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Home › Articles › Bedwetting › Dry Days Ahead

Dry Days Ahead

Helping Special Needs Children Learn to Use the Toilet

By Lyn Mettler

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For many children with special needs, urinary incontinence can be an issue both day and night. Some children simply cannot be toilet trained due to medical problems while others may just take a little longer to learn the skill.

For Angie Carothers, a special education teacher in John's Island, S.C., helping children develop toilet skills is all in a day's work. "These are life skills," she says. "It's a big hurdle for a child to cross, and it helps the parent for them to be toilet trained."

Toilet Training
So how can you help your child learn this all-important life skill?

First, check with your pediatrician to be sure your child is capable, ready and that there's no other underlying medical problem. According to Dr. Stanley Hellerstein, professor of pediatrics at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., children who dribble urine or are wet all of the time may have a neurological problem or a problem with the structure of their urinary tract. "In that instance, a urologic evaluation is indicated," he explains. "This should also be obtained if urinary urgency, urinary frequency, pain on urination or an abnormal routine (malodorous or abnormal color) is present."

If your child checks out okay, and the doctor gives you the thumbs up on toilet training, there are a few techniques you can employ to help you both along the path to dryness.

Routine. Routine. Routine.
Carothers, who teaches children ages 6 to 11 at Angel Oak Elementary School, finds an important part of training her kids to use the bathroom is getting them into a routine. "My classroom is very structured, and the children need to have that structure," she says. "I start by structuring their day so they know when they'll be going to the bathroom."

Carothers' students, who suffer from Down syndrome, spina bifida and cystic fibrosis, go to the bathroom as a group three times a day – when they arrive, after lunch and before they go home. When children are at home, she recommends that parents keep the same, or similar, routine.


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