Soiling issue

It seems as though soiling as a subject lacks glamour thus is lowly researched and incomplete of strategy offered in general. 

But possibly it is more common than widely known, and since most children will move away from it with love and guidance, it tends to be not discussed much perhaps. It would seem a minority can suffer long term but presumably because that has been without support.

For instance knew someone in the predicament long term, but take a deep breath & fear not, as this extreme case. This person did not get over it until way into their 20's, but had absolutely no support or empathy in the circumstances. Being aa school friend we even knew about it then, let alone later.

If it is not just a phase and it is into teenage etc, the short way to describe is 'Psychological', or having a deficit in looking after ones own basic needs. But what does that inform - not much .

For the younger ones it usually solves with care and guidance, for the older ones it would then seem more profound like that.

 If it does not refrain and worries mount, it could be a Unconscious / subconcious style protest caused by a trauma of some kind which is then causing the individual difficulty in making sense of self identity aspects, the more tangible symptom being procrastination manifesting as soiling. If an inner conflict has influenced this, perhaps is not being processed, thus a basic function is meeting a self neglect.

The problem is perhaps then transfered via an inappropriate sense of personal ritual, and the development of a decision making process regarding the basic function of passing a stool .. which soon inherits indecision and delay - and the soiling occurs.

Something similar without trauma could apply to younger children. As much as we try as parents, we cannot know everything about our child, and a less profound but still habit prone matter might be preventing the regime. 

Regards

Jenwren,

I can't get my head round this at all. So, I'm going to ask the questions I asked previously again:

.

Why was your son put on laxatives in the first place?

And what happens if you stop giving him them?

.

As for why he bullies and is being bullied - it's pretty obvious from what you've said.

He's bullied because he's being singled out as being different (isn't allowed to do certain activities), and because he soils himself!

And, he 'bullies' because he gets bullied!

.

If I were you I'd just stop giving him laxatives, completely - if he's soiling himself so often, he clearly doesn't need them!

If that leads to 'retention' problems, then start giving the laxatives again, but try to find a dosage level that's high enough to stop the retention, but low enough that he doesn't soil himself all the time!

And if the problem is that he's hypo-sensitive to the need to go, then you need to get him into a routine were he goes at regular times, before he soils himself.

It's the same with my son , we have tried every single trick in the book and we as parents cannot make him stop , with my son he is not aware that he has soiled and is not bothered by it ( we call it his bubble ) :(

We are getting worried because he is in mainstream school and is not allowed to do certain activities and also he gets bullied and he also bullies .

His outbursts at school are very frequent ( maybe upto 3 a week )

We have ask him ll the time and ask why ? But he blanks up out .

the school pass it off as they can't seem to work it out and have even blamed me because I get emotional :(

I think every Mother that has a child on the ASD route is concerned and gets emotional because we love our children !

Even if they change his dose of laxatives either up or down , nothing changes , I have questioned it everytime because it does not help our son :(

It's the same with my son , we have tried every single trick in the book and we as parents cannot make him stop , with my son he is not aware that he has soiled and is not bothered by it ( we call it his bubble ) :(

We are getting worried because he is in mainstream school and is not allowed to do certain activities and also he gets bullied and he also bullies .

His outbursts at school are very frequent ( maybe upto 3 a week )

We have ask him ll the time and ask why ? But he blanks up out .

the school pass it off as they can't seem to work it out and have even blamed me because I get emotional :(

I think every Mother that has a child on the ASD route is concerned and gets emotional because we love our children !

Even if they change his dose of laxatives either up or down , nothing changes , I have questioned it everytime because it does not help our son :(

So why was it prescribed in the first place?

What happens if you just don't give him any laxatives?

Thats what I have been saying all along but they say it's to keep his bowels moving , they have not resolved anything for all this time and it's so hard on him :( !

jenwren said:

has been soiling since he was 4 and a half and has also been on Laxatives ( movical and Senna ) he soils upto 8-9 times a day

If he soils himself 8 or 9 times a day, why, on earth, does he need to be taking laxatives?!

My son is 9 and got misdiagnosed last year for ADHD , it turns out that he is also on The Autistic spectrum , he has been soiling since he was 4 and a half and has also been on Laxatives ( movical and Senna ) he soils upto 8-9 times a day and does not even wish to be cleaned up , the health professionals want him to go into hospital for a clean out also but the thing is he CANNOT cope with any change at all , I understand how you all feel .

We had this problem when John (Asperger's) was four and in reception, and then again when he was in a special needs project that a teacher ran from her home. It persisted into secondary school though he was by then only soiling at home, not at school. A lot of it had to do with staying on the computer for hours and not noticing what was going on below.

We even ended up with the gastro team at the Royal Free, though thankfully Dr Andrew Wakefield had left by then. They couldn't find anything physically wrong.

I'm afraid it only got solved when he went into a residential CAMHS unit for nine months (a whole school year) in year 8. It seems to have been more prevalent when he's been unhappy and confused at school. This is a much more common problem among kids on the autistic spectrum than anyone acknowledges. The NAS did a Help!2 day on it last year which was brilliant, but I hear their funding for these days has been taken away.

Just telling you all this so you know you are not alone. I think the only solution in the end is 24 hour watchfulness and avoidance of things that trigger it. But if it started up at school it is worth looking into whether he is having problems at school, or whether it's something simple like not liking to go into the grotty school toilets (many children don't, even children not on the spectrum).

Hi Just me

My son is 6 , 7 in November he has been on laxatives since he was 3 months old , & has been in & out of hospital for clear outs , he does wes on the toilet poos on the toilet & he still soils both at school & at home , he goes through alot of pants & clothes in a day , his bowels are stretched , we have to take him to the toliet & he sits on it for about 15- 30 minutes each time , we feel he does not have the feeling he needs to go , if you want to chat , or need some one who understands you ,please feel free. xxx

thank you for all the adice will let you know how we get on with these x

Hi there

My son, who is now 6, went through a phase of soiling and smearing when he was around 4 years old and it lasted 5 months.  He has Aspergers.  We let him accompany us to the loo, explaining each step.  We went with him, with his permission, to the loo and gave him guidance.  We had a sticker chart (and still do for other things) that meant that one of the rules was not to have too much poo (and we showed him on the days when there was 'too much' what it looked like) on his pants at the end of the day.  Another goals was not to have smears of poo on the loo roll or tiles around the toilet.  If he had 5 days of stickers then he got his prearranged treat for the week.  He was of course praised along the way verbally and lots of high 5's.  This seemed to work really well and we shared what we were doing with the school nursery so that they could reinforce as much as they could.  I think it all came about as he was going through a period of olfactory sensory seeking behaviour.  Everything, and I mean everything, was passed by under his nose to be sniffed and experienced.  This phase has passed and many others have come and gone after it.  I hope this is helpful to you and let us know how you get on :-)  Thanks for sharing...

Hello sandra,

Thank you very much for the advice i will take alook at the  link thanks again x

Hi Justme

I know myself how difficult this is to solve and how frustrating it is. Here's a link to some NAS information on the subject:

http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/understanding-behaviour/toilet-training.aspx

Hopefully you'll find that interesting and maybe some of the ideas will be helpful.

I just wanted to reassure you that these things do take time to sort out, hopefully some of the things you've been doing already will eventually help. Behaviour patterns are difficult to change. Also your son could be having trouble recognising the feeling that he needs to go in time, so it could just be that it's going to take hime a bit longer. With my son, I felt that he just needed a bit of extra motivation so I resorted to good old fashioned bribery - it didn't always work as he got so engrossed in things sometimes.

I'm also looking forward to reading what some of our other users have to say about their experiences in this tricky matter!