7-year-old starting poos in his pants

[CautiousOptimist]

Has anyone been through something similar with an older child please?

I realise this is common in, say, 3-year-olds. I think it started when he began school age 4. He’d come home with ‘skid marks’ or a bit more than that in his pants often. We talked about it and I realised he didn’t like doing poos at school (fair enough), and was getting blocked up. I started getting him to sit and do one before his bath every night, he was pretty regular and the problem reduced.

Except that he’s now 7, and it still happens sometimes. We’re on holiday atm so a little less regular with bathtimes etc, and it’s happening daily. ‘Oh, I’ve done a poo in my pants.’ ‘Why have you done a poo in your pants?’ ‘I didn’t feel it coming’, he says, or ‘I was too busy having fun playing’.

I’m a bit fed up of scrubbing poo out of his pants after 3 bloody years of it happening occasionally and sometimes often, and am wondering whether there’s anything I can do?

I’ve tried talking to him, saying it’s not very nice for him or anyone else (he agrees), asking whether he likes the feeling of doing one in his pants (he says no), telling him he needs to make time for it and listen to his body and go when he needs to. Nothing seems to get through to him. I honestly don’t know whether it’s physically in his power to stop it.

Any thoughts? Thanks very much for reading this far!

I’m going to get flamed for this but make him hand wash his pants? If it doesn’t stop, take him to the gp to establish if there is a medical reason. Or perhaps the other order!

Could he be constipated? And constipated as my son's gastroenterologist corrected me doesn't mean not pooing every day but not emptying the bowel.
My son, at the same age, started soiling his pants, and an x-ray showed hard balls of poos everywhere. He looked like a drug mule.
Liquid and softer faeces would run around the balls and made him soil. Because the intestine is stretched from the hard poos, the nerves send no signal to the brain to go to the toilet. He would only feel it as it was passing his anus.

I think you should consider constipation, and talk to a doctor when you are back at home. HE can't help it.
Movicol will soften the hard poos and slowly nerves will be acting again.

Thank you for this, I have wondered whether it might be something like this. I’ll book the GP.

Severely constipated children will alternate between soiling underpants, a bit or a lot, and having massive poos that could even block the toilets.
At first, I was like you, so annoyed, until the doctor explained that when there is poos moving down the intestine, it will stretch and that stretching sends the signal to the brain, however when already stretched, no signal goes and it is only when it reached the sphincter, and starts passing through, that other nerves let you know.

He has no way of helping it. You can't feel what you can't feel. It is not his fault and you should explain it to him. I used to draw a boy's torso and the snake of the bowel.

Movicol is a softener, not a laxative, it will draw water to the hard poos. It needs to be treated to avoid importation. We had to make a night trip to the hospital as my son was in crazy pain and they perform enemas on him.
Today , many years down the lines, he is still not 100% ok. If I start seeing dirty underwear , we do some movicol for a week, and I now have micro lax in my pharmacy.

You must also investigate what started the constipation. For us it was the trauma of moving to Australia. He started ripping his nails, and walking hunched like an old man. Took him to osteo, after 5 min she asks me to come out and asks what is going on at home, because it wasn't his back but the muscle on his chest so contracted they caused the back curvature. He was holding his pain and feelings and holding his faeces was a reflection.

The gastro told us to eliminate dairy but it would take months and years to reeducate the nerves.

Avoid impactation not importation