Those of you with older children - tell it to me straight...

[sphil]

Does the poo-smearing ever stop?

DS2 poos in the toilet if we are there but if we're not, more often than not he goes in his pants and scoops it out with his hand. Most of the time he attempts to put it down the loo, but occasionally just dumps it on the floor of his bedroom and/or bathroom. In the process walls, bedding, towels etc get smeared with crap.

If this is a phase and will eventually stop, DH and I can probably bear it. But if it's likely to continue for years, we need to know, so we can think about what action to take.

So I need the truth - no being kind!
TIA

Oh Sphil

Ds2 stopped doing the poo smearing once he was completely out of nappies and pooing all the time on the toilet if that helps. He is only 4 though and not an older child.

Ds(6) has never used the toilet for a poo. Always goes in pants and I'm getting a bit fed up with it so watching to see if anyone comes up with ideas.

Ds just shouts the smell, the smell over and over and over again!

Hope you get some answers and you are not alone.

DS2 is completely out of nappies - has been for 18 months. Never ever has wee accidents.
We've tried putting him back in a nappy at night but he just takes it off. Funnily enough, the exception to this is when we go camping, when he wears a pair of pyjama pants quite happily.

It seems to have finally stopped or greatly decreased when DS2 was 12.

dd2 is 8 and not continent and constantly constipated, and often fights not to let me change her...

Does it end?

Let me know too....

Sorry Sphil, I meant when he stopped having accidents in his underpants.

He was very much a smearer before that.

It just seems to progress - then we have a huge regression. And he's so bloody cheerful about it!!

DS is 14 and still tries to get his hand in the poo (and then my hair as he's pulling it). He is severely disabled though. A big achievement has been that he can do a poo on the toilet fairly regularly (though seems to have regressed recently). Would like it all to stop too!

ds1 only smears if for some reason he doesn't make it to the toilet. Very, very rare. So I think your aim/focus is to get ds2 onto the toilet 99.9% of the time - even when you are not there. Lord knows how though.

DS1 responds very well to a mix of carrot and stick. So 'do this and you'll get x' works but 'do that and you won't get y' works even better. He's only recently understood that sentence construction though - and I know it goes against all the reinforcement in the land but there are so few things he likes or can be bothered to work for that threatening to remove something he likes (usually an activity- train ride/swimming/camping/horse riding etc) works better than trying to find an instant reward that he couldn't really care less about.

I think the first step to understanding it was developing a sense of time so once he understood that he goes swimming on Sunday then 'or you won't go swimming' made some sense if you see what i mean.

How are his guts though? Obviously that will make a difference.

He understands 'do this and you'll get X' but only if it's immediate. I think the same would be true of the 'do that and you won't get X' and I can't think of an X he has in his room at bedtime that could be taken away. We have started showering him instead of bathing - he dislikes the former, though not strongly - but we felt that maybe it wouldn't be as reinforcing as getting another bath.

I am borrowing my friend's baby monitor camera tomorrow - it'll enable us to keep an eye on him without having to sit outside his room for hours (which he loves) and I can see that we could try a system of fading prompts, like calling 'DS2, toilet' up the stairs for example.

The point about the guts is a good one - he was stealing cereal on a regular basis a couple of weeks ago (We didn't realise he could reach it - DS1 caught him!) The effects were very obvious - behaviour and bowels. His bowels are back to normal more or less but I think the 'gluten effect' takes a long time to clear from his system. Then he had a minor sick bug last week and we changed his bread for a couple of days (couldn't get the normal mix) to one that had yeast in it - so all this could be having an effect. But tbh he does it on and off all the time.

i work in special ed also have a SN son[36]
i work with leavers 18/19year olds and one of them smears all the time. unless we go into the loo with him, but we always have to have someone else outside the slightly open door.for our saftey and his human rights.
we often get covered in it if we dont go in as he rolls it into balls and waits for us to open the door and flings them at us.

myra

With ds1 the 'you won't get x' can be a few days distant, or something like going in the bus to school (not that I'd ever stop him) or even better a train trip or something he know he's going on but it seems to work in a way that trying to find an immediate tangible reinforcer just doesn't (mainly because I think he just doesn't care enough about toys, or books or food or anything really for anything to work as a reinforcer, not a strong one anyway).

camera sounds a good idea.

