Pooping in his underwear! WHY!!!!???

[Avonlea]

My son will be 4 years old in September. He has been fairly well potty trained during the day. At night he still wears and over-night type pull up as he is a very heavy sleep wetter.

About 4 or so weeks ago, he was at a friends home playing with two other children in the sand box, when he pooped in his underwear. We cleaned it up in their bathroom and then drove home. He was sad to leave and sad to not be able to play any longer..but we had to go home at that point( we had been there almost 3 hours and also I had no other clothes for him) so we went home.

Well..the next day he poped into his underwear again while watching pbs. And then again the next day while playing in the living room as I nursed Emily to sleep..and on and on. He has doen this almsot three or more times a week now for the last month.

I am past the point of knowing what to do any longer. The other day I yelled at him and told him I was just completely grossed out by this. I was mad. I know I could have handled it better...but honestly I am really angry with him when he makes these messes.

If he has to pee he will go into the bathroom and use the toilet, and wash his hands with out a smidge of trouble..but the poping is not occuring there and as far as I am concerned this is getting out of hand.

Three things make me want to run screaming the other way: Poop, Vomit and Blood. And although changing poop diapers is one thing, I can deal with that ...cleaning poop out of clothes, and off of his legs, innner thighs, hands( if he has tried to remove his pants ) and off of the side of the toy he was playing with( because the poop has rolled out of his underwear and onto the floor with a lovely plop noise) or off of the side of the bathtub or toilet( because he leans on them after I take his pants off..we have a tiny bathroom and there is no room to move in it really.) makes me sick and also makes me angry.

After doing this once a day for teh last four weeks..I want to scream. I am tired of this mess. I now am making him go and sit on the otilet almosty every hour for a few moments and telling him to polease just sit. If nothing occurs then..oh well..On occasion his has had a BM in the toilet just because I had him sit down. However, more often than not he argues with me and will not sit on the toilet...and has gotten off of the toilet only to poop his pants moments later!

He told me it hurt to poop, so I got some juices and what ever else I coud find that he would eat that might help his poop be softer and easier to pass. Then I also put a stool and picteu books in the bathroom ..so he could rest his feet and have something to look at.

I just don't know what to do anymore. I am at the end of my rope with this one, and am afraid to go anywhere almost because I NEVER know when he might do this. I am GROSSED out by the whole thing as well. It has GOT to stop. Please..does ANYONE have any ideas?

[Katana]

As long as you're sure there isn't a problem with going, I think you can assume it's the symptom of another issue.

My ds and two of the boys I did day care for did this. It was really frustrating at times. They were all trained, and then suddenly, months later, regression. It took me a while to figure out there was a bigger problem.

My suggestion is that your ds might be feeling out of control about something. When you figure out what that is and offer a solution to that problem, he should start pooping in the toilet.

My ds didn't like it that I was watching other kids 3-4 days a week, right when he was around 3. So he pooped in his pants, for about a month, on and off. There was nothing I could do, I needed to keep watching the other kids for money so we could eat, but I had lots of conversations with him.

Imagine, talking to a 2.5 year old about money and food, and all of that, but wonder of wonders, I managed to explain it to him where he understood that the kids were going to keep coming over, but it was okay if he didn't like it.

He spent a week telling the other kids, I don't want you here today, but at least he pooped in the toilet.

The other two boys didn't like it that they were away from their mom 3-4 days a week. So we talked about that, and they also went around for about a week saying that they didn't want to be away from their mom and didn't like it. But they started pooping in the toilet again as well.

Also, every time they pooped in the toilet, they got some kind of candy treat. I do resort to bribery and presents. Whatever works.

Another reason might be that they just don't want to take the time to go. They want to keep playing, keep having fun. The best way to deal with this is to remind them to go. And then, everytime they go in the bathroom, they get some kind of treat. Eventually, they'll remember.

The bathroom and the toilet are the only place I use bribes so shamelessly, but I don't care because it's better than cleaning up a mess and being about it.

Hope that helps. I'm sorry you're going through this. I've been there. It's awful.

