As I’ve mentioned a number of times, one of his IEP goals for the coming year is, with fading prompts, to get the Monster to announce to us – on his own – when he needs to go to the bathroom.

At school, he’s on a relative schedule – they take him to the bathroom before/after lunch, once or twice more throughout the day, and then before he gets on the bus to go home.  Since sometime in the fall, they’ve moved to a classroom that has a bathroom actually in it, so that they don’t have to take the kids (several of whom are in the same boat ) through the hallway to the bathroom.

At home, it’s kind of hit or miss if he manages to get there (though more hit than miss lately).  The difference is that he needs to speak up and say something when we’re at home, since we have the baby and can’t always be paying attention to him to see if he needs someone to run him to the bathroom.

Lately, it’s getting better, especially since I’ve started reducing his rewards for successfully toileting if he didn’t say something to indicate a need to go first.  We have the occasional miss (usually #2 rather than #1)… but then there’s mornings like today, where he clearly indicated that he needed to go with enough time to get him down to the toilet without an accident.

The next step is going to be the harder one to accomplish – getting him to use a universally recognized and acceptable phrase to indicate a need to go.  At the moment, we’re dealing with shouts of “Potty! Potty!” when he needs to go.  It suffices but would hardly be appropriate in shul.  We’re aiming more for a “I need to go to the bathroom” (or even a “I need bathroom” or “I need to go”).

But, frankly, this is a vast, vast improvement over watching for the pee-pee dance…