My ASD son (15) marking his territory. 💩

[LizzieBowesLyon]

I promise this is not one of those weirdo threads. I’ve been around for yonks and have changed my name to protect him. He’s at mainstream school, holding steady on GCSE but is very square and socially awkward. We have had problems with stool withholding/encopresis for ages and he doesn’t seem willing to regulate his bowels properly and also seems to be almost nose-blind!

After something of a breakthrough on comms today, he has admitted that he hides pants with poo in “to mark his territory.” He did it on holiday - on the last day one of the other kids noticed a quite deliberate stripe of poo high up on the bathroom wall. DS admitted this was him too.

He has also been known to scrawl/mark the walls a little but that’s reduced to almost nothing. This however drives me insane.

ANY helpful pointers would be good.

I don't doubt you've done everything you can so far, but I meant that today's admission from him that it's 'marking his territory' gives it a new slant which perhaps needs harsher boundaries. Is he genuinely just not disgusted by it? Is there anything that does disgust him that you could use as a comparison to show him what it's like for you?

@LizzieBowesLyon it's not an area I have particular specialist knowledge of as I wasn't the one dealing with that specific part of it but my colleagues taught me not to challenge or over react but be fairly matter of fact. I did have one client who I could tell was really wanting me to react as he would point out the items in question so I can see the attention seeking aspect. I know that in those with mental health disorders it can be linked to hoarding tendencies, grief and loss and also anxiety/OCD issues. I think obsessive collecting can be an ASD behaviour though can't it which can be a form of hoarding? it really made me think when you said about toilet training and needing to say "goodbye". Your son is doing fantastically to be in mainstream and doing gcse's but I imagine school is a really daily challenge for him and it must be hard to deal with those feelings of functioning in a NT world and releasing all those stresses, I was a poo withholder (hospitalised etc) myself and as an adult I still struggle to let go of stress and feelings .

So your latest method of showing disinterest sounds sensible. Perhaps he’s getting a kind of thrill out of others’ horror and disgust as well? He could be ‘marking his territory’ secretly, then waiting in eager anticipation for the evidence to be found and the reactions to start.

If the reaction he got was almost pitying boredom and disinterest, then hopefully this behaviour would reduce. Obviously you’d have to school his siblings about how to react.

To my mind, a compulsion is more beyond someone’s control. A behaviour that seeks a gratifying payoff is much more of a choice, even if it has become a bit of a habit. The latter is easier to control.

I’d also think about what he dislikes or what concerns him. For my DC it was embarrassment - they don’t like to be seen as silly/wrong in front of others. That was a handy tool that I used very matter of factly to reduce some behaviours. They wouldn’t stop because I told or asked them to, no matter how much I explained, but an ‘ah well, I’ll just have to tell…’ really got through to them and they took it on board. I think this was because the motivation to amend their behaviour was for their benefit, and it was that that worked best not any appeals for kindness to others or vague ‘that’s not what we do’ explanations. Their motivation to change was a benefit to them.

I hope that’s comprehensible.

I have a book called 'The A-Z of therapeutic parenting' by Sarah Naish it is aimed at parents or foster carers of children who have a history of trauma. there is a section on poo issues. I haven't used this section, but other sections that have been relevant have been very useful.

Who cleans this mess up?

@LizzieBowesLyon I would have this moved to the SEN board or you will have more of the ignorant responses you have seen so far.

Some people just don’t understand what it’s like to raise an SEN child and posters saying this is the most disgusting thing they’ve heard are NOT helpful and are clearly forgetting this is a disabled child they are talking about!

I would find a therapist who has some experience in this is possible. He's not 10 and you say he is 6'2. Soon he'll be an adult and sadly the patients people have for a child people will not have for a 6'2 teen and his habit can get him in dangerous situations.

This needs to be moved to SEN board
Some of these replies show people have no clue or understanding of autism and SEN .
Seriously op
I'd ditch this thread and start one on SEN board x

I also think you need bigger help here.
I know you said he did it on holiday, but is this a home thing or does he do it at school too?

Is this a sensory release after masking all day I wonder and, if it is, then is there anything else you might be able to replace it with?

I had encopresis at his age too(undiagnosed),I was getting bullied at high school in the bathroom,so I quit pooping at school completely,plus at home I had to share a bathroom with 3 sisters .
So I rarely ever got time to poop in privacy and for the length of time I needed to pass a huge painful bm from days of witholding.i also had terrible diet ,no fruit ,only cheese and bread basically.
I began bleeding in my underwear,and sure enough mom found it and dragged me to the doctor asap.I had developed mega colon, hemmoroids,and fissures all by age of 15.
This was in late 1970s ,very little treatment was available for what the doctor thought was just regular constipation, when in fact the real cause was encopresis.
My mom was a nurse ,so the doctor told my mom to give me weekly Fleet enemas(since I had bleeding hemmoroids it wasn't safe to give the enemas to myself),until my colon shrunk back to normal size .
doctor said it might be a year of enemas and no cheese till I was healed ,it wound up taking 3 years of enemas ,because I had encopresis and didn't tell anyone.

I used to withhold stools as a child and in retrospect I think it was rebellion against too early and strict toilet training by my mother. Always mum's fault!

Yep I blamed Mom too lol,a lot of us hold in cause we know how painful it's gonna be to pass the brick in our rectums

I second the psychoanalysis suggestion, if he has enough self awareness. The analyst would need to be aware of the attention seeking drive though. The hoarding (encopresis) and attention seeking/ marking tendencies need to be addressed. I know you probably have this at the back of your mind, and it's probably distressing, but he won't be able to live independently in a communal university setting or beyond if this problem continues.

Meantime, can the bedroom doors of other members of the family be locked all day to prevent him entering and committing this marking behaviour?