{This is a private kind of story so I only tell it in hopes that I can help someone like me, a clueless mom looking for answers.}

Have you ever felt like a complete and total failure as a mom? I had one of those moments last night.

We had just put the kids to bed last night when Jeremy brought me an armful of Isaac’s laundry. There was an overwhelming, knock your socks off, smell of poop that came with the laundry. I pulled out the offending piece and showed my husband. The large chunk of poop not only filled the underwear but had smeared all over the pants he had been wearing as well as a lot of the other laundry. It was a huge mess! Absolutely ridiculous! We pulled Isaac out of bed to help us clean it up.

This has been happening for a long time now. Over a year. Maybe two. I haven’t been counting. We’ve stopped getting mad at him. It doesn’t do any good. We’ve tried talking to him. Motivating him. Rewarding him. Nothing seems to be helping. He is at the point where he cleans up after himself and will even do is own laundry. Because of this, it’s kinda been off my radar. If he stinks we simply say, “Go change your pants.” It’s been an accepted way of life. We’ve bought extra underwear for him and when we go out of town we always pack 3 times as many underwear as needed because it seems to be more of a problem away from home.

But last night I could hardly stand it. Why is this happening? What have I done wrong that my son can’t go to the bathroom normally? Why can’t he get to the toilet on time? Why can’t he feel it COMING OUT!! SO frustrating! What to do?

The tears started to flow right then and there and poor Isaac felt so bad. He was trying so hard to swish his underwear around in the toilet like a good boy. He was making such a mess with it splashing around and it was totally disgusting. He thought it was disgusting too. I had wanted him to clean it up himself as sort of a punishment, go he knew how gross it was, but I ended up helping him because I felt so bad. Ahhh! When he saw me crying, he started promising that he wouldn’t do it again. He started giving himself punishments too. “If I do it again I wont be able to play video games for 2 weeks. No 3 weeks. Okay 4 weeks.” The only problem is… I knew he’d do it again.

I started thinking that something was wrong here. He doesn’t want to poop in his pants. He wants to be a good boy. He doesn’t plan on it and he doesn’t do it intentionally.

I sent him off to bed and plopped on the couch even though I was exhausted and should be plopping into bed. I then googled, “My 6 year old son keeps pooping in his pants.” I couldn’t believe the results. Story after story of parents with the exact same problem. Help, help, help, they were all saying. I then kept seeing Encopresis pop up. Over and over again. People were saying, “My son was diagnosed with Encopresis.”

So I looked it up. Encopresis! It fits Isaac to a T. Exactly describes him and his pooping struggles. Oh my, it’s actually a thing! A diagnosis! A condition. It’s not just him being too lazy to go to the bathroom. He is actually having a problem.

Hurray! Hurray!

After reading up on it I felt like saying “Duh!” to myself but hey, we live and we learn.

Encopresis is a fancy way of saying your kid is chronically constipated. Stool holding. It sounds a little lame at first but it get more complicated than just a kid not wanting to go to the bathroom. They may be holding it for several reason. They may be too busy, they may be trying to avoid the pain of it or they may be just so constipated they can’t go. Plus diet, illness, decreased fluid intake, fear, limited access to a toilet can all be factors.

But what ever the reason… the poop begins to accumulate in the rectum and gets backed up into the colon and a vicious cycle begins.

The colon’s job is to remove water from the poop before it’s passed. The longer the poop is stuck there, the more water is removed — and the harder it is to push the large, dry poop out. The large poop also stretches out the colon, weakening the muscles there and affecting the nerves that tell a child when it’s time to go to the bathroom. Because the flabby colon can’t push the hard poop out, and it’s painful to pass, the child continues to avoid having a BM, often by dancing, crossing the legs, making faces, or walking on tiptoes.

Yes, when we catch Isaac standing there frozen to the spot with his eyes watering, we tell him to go to the bathroom, he walks off on his tiptoes clenching his bottom together. But I never realized he was constipated. He has never said that it hurts to go or that it is hard to go.

I’m always telling Isaac that he needs to go to the bathroom when he feels the poop coming out. It makes sense to me so why can’t he just go the bathroom, right? But then he tells me that he can’t feel it. He doesn’t know when he has to go. So when I read that the nerves are affected in such a way that they CAN’T FEEL IT!! it finally made sense to my grown up brain.

Ding ding ding. Light bulbs coming on!!

Eventually, the rectum and lower part of the colon becomes so full that it’s difficult for the sphincter (the muscular valve that controls the passage of feces out of the anus) to hold the poop in. Partial BMs may pass through, causing the child to soil his or her pants. Softer poop may also leak out around the large mass of feces and stain the child’s underwear when the sphincter relaxes. The child can’t prevent the soiling — nor does he or she have any idea it’s happening — because the nerves aren’t sending the signals that regulate defecation (or pooping).

Quite often his accidents happen right in a row. Now I realized that it was the liquid leaking through. He keeps changing his underwear until -BOOM- a great big accident happens that finally grabs my attention. He will hold it until he can’t possibly hold it any longer.

Ah, poor Isaac! My heart aches for him. What a distressing thing to keep happening to my sweet boy. Luckily there is treatment. Things I can do. Things a doctor can do. Although it sounds like it can be a long hard road to fix this problem and it can quite often relapse.

So here is my plan:

1. Communicate- When Isaac gets home from school today I’m going to sit down with him and tell him what I have discovered. I want him to understand that he is a good boy and it isn’t his fault that he is having these accidents. I want to apologize for all the times I got angry at him for it. I want to explain to him that this is a condition that lots of other kids have and that there are things we can do it help it.
2. Create a Poop Calendar and Schedule Toilet Time- Everyday, after school, Isaac is going to need to spend time on the toilet. I’m going to have him grab a book and spend 5 to 10 minutes sitting on the toilet. We’re going to mark on the calendar whenever he has a BM so that I can have some idea of how often he is going (because I have NO idea.)
3. Increase fiber, fruits, veggies and water- This actually may be the source of our problem. Isaac hates fruits and veggies. Veggies I understand but Isaac, unlike his sisters, never grabs an apple to snack on. Never eats his carrots in his lunch box and always gags when I make him eat veggies at the dinner table. I guess I’m going to have to administer it like medicine. “Isaac you need to each this peach because it will help you go to the bathroom!” I thought he was getting enough water because he often helps himself to a drink and he eats whole grain breads and cereals at our house so I’m not sure what’s going on there but we’ll see if an increase of fruits help out. Maybe shake a little bit of bran on his food.

I going to try this plan out first and hold off on going to the doctor- trying stool softeners and enemas. If we can’t make much headway they I will. I guess a child may need to be “cleaned out” because the colon can have hard retained poop stuck inside. I’m interested in the information a poop calendar will give me and if we need to go to the doctor that information might help out too.

So there you are. Our poop battle. Have you heard of this? Anyone out there have experience with this struggle? How did you overcome it?

• Raising Children
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