Anyone had any experience of soiling in NT child 6+ ?

[starsintheireyes]

As title says. Ds1(8) has been soiling for about 18 months now, there doesnt seem to be anything that triggered it. Although weve had alot of life changes-new schools/relationship breakup etc the soiling started before all this.

Hes been seen by hospital whove done bladder/kidney scans (he was wetting occasionally too but that seems to have stopped) but couldnt see anything wrong. Hes had his tummy palpated etc but nothing suggests constipation or anything. The only thing the drs have done so far is prescribe lactulose-which he wouldnt take, and now movicol, which doesnt seem to be having any effect at all. I think they prescibed these as he often seem to (sorry tmi) have quite "sticky" poo and they thought maybe thats why hes soiling.

When asked ds1 will say many things- Im too lazy/I cant feel it etc etc...who knows?

Im getting quite frustrated with the whole situation now and his best mate has picked up on it at school, mates mum has spoke to him and hopefully it wont go round school, but if hes picked up on it, its only a matter of time before other children do, and then he will be prime target for bullying. he already has to have several changes of clothes at school, because he gets in such a mess and smells so bad.

His behaviour previously 1-7yrs was awful, convinced there was something very wrong...aspergers/adhd or something. in the last yr, his dad moving out, and him changing schools has resulted in a different child...hes still quite challenging but on a scale of 1-10, it was 10, its now about a 6, so much much better(to my relief), but it seems hes traded one for the other-behaviour overall has improved and now we have soiling instead.

Ive tried rewards systems, confiscating/removing privilages but nothing seems to work, he seems not bother by it(although i suspect he is really) and will leave dirty pants lying around on the bedroom floor if I havent noticed hes changed-also whilst friends round. I come down hard on him about this as i have ds2 and a toddler, so its not on at all for him to be leaving them on the floor when the baby could step on them/pick them up. i make him put his pants in plastic bags and in the washbasket and he has to clean the bath down after hes used it.

Im posting out of sheer desperation, someone must have experienced this!

Any comments/suggestions/experience very gratefully received, TIA x

just to add, he was also smearing on furniture and wiping himself on furniture(caught him wiping his bum on my curtains one day!!) but this hasnt happened to my knowledge for about 3 months.

Just been googling and found out some info about Voluntary encopresis, seems itrs very common in children with ODD-which is something ive always wondered if he has. God this is so hard...

bump. anyone?

Sorry I can't help but bumping for you. There are some threads in children's health about constipation, might be worth looking at even if it doesn't seem like the cause.

Hi, if you look at advanced search and put in 'encopresis' there are lots of threads that might help this difficult situation.

this is one that sticks in mind, although it is quite old www.mumsnet.com/Talk/general_health/553228-please-help-me-with-my-seemingly-incontinent-8-year-old

Thankyou, Ive had a read. I think im scaring myself because its not just the soiling, it has been the behaviour, smearing, refusal to try on his part etc which seems to point more at voluntary encopresis rather than involuntary

guess its time for another camhs referral.

Yes, refusal here, DD 6 in two weeks, and it is so frustrating.

My brother used to soil himself at your sons age. Mum got soo stressed, upset, angry. He grew out of it I think by about yr 5, but I think if she'd reacted calmly he might have grown out of it sooner. My ds(5) also still soils himself, usualy because he gets so engrossed in playing he doesn't notice, I stay calm and just say 'please try to get to the toilet abit quicker.' - he says he will - noone gets upset and I think he is improving.

well see, at the beginning I was very chilled about it all-I had a horrific childhood and wet the bed till age 15, so ive always been relaxed about toileting "issues" with my children, its only been the last 3-4 months that its started really getting to me, I think because noone seems able to find an answer to it and Im starting to dispair becuase sooner or later the bullying is going to start and with something as "nasty" as poo, I imagen once the bullying starts, itll stay with him through the rest of school as kids wont forget even if he does grow out of it.

Its just so frustrating when he potty trained straight away with no accidents at 3.5 and seemed able to wipe his bum properly etc from then on.

It is the no answer to it, it is the constant you have to poo on the loo and the yes mummy every time and then it never happens. She has done it twice in the past two years. And yes the bullying although we have managed to sort the timing of the medication out that she doesn't have any 'accidents' at school. But it curtails going anywhere after school so to friends houses. And she doesn't care.

I sympathise with this as my ds did this poo in pants routine until he was 9. In the end I tried everything that was recommended by the docs and went backwards and forwards about constipation and or the opposite.

In the end he said that he just didn't feel it coming and then thought it was ok to sit in it for hours. I even made him wash out his own pants as I told him I was fed up doing it for him. At that point he seemed to realise it was a problem.

Now we restrict his fruit intake so poos are a bit more solid so he gets some warning and life has changed so much so he now wears boxers like his mates. .

Thats an interesting point about the fruit, he loves his fruit, always has done and consumes alot of it each day-but this never used to cause problems when he was younger. perhaps this week ill not refill the fruitbowl so its not there to pinch out of and see if that has any effect.

five-echo everything youve said x

I really don't want to scare or upset you but I know 2 boys who are autistic and 8 and are incontinent . I'm not sure if what you describe is incontinence or just laziness . I would ask for a referral ASAP .

