Our Baby News

Caring for a disabled child can make your daily parenting duties, such as feeding, toilet training and getting them to sleep, more challenging. However, advice and practical support are available to help you cope with everyday hands-on caring, as well as the wider medical, emotional and financial issues. This is particularly important if your child has complex needs.

When it comes to childcare for a disabled child, a lot of the considerations are the same as for any other child. There are a few extra things to think about, such as specialist training or a child’s medical needs. Find out about different types of childcare.

Disabled childcare tends to be expensive. This could mean making extra sacrifices or working longer hours for one or both parents.

The harsh truth is that more often than not, your disabled child will be your responsibility for a lot longer than other regular children. It is never too early to speak to a lawyer and set up a system where his needs are taken care of even when you are no more.

Toilet Training:

Whether you call it potty training, toilet training or toilet teaching, it can be an intimidating task for parents, especially with all of the conflicting advice out there.

Here are 10 easy steps to get your child out of diapers and into underpants in no time!

Time to say goodbye to diapers?
When you and your child are ready, take a look at the ten steps to toilet training.

If you’re not sure where to begin, you might try a three-day potty-training weekend to kick it off. Get advice from other parents and learn what doesn’t help.

Most children begin to show these signs between 18 and 24 months, although some may be ready earlier or later than that.

And boys often start later and take longer to learn to use the potty than girls.

   Instead of using age as a readiness indicator, look for other signs that your child may be ready to start heading for the potty, such as the ability to:

Teachers and caregivers have their own pressures—so many different children at different stages of development. Here are some ways for them to cope with the demands of caring for many children at once, while also respecting each child’s stage of development:

1. Have a bathroom setup that is child-oriented, with a small toilet and other interesting things to do there—books to read, a picture to look at, a pad for drawing while each child sits.

2. An adult who is not under pressure to see a child trained and can serve just as a companion should be available to accompany the child to the bathroom.

3. No adult talk in the classroom about toilet training. Other children can ask “Are you dry?” “Do you still use diapers?” Don’t enter into it with them. This is an effort on their part to understand themselves—by comparing themselves with other children.

4. Be ready to accept each child where he is in these steps toward mastery. Be ready to admire each little step he tries out but let each success be his, and don’t advertise them to anyone else. Ask him if he’d like to tell his parents when they come to pick him up. If he doesn’t, respect his wishes. He’ll let them know soon enough on his own.

5. 

1. Don’t start until she’s ready and asks to “be dry at night.”
2. Don’t start too early.
3. If you do, she’ll be discouraged when she fails, and will be reluctant to try again.
4. Wait until she’s been dry during naps.
5. Wait until she’s able to go without using the potty or toilet for prolonged periods (3-4 hours) during the day.
6. Keep her in diapers or heavy pull-ups until you are pretty sure she’ll make it. Even then, go back to them if she fails.
7. Don’t ever shame her.
8. Don’t act too excited when she is dry after a nap, or when she wakes up dry in the morning. Once again, it’s got to be her achievement, not yours.
9. Offer to put a potty by the side of the bed at night. Buy a special one. Paint it with luminous paint. Call it her own “night time potty.”
10. Get her up before you go to bed. Be sure she’s really awake. Carrying a sleeping child to a potty to empty her bladder doesn’t provide the learning she will need to get up to go at night on her own.
11. Use a rubber sheet under the sheet so urine won’t wet the mattress. This way it will matter less if she’s wet.
12. Limit after-supper drinks—the less the better. But try not to make it an issue. If you do, she’ll feel cheated, or stressed. Neither will contribute to her cooperation.
13. Encourage the child to try to wait a little longer in the daytime before urinating, if she’s interested.
14. If she can hold on to her urine a little longer, this will help increase her bladder control. She can also try to stop and start her urine to strengthen her sphincter (the muscles that open and close the bladder) control.

The excitement of walking, and of being independent, is so overwhelming to a child that this certainly is not a time for a parent to expect any interest in sitting still anywhere—especially on a toilet.

Yet many parents come in for a checkup and say:

“You were absolutely right about the pressure! My parents sent a potty seat in the mail.” Or else: “The daycare center has already asked when I was going to start toilet training.”

“How did it make you feel?” Dr. Berry asks.

“I felt as if I should get going.”

