Published on 12, July, 2020
Just a warning this might be a little much. If poop grosses you out maybe don't read.
Hey, so I'm a 27 year old guy awaiting an assessment as I really can't be sure I'm autistic or not and one thing from my childhood I'm very unsure of putting down to autism is that I basically soiled myself up until I was about 13 years old.
The reasons I don't know if this is potentially due to autism is that my parents were both drug addicts and I was really neglected but I knew how to urinate fine, it's just with number 2 I just held them in because I was scared and didn't really know what I was supposed to do so it just came out and I was constantly smelly and dirty. It made my childhood an utter hell.
My Mum did sometimes get people like social workers to help but nothing ever worked. Someone tried a star chart I'd put a star on when I went to the toilet but I didn't keep at it.
When I was 11 I did stay with my aunt for three months and she really helped me get into a routine of washing (something I never did at home) and going to the toilet and that was the only time I was really in a routine and I thrived so much. Then the social work gave me back to my Mum and everything fell apart again until I moved in with my Dad about 13/14 and I just decided to go to the toilet when I had to poop and boom. Problem solved.
Basically I just want to know if this sounds like autism or a consequence of neglect. Maybe it's both, the confusion just comes in that I could pee fine so I'm so unsure.
I've come across the term 'stool withholding' a fair bit on the PDA (pathological demand avoidance) forums. [PDA is an autism spectrum condition]
As for me, I had bedwetting late into my childhood. That was pretty uncomfortable and difficult to deal with when I was 10 years old at boarding school. The problem continued until I was a teenager. In my case, I had a lot of child abuse at home too, so it would be hard for me to say it was necessarily an autism-linked thing.