I have been through something similar with my dc and I am just coming through the other end so I can only tell you what we have done, hope it helps....

When my ds was 4 (in reception) at school I requested an appointment with the 'school nurse' (she was not based at the school but was part of the community health team and was there fore the person given the role as contact for a number of school in the area and was based in the local health centre) This was beacuse he had a lot of wetting accidents (not always full blown, but often very damp pants and trousers). He had also started soiling occassionaly around age 3 and this was getting worse. To cut a long story short this is the treatment he recieved (I have only included the bits that worked!) My son was seen regularly by the community nurse and community paediatric consultant.
-he takes oxybutinin tablets twice a day for a bladder condition (irritable/ overactive bladder)to reduce the wetting problems. This is a very common condition and is easily treated
-he takes a tsp of lactulose at bed time to try to keep bowl movements soft and eay to pass (TMI?!)
-he takes half a sachet of movicol again to keep bowl movemnts regular and easy to pass. He takes this mixed with juice with evening meal.

As a result, he usually as a bowel movement in the morning (take the lactulose and movicol at night to get things moving before school so you can hopefuly avoid accidents there). We also said that we would help wipe him up after he has been to the toilet (incentive for him to actually go in there and do it) although he now does this himself. Also make sure he has a large drink (pref water) with each meal and a good size drink between meals to help bladder and bowel function properly. Speak to his teacher and make sure they are fully aware of the situation. You can get help in the form of a TA at school if the prob gets really bad, but we did not need this.

Have you seen any medical professional about this? If your son has these medical conditions, they can be worsened by any emotional problems they may have.

By the way, google ERIC, they have so much info on childood continence issues of any kind, its a great website. They also have a helpline, numbers on the website x

yes weve seen professionals since he was 4. At that time it was because of behaviour, as I said his behaviour WAS completely off the wall eg at 2 he was scaling the neighbors trelis at the bk of our garden and escaping over into their garden, at 4 he was climbing onto my garden shed and scaling the wall- a 10ft jump down on the other side and running off down the road-often just in his pants. In yr 1 at school he was running out of school and into town, being restained on the floor several times a week etc etc etc He was angry/aggressive/provocative, basically out of control and way way beyond normal for his age.

Weve gone back and forth between peads/camhs, neither being that helpful- reluctant to do anything but conners scale(although recently had a breakthrough and hes had genectic testing done-dont know results for another few months yet) the problem at the moment is that one wont work with me whilst the other is iyswim, so at the moment hes under paeds due to the testing so cannot get a camhs referral till the genetic results are back.
School are fully aware of the problem-he has his own toilet(disabled one) at school with a plastic bin, change of clothes wipes etc in.

our current paed sees three issues - the soiling/ encopresis, adhd and some anxiety/ social issues. it's a bit of a venn diagram tbh, but although aspergers/ odd etc have all been discussed in the past, a complete psych/ ed assessment just confirmed the three above.

ds1 is just 10 and has been seeing paeds re continence issues for about 5 yrs now. the one thing that has made a difference is the use of an enema routine. all of the other paeds etc have just done the lactulose etc route. this paed said, right, we have to clear you out completely. then from that point you follow your toileting routine and take your lansoyl. if you soil, you get another enema. she suggested upping the lansoyl so that witholding is impossible, and keeping him to the toileting routine. so if he soils, it is because he didn't go to the toilet at the right time.

he had a series of three enemas at the beginning of this programme (3 nights) and we have had to give two enemas at other points. i try to ignore skid marks, but if he soils, he knows he has to have an enema that night.

i actually can't believe it's working, but it is. he really dislikes the whole enema thing, so i suppose it's a case of avoiding it.

school seem really proactive - that's great! ds1 doesn't want me to speak to school at all. at his last school he saw the counsellor for two years.

he isn't fixed, but we're getting there. i hope as long as we keep up the 'zero tolerance' on soiling then it will disappear.

That sounds hopefully, although I cant see him letting me give him an enema...or trying to wrestle a 7 stone lad into making him have it. Bit like the threat of pullups/pads, I have tried that, but realistically theres no way Id manage to get him in one if he protested, hes too big, too heavy and too strong!

yep. which is why the paed made it very clear to him that either he let me or dh do it, or we were to take him to the emergency room at the hosptial in town, and they would do it instead, with no argument.
given that choice, he has so far reluctantly eventually acquiesced. he has tried all sorts of complicated psychological wrangling to get out of it, but we are playing hardball. he's always co-operated in the end though.

Yes.

DS2 was clean for about 2 years and then reverted badly. When he started yr 1, after a tummy bug. It started off as occasional accidents but at some points it used to be quite bad and I am amazed he wasn't bullied about it TBH as it was fairly obvious quite often. He would never give a reason. He would say he didn;t know why he did it and got really upset so we didn't like to press the point. We tried everything including star charts but nothing helped.

By the age of 8 he was OK again but it was a difficult time for all of us. He's 15 now and it seems so long ago but at the time it seemed to go on for ever.

I have no suggestions sorry, but lots of sympathy.