Strange behaviour in 8 year old, re pooing

[wonderingwhatisgoingon]

Name changer. My 8 year old has had a few issues with going to the toilet when she needs a poo. Basically she tries to stop it until she really cannot hold it any longer. This isn't something that has happened since she was little, this is a new development - happened in the last year or so. So she'll sometimes let off an impossibly huge, smelly whopper after much struggling. I have spoken to her about this, very gently without embarrassing her, and from our conversations what I get is that she is simply too lazy to go to the toilet when she needs to. Nothing more than that. She knows that she needs to go when she has to but every so often she does her suppressing thing and holds out for days.

Today I went to neaten up her bed when she'd left for school. I used to make her bed on weekdays but lately she's been very good about doing it herself everyday, which I was very happy about. However, lifting the duvet up I found that the sheet underneath was full of clumps of dried poo. I feel really, really upset now. Why on earth is she doing this? It seems to have reached an extreme if she's now happy to even sleep in her own poo. I did notice this once or twice before but there was very little and looked like old bogeys. Thought nothing of it and just put the sheets in the wash.

What do I do now? Anyone can help me?

My DD went through this at the end of year 2 and halfway into year 3. I took her to the GP who referred her to a Paediatrician.

I found out that there were a number of reasons that this happened but mainly she was too scared to ask the teacher if she could go to the toilet as they had a rule whereby you could only go to the loo at breaktimes. She was also really stressed about schoolwork and as a result found it difficult to eat properly at set mealtimes and instead would snack throughout the day so that she was never really full enough which would lead to constipation and make it uncomfortable for her to go without pain.

Once I found this out it was really simple to resolve and took about 2 weeks. I changed her diet slightly and included more soft veg and fruit and increased how much water she drank. I also looked at the ERIC website which had loads of good advice and once I stopped getting stressed by it, she calmed down and things went back to normal.

The problem was that she knew it was wrong but couldn't help it and I was contributing to the problem by getting cross with her and thinking it was her being too lazy to go to the toilet!

I hope this helps - Good luck!

Thank you very much ispice for your post. I have taken note of all your points and will look at the website you mentioned too. I think I will see the GP too. The thing about school rings a bell, my daughter doesn't use the school toilets for a poo too, because she's used to using a bidet at home. Though she's like this during the holidays as well.