to pee or not to pee

so the past two weekends, I have been attending a seminar on how to potty train children with autism. It was $100, so I thought that was kind of pricey for someone to tell me how to get a kid to pee in the potty, but decided that since Joey was 4 and still in diapers full time that it was worth $100 if I can get him day trained before school starts in September.

So I went to this seminar the first week, and came home with a chart and a plan to observe - liquid in, liquid out, write it down. This was called baseline charting.
week 2 the plan was to look at the chart and start potty training in full force.
'expect lots of accidents' the first few days we were told.

Day 1. Put underwear on Joey instead of a diaper.
This has always been met with huge resistence in the past - hence the reason I haven't really started training him before now. He actually physically resists even putting underwear on to the point where it feels like he has 20 arms trying to take it off to match my 2 trying to put it on - also he appears to have gained the strength of 10 toddlers while doing this, so up until this week we have not been successful with even GETTING it on for more than 3 seconds and he's taking it off. It's diaper or nothing - so we went with nothing for the baseline week

I have been bribing him with gummy bears which are a HUGE treat and are only for toilet training. All through the first week we had some success as long as he was naked,and he was heavily and frequently rewarded. He got gummy bears for sitting on the potty (even if he did nothing) He got gummies for every little tinkle and fart. I gave him gummy bears for putting underwear on. He put the underwear on. "Big boy pants" we call them. but every time I put something on him - underwear/diaper/pullup - he used that instead of the potty. every time.
The first day of real training he peed in the big boy pants. 3 times in less than 2 hours. So I put a diaper back on - this was harder than I thought.

Day 2. I have the gummies, and lots of juice and using every tactic I was taught - he miraculously stayed dry all morning.
The plan is to have him dry in the morning and put a pullup on in the afternoon - we are aiming for dry 1/2 days only.
Imagine my surprise then when he came running in from the backyard "Have Go Pee"!!!!
Without prompting!!
He came in an peed and went back outside - with a dry pullup.
He stayed dry until bedtime.

Day 3. He did it again!!! Stayed dry all day today - even voluntarily used the toiled on his own. He can pull his pants down but doesn't have the coordination to pull them up again yet, so I was working and he came upstairs and found me with his pants around his ankles and he said "pee in the toilet" so I went and checked and yes he did and yes he gets more gummies and yes he stayed dry right up to bedtime again!

And that's where we are right now.
Now if someone told me that it would only take 1 day to train THIS kid - I would have laughed and probably made some stupid kind of $100 bet that they were wrong.
If it turns out that this kid stays dry again tomorrow - I'm going to email the girl who did the seminar to tell her that she is divine and that she is a miracle worker and can she please do a seminar on "how to get kids to eat their lunch that I pack at school" and maybe also a seminar on "how to keep little people from messing up your house". Oh and maybe one on "How to find the bandaids that you bought last week but have disappeared the moment you really need one"