Still in diapers

My 10 year old boy is still wetting his pants. I've had him to the doctor and they found a slight abnormality in his "external sphincter" which makes it difficult but not impossible for him to stay dry. He's never been out of diapers. He doesn't seem interested. Fortunately he goes to a private school so they have accomodated this. However they require that I put him in pants that can be opened for diaper changes. They recommended some velcro ones but I can't afford them nor disposable diapers. So he is in cloth diapers and plastic pants, and I opened up the seam on all his pants and put large white industrial type snaps down the legs. He smells like pee if I don't use baby powder and baby products including baby cologne on him. Sometimes I embarrassed for him and sometimes I think it will help him stop wetting. His diapers occassionally leak at night so I have never taken him out of the crib with it's waterproof mattress. Each year I think about taking him out of the crib and redocorating the nursery for a bigger boy but....frankly it's convenient, appropriate and I think I would miss my baby. How can we move past this?

[margypops]

You are kidding !!

[babygirl6152]

What kind of private school? Is he mentally challenged?

What does dad say about this 10 year old boy still being in diapers and in a crib?
Are you unable to have more babies? Is he the youngest?

Do you have any psychological impairments?

[margypops]

I thought this thread sonded incredulous hence my remark, you are kidding , am still not certain if its for real.

[babygirl6152]

just gotta wonder- I have wanted more babies and I am incapable at this point so I turn to rearing babies short term 2 days a week at preschool... Just never know how far some folks will go if there are emotional impediments

[tractorman]

Sounds like a bit more effort on your part would help him. I would also recommend a chiropractic treatment cause my chiropractor has helped a lot of children with bedwetting and incontinence problems. Be sure he is examined thoroughly by a pediatric urologist and all his history is carefully reviewed by them.  

[mtgoat911]

does your son have autism? i have some experience with this, but i would need to know what he has been diagnosed with

[Dawn8197]

Hi Linda.   I'm not sure of the circumstances regarding your little boy, but I have a similar situation - David is 9 years old, but basically is still a baby as he is mentally challenged.  He is still in diapers, both daytime and nighttime.  I keep him in the crib because there is no need for him to get up and for his safety.   In the winter, he wears sweat pants because they are easy to pull down for changes at school.  At home, he usually goes around wearing nothing over his diaper.   It really is just like having a baby in the house because David is still a baby.  He does have atypical absence seizures that often are status epilepticus because they can last an entire day.  This goes hand in hand with his mental handicap, but there is no identifiable cause.  Nothing wrong with him physically other than he's small  - he's just slow.  It is difficult at time to detect that he is in a seizure because of his handicap.   At any rate, there is no sense in rushing him or pushing him.  That is who he is.   He sleeps in his crib, eats in his highchair, and wears diapers around the clock.  At school he is in a self contained room for mentally handicapped, although once in a while he is included in his regular classroom for special occasions.  We have no plans to potty train him, and in fact, I have 35 packages of diapers that line the wall of his nursery.  He has 4 older sisters that help take care of him...and plenty of babysitters.

[yojojo12]

Well I have Aspergers Syndrome, Emotionaly Unstable Borderline Personality Disorder, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Traits of OCD, Reactive Depreshion, Mild Developmental Delay (mental age 19 instead of 24) and Epilepsy. Im not a baby as such cause obviously im 24, but what might not be so obvious is that im an Adult Baby.
  I wear dapers 24/7 because its a comfort, provides a sense of security, they are something i can trust and there is a sense of warmth. Sometimes it is a good thing as when i have seizures im bowel and bladder incontinent anyway.

I have to agree with tractorman on this one though. The doctor said a slight abnormality, that dosent mean his external sphincter is experiancing a complete mucle atrophy. The question posed by mtgoat911 is also valid if your son is showing no signs of intrest in potty training.

You have a lot of work to do, Im not going to say you are a bad parent because it seems to me that parents dont have a clue how to raise children so most of the time they do it by guess work, winging it from day to day or just doing what other people tell them. I would say start by changing his bedroom to a room more suited to his age, you may need to put cot sides on his bed to stop him from falling out of bed as, sleeping in a crib is very diffrent to sleeping in a big boy bed. You turn over diffrently while sleeping.

Having slept in both a crib and a big boy bed, i speak from experiance when i say that having slept in a crib for a long period of time then moving to a big boy bed, if you fall out of bed when sleeping it can be a very frighting experiance. I put cot sides on my bed for that very reason.

Find something he likes, football, a fravrite celebrity, tv program, film, game etc.. and put some posters up in his room. Get him a PS2 (£20)  and some games this will all contribute to making him feel like a big boy. The next thing you need to start doing is telling him is things like big boys wear big boy pants, big boys dont go pipi in there pants, diapers are for babies, take him to chose some big boy pants, and jst as you would potty train any 2 year old begin potty training him.
But keep in mind that due to the abnormality it might take longer. The external sphincter will have to adjust to holding urine in the bladder in a new way.

This may be near imposable to begin with, so you can count on lots of accidents, i would sugest doing this during the summer holidays. Obviously this cant be done with him going round the hous naked as with a 2 year old, so i sugest you get a lot of cheap pants for him to wear from the charity / thrift shops.

A load of small cheap big boy rewards will help, tell him if he can stay dry for a day he will get a new game for his PS2 or something like that, if he can stay dry for a week maybe an outing to the theme park or something other place he would like to go?

If Autisim is an isse there are several guides on potty training children with ASD's on the internet, and such children are often in diapers longer then others, they ushualy take longer to potty train as well.
I chose these links a long time ago and bookmarked them, a mere coinsidence that they are now all three in a row on the google search result for "autisim toilet training", that being said the order of search reslts shange every day, and it took me a long time to chose these 3 links for someone else, who had a ds with pdd-nos and was still sing diapers.

http://www.tinkletoonz.com/special_needs.html
http://www.autismepicenter.com/autism-potty-training.shtml
http://www.brighttots.com/Toilet_training_and_autism

I think the best out of these links is the 1st and 3rd, the wetness alarm sugested in the first link is desigend to be pt in the underware and could be a usefull tool to aid in the potty training as it gives a audio cue (and i think it is also vishual), to the child so that he knows, when he is starting to go, that he needs to get to the potty.