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 😞