Part of the Monster’s IEP is toilet training.
Now, I know that a lot of you are saying, “C’mon, I had to toilet train my kids. Why are you able to get the school to help you?” (You wouldn’t be alone – apparently, even according to his teacher, the para-professional in his class has said exactly the same thing.)
However, this falls under life skills – the school is willing to add it to the list of things they’ll work on with him, since he’s there for 6 1/2 hours a day (9ish – 3:45 or so), and it is something that he’ll need for the rest of his life. He’s not the only one, as another of the IEP students in his class is also on a similar schedule, so hourly, they get marched off to the bathroom to go sit on the potty.
Of course, this means sending the Monster to school each morning in a pull-up and plastic pants, and receiving him home in a similar state (and usually immediately getting him on the potty to make sure that we don’t have accidents). I assume that shortly after he gets to school, he’s taken to the restroom and there he’s changed into normal training underwear for the day. I say ‘assume’ since I don’t know the precise schedule, but I do know they’re using the cloth training underwear there.
There’s our own debate at home about whether it’s better to try to be consistent. At first, it was more a matter, I think, on our end of not wanting to necessarily have to be watching out for messes. We’re more in the mode now of getting our hands on more training briefs in his size, so that we can try to switch over fully and be consistent with the school.
On the other hand, we’re also trying to learn for signs when he’s going to go. According to his teacher, there’s a few things she watches for when he’s at school, least of which that he seems to go hide in one spot of the classroom if he’s about to go. He doesn’t do that at home from what we’ve seen. He does, however, do this squatting thing when its time for Number Two, which usually means we’re too late. This morning was one of those mornings, and I ended up having to walk out to hold up the bus while he was finishing getting changed in the bathroom.
I know, I know. Very few kids, if any, walk at their college graduations still wearing diapers…