Toilet Training Children With Special Needs

Part of the Growing, Growing Strong series, this body care curriculum includes activities and background information to help children develop lifelong healthy habits.

This visual resource helps parents and carers teach girls and young women with autism and related conditions about how to use public toilets safely. It covers the subtleties of social etiquette including where to stand and look, as well as practicalities such as remembering to lock the cubicle door.

This book addresses the issues involved when young children are potty trained in a group setting, such as in the classroom, as well as in the home.

This manual is an invaluable resource for program directors, consultants working with early childhood programs, teacher educators, professional development staff, and other concerned about keeping children and adults safe and healthy.

Every parent raising a young child eventually asks this question: Is my child ready for toilet training? This book helps families address this question by looking for signs of readiness in the child, while exploring the bigger picture of your family’s experience.

This book offers a detailed roadmap for success, including how to gauge readiness, overcome fear of the bathroom, teach how to use toilet paper, flush and wash up and deal with toileting in unfamiliar environments.

In this picture book, we join Tom as he is out and about and needs to use a public toilet. It provides parents and carers with the opportunity to teach boys and young men with autism and other special needs how to use urinals and cubicles safely and to understand the social etiquette.

Dr. Mendy Minjarez, a behavioral psychologist at Seattle Children’s Autism Center, will review best practices for addressing toilet training goals for children with autism or other developmental disabilities.

This recorded webinar offers tips to help families understand when to begin the toilet training process, ideas on helpful equipment, motivators, visuals, and problem solving for children with disabilities.

Dr. Paula Santos presents a seminar for the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles.

Sing, sign and dance your way through potty training with this playful and positive approach which supports any potty training method you choose.

This webinar from the Kentucky Autism Training Center addresses evidence based practices that will help your child become more successful with toilet training.

This video gives advice and procedures for toilet training children with developmental disabilities. Curriculum developed by Dr. Susan Hepburn, Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Denver, JFK Partners is presented as well as vignettes taking viewers through the toilet training process. The DVD concludes with a parent’s perspective on the techniques presented and words of wisdom for other parents going through the toilet training process.

This short video describes intensive toilet training, a technique that can be used for most children, with and without disabilities.

This tip sheet for families was developed by the Illinois Early Learning Project

This tip sheet for families was developed by the Illinois Early Learning Project.

Children with an intellectual disability or developmental delay are best toilet-trained one step at a time. This article describes best practices for toilet training children with special needs.

This article describes procedures for potty training, including the practices with the most research support, particularly for difficult-to-train children (such as children with disabilities).

This article provides strategies that help children with autism overcome their toilet training challenges.

This article provides a visual sequence of the steps to take for a young child to toilet train.