First of all, as an almost 30 year old and mother of 3, I’m completely grossed out and totally embarrassed by this topic.
A few years back, I thought that I was going to lose my mind. My oldest was in PreK and could have an articulate conversation with anybody. She knew her ABCs, could do simple addition, and could make her own PB&J sandwich. BUT, she struggled with making it to the bathroom on time. Yes, she would poop in her panties. At the age of 5. I still cringe when I think about the days that she would come home with a little plastic baggy of soiled underwear.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a daily occurrence. But the fact that it happened at least half a dozen times (both at home and at school) during the first semester made me realize that something was not right. In the beginning, we decided that she was having too much fun playing. Her fun loving personality was causing her to wait too long before asking to use the bathroom. But then the issue grew to a whole new level. Not only was she pooping in her panties, but one day I found poop fingerprints on the side of our bathroom cabinet. I won’t lie… I was so upset. After I calmed down, we talked it out and created consequences for her poor decisions. But the accidents and fingerprints didn’t stop.
My emotions morphed from disappointment to anger. I remember grilling her about getting to the bathroom as soon as she needed to. We bribed her, took away toys and TV time, and we even spanked her. I didn’t know what to do. The thought that my daughter could do something so gross was embarrassing to me and I wasn’t about to ask my friends for advice. I didn’t want her to be known as the “poopy kid.” Oh, but I wish I could turn back time and put myself aside so that I could open up to talk about it with others. Because maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be having to deal with this problem now.
She is now almost 7 and although the days of poopy panties and fingerprints have stopped (HALLELUJAH!), pooping is still a major struggle. Her doctor shed some light and has given me some guidance and hope that this will not last forever. All of our fighting and my gray hairs were caused by encopresis and dehydration. She would hold her bowels for as long as she could because they were hard and it hurt for them to pass. I feel terrible now for thinking that she was being defiant and lazy! After months of taking constipation medicine daily, we have now transitioned her to 2-3 prunes every morning with breakfast and we are adamant that she (and her sisters) are drinking enough water each day!
The reason she still struggles is because her body has not yet been able to fully adjust back to “normal” life (or life without prunes in our case). If she skips a couple of days of prunes, her poop gets hard as a rock again and the cycle seems to start over. Fixing encopresis is a long process, but I’m not longer humiliated by it. It’s manageable and I’m praying that all of her tummy issues are resolved before she goes off to college.
