Three Year Old Won’t Poop

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Ever since she was tiny, my three year old has tried to hold in her poop.

She’s been on Laxido for over a year and sees a consultant regularly. But the underlying issue doesn’t seem to be improving at all: she still sits grunting and pulling her legs up to her tummy when she needs to poo, until the urge passes.

It is extremely upsetting for us all - getting her to go to the toilet is always a fight and it feels like it is dominating our lives.

She often poops in her pants: many times it’s just a little bit, because she’s held the rest in, but then every so often, because of the medication, there’s a poonami like diarrhoea.

We toilet trained her at about age 2.5 and until recently she did have bladder control, but recently she has started having a lot of wet accidents. I wonder if this is related to how stressful the whole toilet experience is for her.

In the last few days I have started offering her the choice of nappies or pants, and she’s often chosen a nappy. I am trying hard to dial things back and just not care whether she goes in her pants or in the potty, because I know that the stress can’t be good for her.

But the situation doesn’t seem to be improving at all and I am at a loss to know how to help her. I will of course talk to the consultant when we next see her, but she does seem very focused on medication rather than addressing whatever issue is making my wee girl not want to poop.

I would really like to hear from other parents who’ve been through this, either with advice or just reassurance that one day this will end!

Thank you.

They'll be focused on the medication because 99% of the time that's what sorts the problem. The vast majority of constipation in children has no known cause, but it is incredibly common. From your description, it sounds like she isn't on enough medication. When they've been constipated for a while, old rocks of poo build up in the rectum and stretch it up, which interferes with sensation and makes it less good at pushing. To get better, the rocks need to be shifted (the disimpaction regime where they have more and more laxido until they're pooing shed loads of watery stuff) then they need to be pooing soft poo every day, so that the rectum isn't still being stretched, and can shrink back down to get normal function back. If she stays on only enough medicine to be withholding, leaking, straining, and struggling, then she won't get better, because her rectum can't heal up.

www.eric.org.uk

The problem may be psychological rather than constipation...

My friend's son had a similar problem. He wouldn't go to the toilet for days, he was "constipated" (he didn't want to go). Their family lives revolved around his pooing habits, they will talk about and stress about it even in front of him. They tried different treatments from the GP for constipation, they even give him magnessium, still not working...at the end the GP told them this may be a psychological problem and referred him to the psychologist. My friend's son saw the psychologist just once, then my friend and her DH saw the psychologist by themselves and the psychologist told them their son didn't have any problems at all and all the issues were caused by their behaviour and reactions when he didn't poo. The psychologist told them to stop making a fuss about the poo thing, and most importantly, stop talking to their son and in front of their son about it. Basically, to forget about it and leave the child alone. Believe it or not, that sorted the problem out.

Thanks. I’ll talk to the consultant about it. I hadn’t seen that website before, thanks for that.

Thanks piscis. That’s what I have been trying lately, to make less of a fuss about it. I do think there is a psychological issue at the root of it - clearly there is some reason she doesn’t want to poo. But it started a long time ago, and we weren’t making a fuss about it at first, because we didn’t know it was going to be an issue. It’s really difficult.