Can’t get her to school

[Motherhoodishard]

Feel like I’m failing as a parent.
Dd, 5, suffers from constipation/being backed up. She’s had tummy aches and nausea on and off for 3 weeks. She’s up and down with it, she can be fine and play etc at some points, but then at other times, has tummy ache, feels sick, has no energy, doesn’t want to leave the house and so on.
She’s become very anxious to go back to school as she gets scared that she’ll feel sick at school and I’m not there or she’ll do sloppy poos etc. I was taking her in and picking up at lunch as she’s worse after eating. She’s now not been in for almost two weeks. School are very aware and have all medical notes off the specialist. I’ve talked to Dd about it lots, I’ve said she should try to go in, I can give her an anti sickness tablet, medicine and any real problems, the teacher will call me and I’ll be straight there (live 2 minutes away) I’ve said she can stay until lunch for a few days at first to get used to going again. She just becomes overwhelmed with anxiety, she cries the night before saying she doesn’t want to go in, then cries and panics in the morning.
After this week, she has two weeks left in school until they finish for summer, she will have lots of lovely activities and the end of year show/graduation. I feel so sad she’ll miss this and her last chance in this class, I also worry if we don’t go back, she won’t want to in September.
She’ll have a v long summer off school and constipation issues will be gone by September.
I’m not sure what to do? Feel so utterly stressed about this, on one hand worried sick she’s missing all this time and on the other hand, I feel guilty for pushing her at times when she cries to me.
She’s bright and i‘m a teacher and can do bits with her over summer, so I’m not concerned educationally.

What would you do? Make her go in or just see how she is and accept she might not return until September if not out of this impacted stage by the end of term?

If she's being seen by a specialist what is the outlook going forward?

If you are scorching this to get sorted fairly quickly I'd be inclined to let her have the time off and try to keep up with reading etc. then if it's sorted by September she won't have the same illness and anxiety.

It really isn't much fun being nauseous and ill at school.

If you are expecting this to be a longer term thing I'd focus more on getting adjustments put in place at school so she is confident she has what she needs.

@Octavia64 I just need to keep an eye on it and make sure she’s not constipated again, I’m doing it with natural juices, magnesium etc and the last time it happened was two years and it’s been managed since then. Hoping I can get her cleaned out and she’ll be back to normal. Just feel sad for her missing it and a bit of a loser mum that my child isn’t at school

If she's doing loose stools are you sure she's not impacted? Sounds like it could be overflow if she's has pain and is nauseous. Has she been scanned? I'd take the two weeks off to try and clear it properly. Has she been referred to Paeds encoporesis clinic?

Surely she should be on some medication eg movicol? My DD (aged 10) has had chronic constipation since very young and is on daily movicol. It's the only thing that helps. No amount of prune juice or magnesium will help if it is serious.

@IseultHam She is slightly impacted, but we’re getting there now, she’s pooing everyday, it varies between hard, small poos, sloppy and good, big, soft poos

ah bless her heart! Can totally imagine why she feels embarrassed

I’d say let her be off until September, like you said it’ll just be fun activities, she’s only 5 not like she’s doing exams etc! You could cause more trauma to her by trying to get her to go in.

Gives you some time to get her sorted, would agree get her scanned and maybe she needs more than natural juices and vitamins xx

@soberfabulous We had Movicol the first time around, it’s awful stuff, didn’t help her at all and had really bad side effects. I did lots of research and was able to get her better with daily kiwi, pear and dragon fruit juices and magnesium citrate. It was terrible at the time, this time seems like it will hopefully be resolved more quickly but is very stressful at the moment

Take the stress off and accept she needs to get better and 2 weeks is nothing, let her re join in sep

What really needs to happen is for her to actually have an incident at school and to see how they deal with it.
Can whoever would look after her take her through what would happen with a doll and roleplay it so she has faith in the system and reduce her stress.

@Starmonkeys Its sad to miss that time though, especially the end of year graduation show 🥲I’m also worried it will impact badly on her attendance, not sure the teacher fully understands/believes it all despite the notes off the Dr etc. It’s so hard as sometines she’s ok, so can venture out or play with friends a bit, but wants me around with her at all times (normally a very confident, independent child. I suppose people think, well she mustn’t really be ill if she was playing at the weekend and so on

Given her age I wouldn’t stress too much over missing the next 2 weeks. Doesn’t sound like you’re failing at all as you’re clearly doing loads to help her 🩷 maybe you could go with her to watch the show and attend graduation for a few hours? She might feel better if she’s with you.

@Singleandproud Yes school haven’t been great at all, she gets embarrassed as often feels like she needs to wee or poo and nothing comes out, so she asks to go to the toilet a lot. Tbe assistant said to her a couple of weeks ago, why do you keep asking to go when you don’t need the toilet 🙄 so I had to explain that part to her too
Its just a sad situation
My worry is it will have been ages off school and then a nice class/teacher in September, worried she’ll have been out too long and will be more anxious not to go

@loropianalover I thought that but they’ll be practising songs/positioning etc the next couple of weeks, she won’t know what to do

I have a son who struggled with bad constipation at this age. I value education enormously.

if she were mine, I think I’d really not push the attendance at her age. Re missing the fun end of term… it’s not fun if she is terrified. She’s 5… she has endless opportunity for fun in her future.

Encourage her, of course, but if you send her against her will and she DOES have accident at school etc it could cause a negative loop and make bigger probs for next year (negative associations etc).