“Can you wait until she’s ready to take it over as her own step?

Parents often reply: “If you say so, but I’d better be successful if I wait. What if I wait too long and miss the cues for when she’s ready?”

“You won’t. She’ll let you know when she’s ready.”

“But I don’t want her to go to college in diapers!”

“I don’t either. And she won’t. If you can wait until she seems ready, in my experience, she’s less likely to fail.”

Still not reassured, parents are bound to ask: “But, I hear so much about bedwetters and kids who won’t go. What are we waiting for?”

   Dr. then lays out the seven early signs of readiness a child will show, and urge parents to wait for them.

For a few months now, much of your baby’s energy has been consumed by her need to move.

Now, as her first birthday approaches, she can get away, and scare herself when she discovers she is “on her own.” Diaper changes are another chance for her to wriggle away to play “catch-me-if-you-can!”

She is so busy, so squirmy, that it takes a very determined hand to keep her on her back when it is time to change her diaper.

A toy wont distract her for long enough anymore. She’s learned that dropping it over the edge of the changing table is too much fun.

As the toy disappears from view, she is testing out whether it is still anywhere at all, and whether it will come back. She is also testing you to see what will happen when you get exasperated!

By a year, a baby has learned to pull up, to stand. This new talent is so exciting that you may as well use it. Let the baby stand on the floor while you diaper her. Let her pull up and down on a railing or cruise on a safe piece of furniture while you change her. She’ll be so ready to try her balancing act that she’ll let you change her more readily if she can keep standing or moving the whole time.

By 7 or 8 months, a baby will be creeping on her stomach.

She may still be going backward as she struggles unsuccessfully toward an object that has caught her eye. On her back, she has already learned how to increase the excitement of diapering. She’ll arch up onto her legs and shoulders. She’ll try to turn over. She’ll show you how she’s learned to move around in this position.

As you lean over to diaper her, she’ll be likely to squeal, and perhaps say “mama” or “dada” to get a response from you. If you turn away to reach for a new diaper, she may either become so active that you must keep a firmer hold, or may quiet as if to wait.

Either way, hold on! She has learned the routine and may at times cooperate. Her face may even say, “Why don’t you play with me? This is my time!”

If you give her a toy to try to distract her long enough to keep her quiet, she may comply by examining it carefully for a few moments.

But then, she’s likely to drop it overboard. She’ll look up at you to see whether you’ll retrieve it. If you do, she’ll drop it again and again, laughing to see whether you’ll play this new game. As you press her belly to hold her down long enough to clean her, she’ll try all of her wriggles.

By 5 months, the diapering game has changed.

The baby will chortle. She will smile. She will reach out to grab your face as you lean over her. She may want to grab for a toy if you hold it up to her. Or she may already be twisting her body, to turn over. Her legs may bend to try to push her body.

 Few babies of this age still lie there passively while you reach for the washcloth, the ointment, the clean diaper. Never take your hand off her! At this age, a baby can easily roll off the changing table and fall to the floor—utterly devastating for both parent and baby.

Parents of an active baby have already become alerted to never leave her, but a quiet baby can surprise parents by her sudden mobility. Give your baby a toy to hold and explore with both hands, to mouth, to hold out at arm’s length and examine, and to mouth again.

She’ll lie there long enough for you to clean her up, rub her with lotion, and diaper her!

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to play again after it’s all done. She’ll still expect the reward of your face and voice. She’ll still squiggle as you lean over her. She’ll laugh out loud if you lean over to kiss her stomach.

We don’t always realize what we are asking of small children when we ask them to give in to toilet training.

First, they must feel a bowel movement coming on.

Then, they’ve got to hold onto their bowel movement, get where we tell them to go, sit down—and do it.

Then, flush. After all that, they’ll have to watch it disappear forever. They’ll never see that part of themselves again!

What a lot to ask of a young child just at a time when he’s trying to understand himself! At this age, children never know where their bowel movements have gone. This question may haunt them afterward.

“Where is my poop? Why have they taken it away from me?”

Many years ago, a very large toilet, big enough for big children to climb in and all the way through, was constructed at the Children’s Museum in Boston.

They couldn’t wait to see where their bowel movements had been going. Children 9, 10, and 11 years old lined up for blocks to try to find out where their”productions” had gone. They were still wondering, even at these ages.