syndrome. Anyways, my son, who is on the Autism Spectrum too, oftne can't tear himself away from his obsessions either and pees in a bottle (big sigh). He is almost twelve so, no, it's not the norm, but autistsic kids tend to be "odd ducks". They also don't respond to peer pressure because they really don't care that much about peers. They have serious social deficits and often like to be alone. For some reason, kids with Aspergers tend to obsess over computers very often! I don't know why. My son has a different type of autism, but he has some of the same behaviors of your son. I would think ADHD would be a very minor part of the big picture here as Aspergers is much more important, treatment-wise, than ADHD. My son took Ritalin for a while because all autistic spectrum kids exhibit ADHD behaviors, but it didn't help him so we removed it. They tend to move around a lot, touch everything, often touch everyone, etc. because they are very interested in stimuli and sensory stuff and want to see how things feel,possibly incluiding the hair of the student sitting in front of them. Some may like to watch paper falling. Mine used to and seemed to outgrow this and has enough social awareness to not do his odd behaviors in front of other kids. However, my son has PDD-NOS, and these autistic kids tend to do better socially, although worse academically. Again, you either have autism or you don't. There are degrees of impairment, but the most glaring is social impairment, obsessions, sensitivity to stimuli and often these kids are very naive. My almost twelve year old is emotioinally more like a very young child. Autistic kids DO grow and mature, but at a slower rate. Some don't reach "adulthood" until 30---some need assisted help as adults. Some aspies learn to be able to live and work independently. I'd learn all I could about Aspergers. The pottying may be partly a matural issue and may be partly due to his intense concentration on his obsessions which makes him not want to leave the computer even to use the computer. A good NeuroPsych can guide you on how to parent your autistic child because they require different parenting than "typical" kids or even kids with ADHD. Good luck :) I love my PDD-NOS son with all my heart because he is my sweetest, most loveable child.Enter Your Email below to claim your Free Book