Reply from Joan, Child's Age 13 - 3/12/02 - IP#: 80.225.17.98

Maggie – I am beginning to realise that although at first glance out boys’ needs are similar (protection for night wetting and occasional day wetting), when we come to look at the detail, the two cases are quite different (apart from the sleep wetting, at night or on long car trips). Whereas your Scotty tends to wet when he gets overexcited (amusement parks, birthdays etc.), my Tom (because of his Asperger’s) very rarely gets overexcited, although he does have tantrums when his routine is disturbed. I suspect his habit of declaring a need for a toilet, at a few minutes notice, is also more to do with his Asperger’s, in that if he is deep in thought about something (usually computers), his brain tends to disregard the need to visit a toilet until the urge becomes so strong that he only has a few minutes to get to one (fortunately, this aspect seems, at long last, to be improving). Tom’s BMs are very regular (once a day, first thing every morning), so this isn’t a risk factor when he is nappied for long car journeys. Also, the facilities in our two countries seem to be different, in that in the UK, family changing facilities tend to be less private and are geared towards babies and toddlers. Once when Tom was 8, I was about to take him into the changing room in a supermarket to change his nappy, when one of the store supervisors came up to me to suggest that I was going in the wrong door, as this was the door for baby changing. When I told her that my son needed changing, she gave me a very strange look. Now that Tom is nearly 14, the embarrassment to both of us would be far worse, which is why I am looking to do our 7-hour trip without a nappy change. The way I look at it is that at night he stays in one nappy for 9 hours, and it is wet for most of that time, so the very occasional 7-hour car trip in the one nappy shouldn’t do any harm (especially as there is virtually no risk of him messing). As far as training pants are concerned, I wouldn’t use them on Tom. For low-risk times, they wouldn’t be needed, and for high-risk times, they probably wouldn’t be adequate, and I suspect that Tom would regard them as being a backward step. We seem to be being pushed in two opposite directions by posters on this board. John and Jinx think we are diapering too much, while Bob reckons we should extend it by introducing training pants. I reckon that we are getting it about right in each of our (different) cases. By the way, have you tried to reason with Scotty that having an accident in the car would make him very uncomfortable and would ruin the car seats, so really he is wearing his diapers for the same reason he wears them in bed (which he now accepts). You could also tell him that my Tom wears them for long car trips and he is nearly 14. Also, there are Fredrick’s nephews (16 and 14). See also Marijke's posting (above). That approach might work. Best of luck.