See Me Go Potty English app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: AvaKid Productions
First release : 01 Aug 2011
App size: 61.28 Mb
See Me Go Potty
The unique, distinctively useful, and exceptionally fun potty trainer.
How it works
1. Use a simple menu to create a cartoon avatar that physically resembles your child/children.
2. Let your child repeatedly play the Go Potty narrative showing him/herself successfully complete the whole process of using the potty step by step.
3. Show your child the Accident Scene narrative to teach what an “accident” is.
You’ll be hearing “I did it!” in no time.
Important features
Fifteen actionable potty training tips included: The app includes concrete advice about preparation, behavioral reinforcement, behavioral shaping, when to continue vs. take a break, and more.
Teaching with positive reinforcement and fun: The Go Potty scene ends with your child’s avatar happily celebrating a successful “I did it!” potty experience. In contrast, the Accident Scene ends with your child’s avatar being disappointed by the “uh-oh”.
Personalization and connection to kinesthetic learning: Children immediately joyfully recognize their cartoon selves, closing the gap between watching someone else do something and visualizing oneself doing something. The supplemental motor area (SMA) of the brain is responsible for learning and planning motor behaviors (actions). Quite amazingly, neuroscientists have shown that imagining oneself doing something involves similar activity patterns in the SMA as actually doing it.
Visual learning is powerful: This app is a great teaching tool for typically developing children as well as children with developmental delays and communication disabilities. The layout is intentionally simple and free of distractions. Your child’s attention will be focused on him/herself using the potty. Parents who have a “neuro-diverse” family know that the teaching techniques we rely on to teach our children with developmental delays also work like a charm with our typical kids. Many kids on the autism spectrum, in particular, are very visual learners, but the power of visual learning is certainly not restricted to them.
Auditory learning and read(/write) learning via simple narrative accompaniment: The animations are accompanied by a simple step-by-step script that your child can readily adopt and transfer to real life. Most children of potty training age cannot read yet; they will simply hear and then mimic the verbal labels for each step. However, many children on the autism spectrum, who are relatively late to potty train, may be able to recognize sight words surprisingly early. A 3–5 year-old child may be able to “read along”, further reinforcing the behavioral sequence.
Background
The See Me Go Potty app came about based on the developers’ experience potty training their three children and is grounded in Ann’s (mom’s) expertise in neuroscience (she holds a PhD in the neurobiology of learning and memory from UC Irvine). They overcame potty training difficulties with a child who has a communication/autism spectrum disorder by creating a step-by-step animated slide show narrative of her going to the bathroom. She readily transferred the process and the vocabulary to real-life toileting and was finally fully and successfully potty trained within a few weeks. When the Smiths’ youngest (typically developing) daughter was ready to potty train, they were preparing to adapt the narrative to look like her, and thought how nice it would have been to have done this for their eldest (typically developing) son, who had been outright defiant to the process. Moreover, they realized how all potty training parents and preschool teachers could appreciate this teaching tool and commenced development of this app.