Yesterday afternoon was our once-a-month-or-so visit with the developmental therapist at Kennedy Krieger.

We’re working through some issues with her that we don’t feel we’re getting enough traction with in other settings – the first goal, for instance, was coming up with a better system to deal with the Monster’s tendency to ‘elope’ when we’re in public (mostly, admittedly, a concern about him in parking lots).  That goal got nailed down quickly, with a little bit of rewarding and encouraging him to do the work of holding on rather than one of us holding on to him.

Task two, though, was the dreaded potty training, which you’ve all heard ad nauseum from me over the last two weeks.  This isn’t to say that we’re done with it, but this was a touch-base after our week of concentrating on it, so that she could hear how it was going.

Please bear in mind – he seems to do fine at school.  More often than not, he’s coming home in the same pants that he went to school in… but then again, he drinks less liquid at school and the teachers are monitoring him constantly to see if he’s needing to go.  At home, things are very different, and we’re also using that Wet Stop.

When we mentioned to her that we’re getting more hit-than-miss, finally, she was very happy to hear it. She expressed incredulity, though, about the fact that the Monster seems to stop himself and hold it when the Wet Stop starts sounding, mostly based on our description of only finding a wet spot and his continuing to relieve himself once on the toilet.  Apparently, this isn’t ‘typical’ behavior – most kids in his situation, it seems, would just finish going if they already were going.  She also was surprised to hear how we were using the Wet Stop (by putting him in the vinyl training pants and snaking the probe down the front, to avoid messes in the house), and asked us to describe it so she can potentially suggest the same to other parents who are in the same boat as us (meaning, the ones who don’t want puddles everywhere).

We all agreed to shift up the goals to start trying to get him to do more self-initiating behavior – for him to either verbally or by overt sign indicate that he needs to use the restroom.  Moving towards something he could do on a car-ride is still a bit off, but at least everyone’s agreed that this is progress…