[beth568]

Boy, I hope someone has some answers. My DD is pretty much completely trained and pees in the toilet, but she has never pooped there. She'll start grunting, I'll scoop her up and rush to the bathroom, she'll sit on the toilet for a minute, and then tell me she doesn't have to poop. Two minutes later, she'll poop in her pants in the family room. I don't want to push her or frighten her, but I'd love to be done cleaning it up. It's NASTY!

Sorry you're having trouble, too.

[Teensy]

My oldest son did the same thing. I never figured out why, but I do what I did that I finally got him to stop. I put a chart on the refrigerator and every day that he had dry, clean underpants at the end of the day he got a smiley face. When he got five smiley faces, he got to go to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch the next day. He continued to use the toilet for several months after that, then had another relapse - so I had to make another Chuck E. Cheese chart, but it worked a second time.

Good luck finding a solution tht works for your child.

[Avonlea]

Well, he did it again yesterday afternoon..like..oh an hour after I posted this thread .

I bought him some gummy worms last night at Fred Meyers, and I told him that every time he uses the toilet I will let him have half of a gummy worm if he pees and....!!!2!! whole gummy worms if he poops on the toilet. I am fully prepared to recreate the sticker chart as well. so, last night he got ahlf of a gummy worm for peeing at fed meyters and today we will start in on the watching for the poop signals.


The other day he had gone outside alone ( big no no in our house) and I had been looking for him with Dhand dh found him and told him that was not good or safe and gave him"the look'..so Paul went and hid in the laundry room . Then he pooped while hiding there((( I was in the other room talking to him as this occured. he got really queit all the sudden and my feelers went HEY!!!! and I said,,um.son , do you need to go potty? and he said No, I pooped already .YIKES!!!!!!)))So...we had to clean up another poop mess and daddy was home this time and talked to Paul about it and ..well..now I am trying bribery. I don't know what else to do..short of sticking him bck into pull-ups for a time. I don't own enough underwear for him to be doing this all the time, LOl.

[katt]

i'd probably put him back in pull-ups, or 1/2 and 1/2 maybe.

[Avonlea]

Honestly, as tempting as the thought of re-using pull-ups is right now , I hesitate to do so. I do not want him to get comfortable with just going in his poants . I want him to use the toilet like he had been previously.

he wears overnight pull-ups, because he pees so heavily while asleep..and I have put one onto his body, and then put Emilys bedtime diaper on, and he will stand in front of me, Close his eyes and tell me after he opens them that he was sleeping and has peed in his pull up.

He is a smart cookie and I want to encourage him to use the toilet!

I am just sort of out of ideas right now...so..we are going to try bribery with candy.

[katt]

Good Luck

[mammaguess]

Be cautious of how you react as a parent to a child having problems with bm's. Take very seriously when the child says it hurts. It has been years since I had to deal with this problem, so the term I am looking for escapes me but I believe it is compacted bowels.

A child with other bm issues may end up holding back and developing compacted bowels.

This is when the bm's become so hard and compacted inside the intestine the child(or adult) is not able to pass the bm. The child may indicate that it "hurts" or that their tummy doesn't feel good. I didn't know what was happening until my ds starting having liquid bm accidents, and looking very confused about it. Our solution was fairly simple but if my ds' body had not pushed the liquids past what was compacted I would have continued to think that he just needed to get over it and poop like he had been doing before.

A mom of one of my dd's friend wasn't quite as lucky. Fortunately they did get her ds to the dr and helped before his liver(?) was damaged. Her ds was starting to turn yellow because of the toxins coming through his bloodstream to his skin. Their dr indicated that if the condition had continued her ds would have died.

So why do I mention any of this??? Because both myself and the mom of my dd friend thought it wasn't anything serious. Neither one of us ran to the dr and I think we both thought more about how annoying our situation was rather than wonder what else was going on.

This isn't about the OP specifically but I thought that if anyone else was going through something similar and was looking here for ideas on how to handle it that the more serious side ought to be mentioned.

