stool withholding / advice support required

[swisswife]

my 4.6yo boy refuses to poo on toilet. He holds it in (for days)& soils himself. He is clearly in agony as he does this, some days he can hardly walk. Trips out and even simple chores are ruined. After he has made a poo we get our sunny happy boy back, until the pressure builds up again. It also disrupts his sleep. As he wakes in the night needing to go, then can't get back to sleep because he won't go.
We have seen the doctor who has prescribed medicine to prevent constipation and is encouraging us to ignore and pay no attention. Have bought and read all the books.
Each day is a nightmare as I have to gauge how close he is to going and how active we can be. On the worst days he just wants to lie on the sofa all day, or be carried everywhere. Ignoring him results in soiled pants, encouraging him results in screaming fits as we get near the toilet. Can anyone help

Oh dear You have my sympathies as we have been/are going though a similar thing with our 3 yo dd.

She's been able to hold her stools in for upto a week at a time. She's always been infrequent but htis presented after repeatedly soiling her pants during PT. The doctor, after enemas, prescribed laxatives upping the dosage until she effectively had to go daily. If she didn't poo, we had to perform an at-home-enema - not something I can recommend, apart from it's efficiency. She was allowed to ask for a nappy/pull-up to do the poo in to start with but we always offered and encourages the potty.

Now, 2months down the line, we have progressed to daily poos on the potty This is amazing as I am more than familiar with the screaming fits over the mention of doing a poo on the potty/loo.

Just got to wean her off the laxatives now...

Good luck.

Sorry no advice, but watching with interest as we are going through something similar with DD who is 2.4 and still in nappies.

my ds is 4.10 and we have just got him to poo on toilet was a long haul now he goes twice a day was once every 5 days but with meds before

anyway we have a smiley face chart on wall and every time he poo's he gets a smiley face when he done ten poo's he could go to game shop and choose a ds game we had all the chats about how when your 5 you should be pooping on toilet and how if you hold it in it gets really hard and it hurts anyway after 4 weeks he is now pooping all on his own really proud and loving putting his smiley faces on the chart which is now every 12 poo's until we dont need it any more we will go up 2 every time

he realises now that it doesn't hurt any more i never thought id see the day but he has done it

my poor boy was the same lethargic and not eating and so under the weather then as soon as his gone bright as button

i did find first few times i had to virtually be really strict and then i left him to it and used calm approach ok you do your poo call me when your done and then we'll put your smile on the chart

he used to start with cry and force himself off toilet then he would just cry and i would walk off then you heard a relieved voice mummy im done and id be all proud and really praise and say see you didnt hold it in and thats why it doesn't hurt this was with meds and he was going every 3 days

then we got it to 2 days id spot the signs clenching etc saying he wanted to go to bed id take him to sit straight on toilet and just tell him to call me when done

then gradually he would just call im done and started to go on his own this point praise was less and we'd just well done lets put your face on for being a big boy now he is on every day and puts his own faces on and we no longer make a deal out of it

even if none of this works with your ds there is a light at the end of the tunnel this is a boy who for nearly 3 yrs would only poo in pull ups now his independent

Is your son on "Movicol"? My friend had the same issue with her 3 year old son and this really helped. Go back to the GP - your son and your family shouldn't have to suffer like this. If the GP thinks he can't help ask for a referral to the paediatric continence service at your local hospital. In fact, you may be able to self-refer- have a google.

HTH.

my ds was under paed and they did nothing we were just given lactulose and senna and the rest ahd to be down to me working out how to get him to go he loves his ds so figured pre owned games could be a incentive reward and it worked and also me just putting him on a nd saying right do a poo and call me when done and just walking away rather than fussing over him

we had lots of screaming throwing him self about but once he done it once and saw his reward he did it again but was weeks before he independently sat on and went i would just dose him up watch for the signs and take him through every 3 then 2 days and then the less it got the less painful it was and he just started taking himself

so good luck you will both get through this we did and i thought we would never get there he wouldn't even sit on a toilet

smiley faces/stars/stickers did not cut the mustard for my stubborn DD

we needed immediate tangible rewards (little book/fun sized Mars/small toy) coupled with a very high fibre diet

after 2 weeks we reckoned she had established a new habit of pooing on the loo, and had lost her fear. we then "ran out" of rewards, and replaced them with stickers.

