10yr old boy - poo and skidmarks in pants and room

[hatstand72]

Hi all,

We are at the end of our tether. Our boy is 10 years old and for about a year now we have been finding either very substantial skidmarks in his pants or worse, bits of poo around the house. It's got to the stage that his room smelled last week and we missed one pair of pants and all our clothes smelled of poo after washing.

We are worried that if this starts happening at school or when he round friends' houses, he will end up being ostracised or bullied.

We have tried talking to him and giving targets and rewards. We have modelled how to wipe your bum and how to wash yourself in the shower (the father modelling with pants on). He is very reluctant to talk about it. The way I see it, there are 3 options:

1. He waits too long before going and has mini accidents before he reaches the toilet
2. He rushes to finish and so some escapes after he has wiped
3. He isn't wiping properly.

He says he doesn't know which of these it is, but it "could be"2.

I am hoping that someone on here has had similar experience and has advice - any advice welcome really!

Could it be Medical rather than deliberate? Have you ruled out food allergies like CMPA?

Hi. My son had this for around a year when he was 6. I think the medical term is encopresis and it's often involuntary so you're son won't necessarily feel like he needs to go to the toilet. I think it can be caused when impacted faeces leaks out. My son got a mild laxative (movicol I think) and this really helped. We also went to a homeopath as every time we stopped using the movicol it came back. After that it totally stopped but not sure if that was coincidence or not.

Thanks for the advice. Pretty sure its not CMPA. Will look into the encopresis.