You are really not failing as a parent. You sound the opposite. I feel for you in this dilemma.

For what it’s worth, stewed and blitzed prunes in porridge are good- as is linseed. Gastro often recommend the latter as a constipation aid.

In years to come this will feel so far in the past xxx

@Boomarang Thank you 🙏 I feel so guilty as have been talking to her about it a lot and saying we’ll go tomorrow etc 😢I will just leave it now and tell her to tell me when she feels well enough to go

It is quite likely to happen again (my daughter is 9 and has had chronic constipation since she was 1). It flares up and down. She likely needs to be medicated for it. Movicol just draws water into the bowel to help the poo not be too dry and solid. Realistically when disimpacting you need to give more doses of it to get to runny tea like poo stage and then reduce dosage until you’re on a maintenance dose. It can have some side effects at first but is very effective at helping stop constipation. Are you under continence team? I would ask for a meeting with school and put all the medical issues down into a one page profile for your child and ask them to forward it to all staff so they know that your child might need more toilet trips etc. my daughters school have luckily been really supportive. She does go in every day but when we last did disimpaction which was last year she did have to take the week off

@Greengrapeofhome Thank you 💓We’ve informed the school since the start, they have records etc. We did Movicol for 3 months and it was horrendous for us and something I will never use again. I’m luckily able to get her to poo everyday with the system I use and she’s not badly impacted this time (the first time was terrible and took so long to get better when she was 3-4

My daughter has been like this since she was 4. She’s 9 now, still soils constantly and has intermittent stomach aches. We’ve just deregistered - I don’t have to worry about her attendance, she doesn’t have to worry about soiling at school and it’s already made such a difference to her.

When my daughter was young she has severe constipation. I was not keen to have her on the movicol regularly so would stop and start with other stuff.

Her consultant explained to me that her bowel is meant to be a passage - like a hall in a house. Because of my stopping and starting it had stretched into a waiting room - her bowel muscles were stretched and no longer had the strength to push stool out. He said I needed to give her movicol every day to keep her bowel moving with the hope that it shrunk back and became a hallway rather than a waiting room.

It did shrink back and eventually she was able to come off the movicol.

I suspect the same has happened to your daughter - going everyday is not enough - she has constipation and you also refer to impaction. This has become such an issue she is feeling nauseous, refusing school and its affecting her education.

I would be curious to know what side effects you had with movicol - was she getting leakage? ie likely there were hard stools and she was getting the liquid go around the sides?

Movicol is a stool softener - there are other options. Products like senkot stimulate the bowels muscles.

If your daughter is up and down with her constipation - she is not OK with it. If a child's bowel is working properly - they are not up and down.

As an aside, do you have IBS / hypermobility in your family? Constipation is slow gut motility and can be linked to these things. It's also a little known that some people have constipation as part of coeliac symptoms rather than diarrhea which most coeliacs tend to have.

Diary is also a trigger for constipation but I am guessing you know that.

I am sorry but I am feeling angry on your daughter's behalf - if "She’s had tummy aches and nausea on and off for 3 weeks."...then you are not keeping on top of it. It's not been 'managed' at all - she's feeling sick, is in pain and is refusing school. She needs to go to the GP and you need to work with the GP to find a solution to her pain and suffering.

Both my children and myself had constipation - one of my children had severe issues until she as 8.

I appreciate you think you are trying but it is clearly not working and you need to go back to the GP for your child's sake.

If she's nauseous with constipation it needs more active treatment than she's getting. It doesn't sound like you're getting to the nub of the problem.

Maybe keep her off Thur - Sun and really go to town - whatever your equivalent of a disimpaction is - so she is feeling much more comfortable by Monday. Pooing every day doesn't mean she is better or that you're resolving an underlying impaction.

I would also recommend you talk to the school nurse (probably via phone, number available from school reception) if you're not taking her to the GP.

I don't understand when you say she's slightly impacted if you haven't had a scan. With constipation her bowel is probably stretched and will need retraining to be pooing normally again. She really needs to be seen by a gastro paed or encoporesis nurse- here the school nurse can refer.

Movicol can't really be stopped and started as it needs to be continuous. I don't think juice and magnesium will fix an impaction. Pooing everyday doesn't mean that it's sorted as if she's still doing soft poo and hard poo it's sounds like a mix of overflow and some poo passing through.

She really needs a proper clear out and the maintenance to keep everything moving.

Okay…a few sharp comments here… we’re under a specialist and have been when she was impacted at age 3.5-4, Dd has been ok since then, until the last few weeks.
We have had an x ray and she is slightly impacted, nowhere near the problem she had before. She has been to the specialist twice in the last few weeks, she knows what we’re doing and has ok’ed it. We also use Lactolose but not frequently as this causes more severe pain in dd
Movicol caused huge behaviour problems, the Dr is aware of this and we can’t use it again
Two years ago, she had x rays, scans, many blood tests, she was investigated for everything with no conclusion, she had no allergies to gluten, dairy etc. We cut back on those when she gets constipated

Prebiotics have helped my little one. Biokult infantis every day.

@IseultHam We’ve never stopped and started with Movicol. We were put on it when it first happened to Dd when she was 3.5-almost 2.5 years ago. She was on it for 3 months and it was horrendous, we came off and I was able to make sure she was disimpacted and better, without using it. We’ve never used it since, we’ve not been on and off it.