PLZ HELP! Toileting troubles, Lies and difficulty co parenting.

[ILLJ]

Hello, I’m new here and was seeking advice and opinions, I’m a mum and step mum close to tearing my hair out. Apologies for the long read, there’s a lot of info to consider.

Heres a summary of the situation so that you can understand the background and subsequent dilemma here:
My partner and I have his daughter (for anonymity we’ll call her M, age7) half the week every week, and my daughter (age 4) all the time.
M’s Mum is a qualified counsellor, v intelligent, v manipulative and v challenging to co parent with as has a lack of boundaries and lack of respect for my partner and myself. My partner is a v involved and present father and always has been going above and beyond to be a good dad.

M has never gone more than 2 weeks without soiling in her life, and her mother is of the opinion that it isn’t a big issue as she herself was doing it till age 6,7, then 9 (the self comparison keeps changing). It only becomes an issue for Mum when the soiling inconveniences her plans, then she will tell M she is being lazy or making bad choices - otherwise she makes excuses for it (e.g Tired, has a cold, tummy ache, didn’t feel it etc.). However she has now come round to the idea that M is making the choice to ignore bodily signals in order to continue what she’s doing, then soiling and sitting in it till found out.

The school put a care plan in place to get to the bottom of the problem and get medical professionals involved to solve the issues. M’s Mum has gone off plan and believes she knows best so doesn’t consistently follow the plan provided by specialists. She believes it’s only an issue when they get to secondary school and are doing it, and that soiling at this age is v normal. We have tried to stress that a Carb heavy diet of fast food or “meal deals” isn’t going to help the possibility that she could be constipated, but they are a regular occurrence when she is not at our house.

We are trying to get M to be honest about when “accidents”/ bad choices have been made so we can get her cleaned up ASAP, we got to a fantastic place of transparency where she would tell us immediately and we’d get her cleaned up, or she would clean herself up discreetly with privacy. Then we encountered a huge setback that was down to a toilet chart being implemented by Mum and the school that peers could see, this set M back into a place of concealing it and sitting in it for ages.

We are still having soiling, and M seems to be holding in number 2’s and then soiling and sitting in it, we’ve explicitly said there’s no punishment for “accidents” we want to help keep her clean and prevent soreness and infections, yet she is still fibbing about them and hiding them and sitting in excrement. She seems to have a skid and then refuse to finish the bowel movement and holds it in which leads to another “accident”.

I am at my wits end, we have tried every approach we can think of to help her through this soiling to get clean and dry, but she just doesn’t listen and act on it. We have passed the possibility of it being a medical issue as we have followed a course of laxatives to rule out chronic constipation - it really seems to be a psychological block that she can’t get over. She is having healthy bowel movements at least once a day every day.

Basically, what I’m asking is… should there be a consequence for lying? And if so, what should it be?
I am fully aware that she may be hiding it out of embarrassment or shame - however she doesn’t actually seem to be bothered by either of those issues, the problem seems to be - that she doesn’t want to stop what she’s doing to go get cleaned up for Fomo.

We are fed up of cleaning number 2’s out of pants, and sometimes it’s 3+ pairs a day. I am also fed up of being lied to. The toileting habits and lying seem to be rubbing off on my child and it’s now Twice the work to sort out.

Thanks for reading 😞

Hi 👋🏼
I’ve just had a google of this and it seems related to movement and balance etc.?
she’s a fantastically agile kid who does gymnastics and football, has brilliant hand writing, etc. etc.

So I’m unsure whether this applies to her?

I suspect the poster may have meant to say interoception.

That seems more possible as sometimes quite small interactions can lead to ragey meltdowns and she has also said “I think I’m just used to doing it, and it’s normal to me, and I don’t know how to make it not normal” so it could be a possibility!

Oh the poor pet. It’s such a difficult issue to deal with. It’s such a shame that her mother didn’t do the disimpactation properly.

At least you are being really positive and not punishing her.

It’s hard because we’ve said to M we’re on her team, we’re here to help. But it seems all hard work we put it Mum undoes, I do think that if we had her majority of the time that we could help her get through it and it’d be sorted.

You can get a jump start on the transit tests by doing the sweetcorn test (it’s on Eric website).

