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Toilet training children with sensory needs

Toilet training can take time and patience, and all the more so if your child has communication or sensory needs. The information and advice here will help you support children for whom toilet training is more of a challenge.

Yet almost all children can learn to be clean and dry. It’s important not to put off potty training for too long as the longer a child wears nappies, the harder it may be to introduce a new place for them to wee and poo. 

Although children with additional needs often need more support with toilet training, bladder and bowel charity ERIC recommend looking at toilet training as a preparation and learning process as opposed to an event – and advise you start teaching your child potty skills as early as you can. 

Read more of ERIC’s advice about toilet training children with additional needs here.

Many children, especially those with additional needs, won’t be able to show signs of potty readiness until their language skills develop, and some may never give any signs that they are ready to toilet train. For this reason, you don’t need to wait until your child tells you or shows you that they want to use a potty before you start teaching them the skills they need. 

Instead, helping your child learn as they go along, according to what they are capable of at each stage of development, gives them a gentle learning process towards stopping using nappies. 

Children with sensory needs may show some of the following behaviours when it comes to using the toilet:

  • Being frightened or reluctant to sit on the toilet, perhaps because of the open space beneath them or the splash sound in the toilet
  • Feeling anxious about ‘letting go’ of their poo, which they may see as part of them
  • Only doing a wee or poo in their nappy or pants, perhaps going to a certain place or hiding when they do this
  • Liking the sensation of doing a poo in their pants or nappy

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Page last reviewed: 02-09-2025

Next review due: 02-09-2028