No, this is not a post about any sort of silly potty dance that Shaun does when he has to go. The title is actually a reference to a comment from a friend that I thought was rather fitting. The Autism dance is two steps forward, half a step back.
Last month, I posted this post about Shaun's success with potty training. It truly had seemed like our struggles with potty training were finally in the past. A month passed and no accidents...or at least, very minimal accidents anyway! And then, just as suddenly as it started, it all went downhill again. Now we're back to 4-5 accidents some days, as we were before. It's extremely frustrating! But like stated above, that's the Autism dance...you make progress, you lose progress.
I truly don't know if it was just a fluke to begin with, or if, more likely, it is due to the unexpected change in routine at home. (I won't go into detail, but a few who know us personally may understand what I'm referring to.) For kids (and adults) with Autism, routine is everything, and even the slightest change in their day to day can throw them off majorly and cause setbacks. Since pottying has always been an issue, it makes sense that this would be where we'd see the regression...in the past, we'd see periods where he'd be doing well for a bit, then something would change (daddy would come home from deployment, go to the field, we'd move, etc), and we'd have to start from the beginning. As a military child, unfortunately, those big changes are fairly frequent, and inevitable. But even small changes can cause troubles as well.
Though he is excited about the new baby coming now, we also know that once here, we will once again have to deal with that adjustment (as we would with any child, just more extreme perhaps). And we once again might see potty issues as a result (or behaviors, or aggression...we're prepared for whatever it brings!).
So for now, I'm sad to say that we can no longer say he's potty trained...but I remain confident that he WILL get there before long...it's only a matter of time!! In the meantime, we'll keep trying and pray for the best!!
0 Comments