My Child Is Mocking Me

I have to give my little Natey credit- for someone with limited verbal resources, and supposed “impaired communication” (depends, in my opinion, on what you consider communication), he is certainly making potty training a wild and frankly entertaining ride for mommy.  And yes, I swear to God, my child is mocking me at this point. 

He continues to resist the potty, crying when we take him, hitting us, screaming  no, saying “don’t like”, occasionally “don’t like potty” , “don’t want”.  Anger always makes him use his words, so that’s nice to hear when you usually struggle for each word.  The hitting, not so great, neither is the kicking.  I am not one to ignore my child’s unhappiness, but this is a change in routine for Nate- he is not going to like it- it’s out of his “comfort zone” and for any child with autism this is extremely difficult.  We just have to work through it. 

He has been communicating his dislike for the potty in other ways as well- such as sitting on the potty with me for 20 minutes, walking out of the bathroom and wetting his pants  5 minutes later and then SMILING at me or laughing when I say “accident” and “uh oh” .  NOT funny.  OK, a little funny. 

He still likes to watch his little social story video about the potty sometimes.  It goes something like “go potty please.  Walk walk walk to the bathroom, pants down, sit down on potty, I’m going pee pee….” Etc.  Well I took him to the bathroom the other day and he was not happy about it.  He sat down on the potty and I whipped out my iphone to show him the story.  As the app was loading he looked at me with this sarcastic little grin on his face and said “walk, walk, walk”, and then started laughing.  Mocking.  Me.  He has never repeated words of a story like that before though, so actually it kinda made me well up a bit. 

He capped off the past few days of fun today by stalemating me from 7 am to almost 1pm- nothing- not a drop.  I decided I would give him a taste of his own medicine.  We were gonna sit there in the bathroom until he produced some results!  I was working on a test for work while he watched a movie on my phone.  After about 40 minutes, I looked over and he was going!  Halleluiah!  I praised him heavily, gave him some marshmallows- he smiled, and proceeded to drop my iphone right into the full training potty.  UGH.  

Somehow, even when I won, he got me!  Damn it!  Now my phone sat in rice for about 6 hours and is working fine, except the charger won’t fit in it, so I suspect a grain of rice is lodged somewhere where I can’t see it, which means a trip to the iphone store.  On the bright side, he stayed dry all day today!  That is the second day so far in let’s see, 11 days of potty training, which may not sound like a lot, but it is two more days than he would have had if we weren’t trying, so I’m pretty happy about it. 

The kid is a force of nature.  I am telling you, he is SMART.  He is so “in there” and just taking his own sweet time showing himself to us.