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Autism news: Watch out for expensive potty training programs September 10, 2018 |
Hello! My apologies in advance for this longer-than-usual email as I have a little more to say today. I had a sudden inspiration to mention something to you, something that has bothered me for a long time. Some time ago I saw a sales pitch directed at parents of children with autism. It was about potty training. They used some serious fear tactics, saying that if your child isn’t potty trained by the time he is five years old, that he may lose bladder control and be unable or difficult to be potty trained. That made me so mad I was seeing red…. I then did some research and found zero evidence for such a claim. It makes me so mad when marketers take advantage of unsuspecting parents of disabled children. They’re taking advantage of the parents’ difficulties and trying to add desperation to their plight. Please don’t fall into such traps. My own son was potty trained at about age 12. He had no trouble with bladder control. When he was much younger I read a book called Potty Training in One Day. It taught a method of, you guessed it, potty training your child in one day. I tried it for my son and, let’s just say you really don’t want to try training an autistic child that fast. I’m not saying that book wasn’t good. I’m sure it would be fine for other kids or maybe mentally disabled children. Any kids except autistic kids. The book said that they had potty trained adults in an institution who previously had to wear diapers. And the adults were successfully trained in one day. But they weren’t autistic. There was no mention at all that they had any trouble with bladder control. Another thing the fear-based-potty-training sales pitch said was that they would have you training your child in one week. As I mentioned before, I would not recommend training an autistic child that fast. As you know, our kids are very dependent on their routines and they don’t take to change very easily. It might be very upsetting to an autistic child to try to make him change his world that quickly. He may even be less open to future attempts at toilet training. The third thing I want to mention is the common practice of online marketers to charge high prices for their information products. I don’t know how much the fear-based-potty-training program was going to cost, but I would be willing to bet it wasn’t cheap. Bob Bly, a successful copywriter, has said that any information you need to know can be found in a book somewhere. That principle has served me well and kept me from going into debt again. If you need to know about potty training (or anything else) and can’t find the information online for free, try looking for a book about it on Amazon. I’ll be coming out with a potty training book before long. I’ll let you know when it is on sale for less than a dollar. But to give you something to try until my toilet training book comes out, in a nutshell I’ll give you the whole concept behind the method I used to train my son. Be patient and take it slowly, even gradually, so that your child only has to bear with very small changes in his world. If you take that approach, he will eventually get there. It may take a year or two, but remember, our kids need the gentle, patient approach. My apologies again that this email was a bit longer than usual today. Thank you for taking the time to read through to the end of my message. Til next time, Kay Donato
Discover Autism Help, LLC https://www.discoverautismhelp.com |
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