Would help inform the medical side of things and narrow down the thinking there.

Making soiling more inconvenient than using the toilet, and praising positive behaviours works well for my daughter. But she’s younger.

Yup. I did.

Brain is not braining today

I had a lot of issues with my eldest soiling.

Turns out it was interoception - an autism diagnosis came just a year later.

That’s still punishment related to toileting. She is lying to avoid the punishments anc/or public shaming her mum is doing.

Thanks I’ll look specifically for that later!

she has a real disdain for going to the toilet. She says “it takes to looooong” however she’s usually in and out in under 10 mins for a poo, so not like she’s trying really hard to push a stubborn constipation poo out.

We’re gonna try and stress to her that stopping what she’s doing and going to the toilet means she can get back to whatever it was that she was doing much quicker than having to clean the mess up. So I wonder if pausing whatever she’s doing when she goes to the toilet and not pausing when she’s cleaning up would be an idea? It’s not a punishment - more of a natural consequence of choices/decisions/happenings.

I agree with going to bowel specialists and looking at sensory and behavioural issues. I also think zero punishment for any of it. You’re not on her team if you’re also going to make her feel ashamed and naughty for a different aspect of her struggle to be continent.

We have an honesty policy where they won’t get in trouble for telling the truth, they are praised for it. We use it in regards to lying about anything like e.g tripping over her little step sister.
so when I ask in regards to toileting I say “hey, honesty policy, are we all good in the pants department right now?”

when she does lie we simply say “we’re disappointed you lied about it as we want to help” and it ends there - no punishment.

“We’re gonna try and stress to her that stopping what she’s doing and going to the toilet means she can get back to whatever it was that she was doing much quicker than having to clean the mess up. So I wonder if pausing whatever she’s doing when she goes to the toilet and not pausing when she’s cleaning up would be an idea? It’s not a punishment - more of a natural consequence of choices/decisions/happenings.”

I would not as this can be caused by severe ADHD. You can stress to her all day, talk to your blue in the face and she still won’t be able to stop until you get to the bottom of why she can’t stop an activity. You’ve said she is intelligent for a 7yr old, so to me she would if she could. This would also increase fear of missing out and stress so when she feels she a poo has emerged (I don’t think she feels the pre poo urge for some reason) she isn’t going to admit she needs to clean up.

She is under a bowel specialist. We are following their guidance when she is with us.
We don’t punish when it comes to the lie surrounding toileting we say “I’m disappointed you lied, I just want to help you get clean” and that’s it, we move on. The problem is perhaps that nothing is helping us to work together on resolving the sitting in it.

Drop the “disappointed you lied” imho. This indicates she is doing it on purpose and within her control. Someone calling you a liar and a parent constantly being disappointed is a powerful deterrent to admitting to something that then results in the “I’m disappointed you lied”.

Try and be positive, like “it’s just an accident, don’t worry we are getting you help to figure this out. I know you are trying your best, let me help you clean up”

The trouble I have is understanding how quite often she can get to the toilet on time, without prompting, and others she chooses not to and will say “I didn’t want to stop playing/doing XYZ” and will also admit that she felt the poo feeling but didn’t want to stop what she was doing. Eg. Reading a book in bed, instead of popping it to the side and going, she soiled herself, then came out to tell us she had an accident. She said she wanted to keep reading, and we tried explaining “it’s just you reading, and it’s your personal book, so if you had set it aside, nothing will have changed in the story by the time you got back”

Well, because when you ADHD you have no control as to when the hyper focus happens and takes control of you. Some days you can manage, other days you get sucked into a hyper focus bunny trail and the next thing you know it’s 16hrs later. And I have said exactly what your DD has said as a child when I didn’t have the words to explain hyper focus and how all consuming it is, it is like what you are doing is the most interesting thing on the planet and you can’t stop. I have had that with books where I can’t put it down until I’ve read all of it cover to cover- missing meals, not going to the toilet, reading through the night…

All I’m saying is consequences from you and punishment and shame from mum has not worked, you are right this isn’t normal for a 7yr old at all and the things you have posted that she has said as to how she feels, it is ringing bells from when I was a child with undiagnosed ADHD. I didn’t have issues with poo, but I pissed myself many many times for forgetting to go to the loo, not feeling a full bladder, being too caught up in whatever I’m doing and then it all releasing in one go like a flood.