When ds1 started wetting the bed again after being dry for a year or so it was completely behavioural. he LIKED the wet bed. Would strip off, wee and enjoy it. Eventually he decided he didn't like the waterproof duvet, so I told him he had to keep his nappy on if he wanted me to take the waterproof bit off. And he did. Once he wore the nappy he was quickly dry again as he wasn't getting his lovely wet soggy bed that he liked so much. I'm sure the first time was an accident but that set it in place for a year or so. If ds2 likes poo smearing (and if you've ever heard Roz Blackburn speak he may well do- she loves it!) then I guess it's trying to find a way to break that feedback. goodness knows how, if ds1 hadn't suddenly gone off his waterproof duvet he'd probably still be wetting several times a night every night and enjoying it.

But the positive is you may get taken by surprise suddenly!

We tried the camera tonight - sooo interesting. He was dying for a poo - can tell because he does a stiff-legged walk - and went in and out of the bathroom loads of times. The problem with the camera was that I couldn't get it in a place where I could see into the bedroom and bathroom at once - but we could solve that problem with a wall mounted bracket. But even where it was I could tell that he knew what he should be doing. The difficulty is that he tends to do little bits of poo first before the big one (sorry if tmi!) and because they stick to his bum then he uses his hand. But what the camera made obvious is that he is pulling pieces of loo roll off when he does this - it's just that he doesn't have the motor skills to do anything useful with it afterwards. I ended up running up and down the stairs whenever he disappeared off camera - but at least I did catch him about to perform and made him sit on the loo (which he does without fuss - it's just that he needs telling).

The best thing was later on - I was in kitchen and saw on the monitor that he'd taken his PJ bottoms off. So I yelled up the stairs ' DS2, out some trousers on!' without much hope he would respond but then on the camera saw him go to the drawer, take out some pjs and put them on! First time I've ever seen him respond to a long-distance command .

Fab at responding to the command!

This is the sort of thing that would have led to ds1 smearing. It tended to be when he got in a mess. I suspect if his guts hadn't sorted themselves out (he produces very cleanable poos) hecwould still smear.

Ds3 - five and NT but with autistic guts - produces lots of sticky/messy poos and I caught him smearing yesterday! Not loads in the way ds1 would have but he got some on his finger and reached over to wipe on the wall!!! I caught him before he reached it. Never has this with ds2 but he's never had auti guts.

Oh that is interesting - DS2's poos are so much better than they were, but still sticky at times. Who do you think is best person to see for gut problems in our area? We still use MA but he has gone off boil a bit tbh and seems to be so recalcitrant about any sort of testing. I really need to know what exactly DS2 is sensitive to - there's no doubt that when we get the diet right his behaviour and bowels are very good. But getting the diet right is very hit and miss, especially as I'm constantly aware of the need to expand his food choices. He is much less keen on taking the supplements than he used to be - often leaves a full bottle at the end of the day and chooses plain water (don't blame him really!) So I'd rather go down the diet/enzyme route in a way. MA's regime has helped him hugely - but think it needs review.

Sorry - bit off the point of my OP. And why I'm typing this when we have 40 mins until we leave for school God only knows

Oh I have no idea. I have been wondering whether to do something with ds3. The people I know tend to use people who do a lot -e.g. chelation, and I don't want heavy duty intervention for ds1 or ds3. It's hard. I remember Mandi saying she thought it was better to do it yourself!

It might be worth seeing someone very conventional. The neuro we saw at Bristol was very holistic- by which I mean he really did consider/was happy to talk about everything and he mentioned diet etc as well. I was impressed with him. It might be a place to start and it's leading onto certain testing with ds1.

Or join Autism Biomedical UK (a yahoo group) and ask for recommendations. Breakspeare is often used as a place to get tests done I think.

DS1 doesn't poo smear any more although other similarish stiff goes on still (food smearing mainly though we can handle that )

DS3 stopped when we got him trained, if he has an accident now though he still smears like MrsT's son.

Yay for long distance commands

WRT to paper, use wipes. DS3 has similar issues with paper but wuipes work fine, easier to pull and far more effective when barely wiped.

And if teh camera thing is a goer and you want help installing antyhing shout: right in DH's field these days LOL. If he can swing around on TV cameras he can install bits if you need anyone to do (and mroe importantly can sign off as sparky for you for no charge)

Thanks Sancti - that's v kind - I'll let you know. One I found on internet has a wall bracket so I think we will probably be OK.

I don't feel confident enough to do the biomed myself, though I probably should. God knows we're spending enough on supplements that he's not taking! Must have another look at Treating Autism - is that the one with the 'Getting Started' section?