we also read "poo goes to pooland" which talks reassuringly about what happens to a poo when it's flushed down the loo.

we had our own stories and yes sorry forgot first few poo's he had instant reward to give him the feel good to do it again i think we did this for first 5 he got sweets a game , magazine etc and the chart came into place as he got the reward idea then and believe me i may make is sound simple it wasnt we had nearly 3 years before any of this worked of complete awfulness

oh sorry forgot we also had packed lunch at school which contained mainly fruit this was when he was going more every day now he has school dinner like his friends as i know his more confident he actually did his first poo round someone else's house the other say and thank god no more being sent home from school because his so lethargic or in pain

at my wits end re my DD withholding her stools. i really don't know what to do next...

She suffered from bad constipation since young age. She is now 3. Repeated visits to doctors for a about 9 months where they kept on giving Lactulose and Senna and finally supotitories.

Nothing altered and my daughter continued to withold for as long as possible and she could hold it in not longer and resulted in soiling her knickers.

Finlly got a referral to see a paedeatrician and he prescribed Movical. This has been amazing as she doesn't withhold like she used to but she still soils her pants.

She will go and hide and do her best to hold it in and when i see her tip toeing and squeezing her butt she will NOT admint she needs a poo.

finally the same result a always... poo in her knickers.

Poos are a good consistency but the fear ti is going to hurt is still there.

she has no interest in her star chart or rewards even when she can see them or days out.

I jsut dont know what to do next?

she starts school next yeat and the last thing i want is for her to be teased or be withdrawn becasue of bloody poo !!! aaarrgghhhh

i try and be as patient as possible but she knows i am upset and disappointed .

ANY advice anyone can offer would be sooo greatly received.

SwissLife your post nearly made me cry - it does effect the whole family life and ruin days out etc.

xxxxxxx

Oh dear SwissWife I can totally understand what you are going through. I have the same with my DS who is 4.9 and started witholding at Christmas when I was pregnant. Since then we have moved house and he has also moved schools. Not Ideal I know.

He builds up for days and then eventually soils his pants x4 or x5 a day which is so boring and as you know totally takes over your life. We have tried everything: changing diet, laxatives, getting cross, getting him to wash his pants, totally ignoring it. Whilst objectively I know he won't be doing it forever and the impact of the changes will lessen, it doesn't help when your hands smell of poo all the time because you are having to wipe his bottom when he soils by accident all the time.

Anyway, I'd recommend "Constipation, Witholding and your child" by Anthony Cohn which if nothing else tells you that you are not alone, 30% of children have a similar problem.

We, I think and hope, are making progress. We reward him for sitting on the loo for a short time after breakfast and after supper even if he does not 'produce'. He plays games on my iphone and i keep it just for that. When he does do one I act like he has won an oscar. His diet is great so no worries there. We also use Movicol. I have also had a friend to Reiki on him which seemed to have an unblocking affect straight away. Good luck and let us know how you get on, we are totally with you !

Hi all,

I thought I would reactivate this thread as my wife and I have an issue with out (almost) 4 year old boy. It is nothing short of a nightmare. We had him on various doses of movicol for the last 18 months or so, but all that seems to do is make his poo like diarrhea and impossible to clean from his bum, making him sore, and making him want to poo less and less.

We are now giving him 5ml of lactilose every day, we have only just started this, but basically he withholds his poo, has to let little bits leak out and this makes his bum sore, by the end of the day he has tensed up, and will not let us change him for anything. Nothing seems to work, we tried the 'poo goes to pooland' story but I think he is now kind of scared of the loo because of the idea he could get flushed down it. Potty training is so far away from our minds at the moment, my wife wants to get to the point where he is passing solid poos into his nappy before we start thinking about potty training, but I am not sure we will ever get to that stage.

Frankly, the doctors we have seen have all been next to useless with this problem, up until seeing this (and other) threads online about this, I thought this condition was really uncommon. It's reassuring to know we're not alone with this. Any advice would be appreciated.

We had a bit of this. It's been resolved by the following. Lactulose daily, high fibre (kiwis, veg soup, much reduced wheat, loads of water) each night after warm bath and before bed sit on the big comfy seat potty next to toys so can distract self if necessary. I think the potty works as its less scary than toilet and squats their legs up so the positioning helps. The daily timing has been important for us.