[littlest birds]

Good luck I had the same problem for a couple of mos during the past year with my 4yo ds. He had been dry through the night and everything. It was definitely an attention issue. He simply didn't want to stop playing so he would semi-intentionally tune out his bodies cues until it was too late. He did it with peeing too. You could watch him do his "pee-pee dance" as he jumped up and down fighting his urge to go while focusing intensely on the play-world he wsa involved in. In fact he would actually win for a few minutes and do it again, sometimes several times, before finally having an accident. And we would tell him "Go potty" or say "do you need to pee" or "you need to take care of your pee-pee" and he would ignore us most of the time. Arrrrrgh!

We cleaned up so many poops down legs and he would actually try to get it off himself and create such terrible messes. He did hate the accidents and we would see this devastated look on his face as soon as he had one. Although with pee he would wet his pants and ignore the wetness, with poop it really bothered him. And he was horrified if we diapered him or used a pullup I guess there was a natural consequence for him because he really wants to be in control of himself. So many times he would wait till the last minute and run for the bathroom trying to literally hold the poo in with his hand on hit butt. Sometimes he even made it.

It was so tough. It was like he had to go through an extra maturity stage to really put together his toiletting awareness and response in terms of the rest of his reality. It seemed as though he had entered into a new cognitive develpoment area and lost some of the progress with this physical area until he could readjust and bring them into balance. It seemed natural in terms of his growth, although torturous for us as parents.

I did react with negativity but I tried to channel the negativity. I was honest about thinking it was YUCK that's for sure, and honest about my own frustration. I felt like he was also frustrated with it. And we would talk about how we would be able to do this better as he got bigger. I guess anything you do should be about drawing his attention to his body's cues and the process. Little things helped us, also, like him not being able to wear the pants he liked best because they were all in the dirty laundry over and over again. He hated the occasional diaper or pullup but somtimes we would say this something you have to wear if you are not ready to take care of this. We just told him over and over to take care of his poop and pee-pee "all by himself" and take care of keeping his pants dry. We might start the day in his favorite pants and talk to him ahead of time about keeping them clean--he was so eager to keep them and be independent that I think these sorts of things gradually helped. This made for an intrinsic reward, which seems best IMO. But some children would care about this more than others. I felt like it was a very slow process and that this fact was unescapable no matter what I did. He still had to build that attention/response pattern inside himself.

It will not go on forever! And once it's past life seems reeeal good. You can think, things may be tough but at least I'm not cleaning up s**t several times a day.

[Marsupialmom]

Please look into Encropresis!!!!!

My son had this and I thought he was being lazy. We did more fiber and it actually made his situation worse. He was getting plenty of fiber and water. His bowels were so stretched out. His rectum had to be retrained "unstretched". We did this by having very loose stools for a long time. He was on milk of mag, if I would have known more I would have done flax seed oil instead but I was finally getting a doctor to listen to me. I did not think my son was still constipated because he was bm'ing/skidding his pants daily. In reality it was the soft stuff working around the hard stuff.

We have learned many things. Not all fiber is created equal. Stay away from the things in the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apples, and toast).

Each kid can respond differently to different juices. Apple juice can be very constipation for some children. Many people have good luck with the P juices but others it causes more constipation.

Milk and cheese can be very constipation. Some kids have no problems with yogurt other it causes problems.

Making him sit on the toilet every hour is only frustrating. Instead sit him on the toilet for 5-15 minutes after each meal. You might want to start for one minute then build up. Some people have better luck with waiting 5-10 minutes after a meal then making the child sit. Your intestines are moving so it makes a bm more likely. This is why many people bm after meals (esspecially breakfast, LOL).

Add flax seeds/meal/oil to his diet.

Putting him back into a pull up or diaper can be very emotionally tramatizing.

If he has encopresis bribes won't work. It can actually make him more shameful and frustrated because controling his bm is physically something he cannot do.

Please read these links.

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/8/t086200.asp
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/8/t086100.asp
http://www.keepkidshealthy.com/welco...ncopresis.html