Before the Potty Party: Preparing Practitioners for Toilet Training

Abstract There are limited resources specific to preparing for and developing individualized, intensive toilet-training programs for individuals with developmental disabilities. This has resulted in practitioners omitting critical steps within the program-development phase and hastily including unnecessarily intrusive training components, leading to unfavorable training contexts and variable caregiver buy-in. The purpose of this article is to discuss ethical and practical considerations for developing intensive toilet training programs. We do not provide guidance on toilet-training protocols, as this has been extensively described elsewhere. Instead, we offer recommendations to bridge the existing gap in the literature for toilet training planning that is focused on medical considerations, risk assessment, choice to participate, data collection systems, and caregiver collaboration.