Adding, I’m not diagnosing her, I just think it’s possible it’s behavioural as did another poster and ADHD is one possibility and it’s best to work with her without judgement and without attaching negative labels to her- liar, disappointment.. but her mum just awful. You’re very kind compared to her mum. Poor kid.

This can be an adhd thing but it can also be a warning system for poos that is not working very well. Children delay going to the loo all the time but they are usually able to hold on a bit . She is receiving the message to go very late so her attempts to hold are futile.

I would urge you to ring the Eric helpline and get a good advice on what is going on so you have more understanding of this. Don’t say you are disappointed in her for lying. Don’t berate her for delaying toileting.

the 10 mins in the bathroom are because she is likely just clearing the tip of the iceberg and not fully evacuating her bowel. Children tend to do this with constipation. They don’t always strain like an adult might.

And how do you know she’s lying?????

Maybe it did feel fine to her at the time.

Id be really really careful about going down this route.

my child’s stepdad pulled this kind of stuff - accusing child of lying etc.

How light it feel to be thought of a lying when you’re telling the truth by no one believes you because your perception of your own body is not on the same plane as what others expect your perception to be?

BTW - my child is an adult now. Their interoception is still under developed - vomit still has a 98% chance on not ending up in a receptacle.

Don’t get me wrong, before we thought it could be a medical issue we were frustrated and told her she was making bad choices. Since realising it could not be her fault we’ve backtracked massively and are trying to be supportive and prevent soreness and illness. This poor child has had thrush twice and we are desperately trying to prevent that happening again.
When she has thrush mum did not tell us and just gave us a cream and said to use it when she’s sore, after googling we realised what it was and that it needed to be used consistently.
M also got so constipated we thought she had an appendicitis as she was wailing in pain, Mum tried to downplay it as tiredness and tummy ache, asking if she had a temp etc. to make us look as though we were over reacting. 111 said to get her to hospital, Mum was miles away and asked “should I come straight there then?” - yes you absolutely should.
She arrives at the hospital, M has elevated BP, low heart rate and funky urine samples - Mum drags her out the hospital because Mum is immunocompromised and didn’t want to wait in the hospital. My partner was in pieces, he came home devastated as Mum took M home with her and had said “I get the last say I make the final decision and you’ve got to be okay with that!”
Mum is usually of the “no shame, no punishment, it’s not her fault” until she took her on holiday and she soiled herself 5 times in one day and Mum said “You’re being lazy and making bad choices now”. So I think M gets mixed messages from Mum.
i understand she could’ve felt this way with us too, however we’ve had a discussion where we’ve said that we’re sorry if we’ve told her off and she can’t help it, that we aren’t going to do that again and we just want the focus to be on getting cleaned up ASAP, because that - we can help do.

Hi!
I know because she admits it afterwards when she’s talked about it.
She does also have tell tale signs when lying about other things that she does when she’s telling fibs about being clean and dry, and when she’s in a place to talk about things she does tell the truth which is usually completely different to what she said before.

@ILLJ

It’s totally understandable. I’ve been dealing with constipation in my child for years. Everything you are saying about her symptoms is so familiar to me. We also got frustrated at first. I think this is a normal first reaction to this. But when you introduce shame around this issue it tends to make everything worse.

She may not be lying, she may not feel it, she might be embarrassed. You just can’t know at this point. The focus has to be on the medication for now and any other advice you have received- like putting in a step for her to put her feet on. Toilet sits 30 mins after a meal. Blowing bubbles on the loo. Forget your honestly thing with it for now. It won’t help at all.

I think your putting too much on her. She's only young. Maybe she doesn't always realise she's done it. My DD is six and I know that she sometimes doesn't know she's soiled until she goes to the loo. She just doesn't feel it. I know because I've been with her and seen her reaction.

Like the others I really recommend talking to ERIC their advisors are incredibly helpful.

Interestingly we're just starting down the pathway for diagnosis for my DD too because she's showing other signs of being neurodiverse.