Hi everyone, im at a complete loss, my 10yr old daughter is soiling herself. Not alot but more then skiddies. To the point i can smell her and ill ask and she denies it. Ive tried talking to her and she says she doesnt know why. I dont know what to do or why its happening.
6 Replies
Toileting issues can often be attributed to anxiety in children. That would be my first guess but it could be a multitude of things...
I'd consider the following:
Has this always been an issue or is it relatively new behaviour?
Is it possible there's something going on in her life that's causing her stress (e.g. home life issues, problems at school)?
Have you seen a doctor to rule out a physical issue or does she have any underlying medical problems that could be causing this?
Working out if it's a physical or psychological cause will be the first step to working out a plan to resolving it. Good luck!
Maybe she has a food intolerance and its giving her diarrhea?
My boy had this for years. In his case, he had something called Encopresis. At some point, he was berated for having an accident, he then held on to his next one (because he didn’t want to get in trouble maybe?) to the point that he was that constipated his body just pushed them out. In his case, the doctor explained that bowels actually expand, and with chronic constipation the bowels doesn’t get a chance to go back to the way they should be. After a long time, the body looses the idea of the feeling of needing to go, so there’s no warning it just goes. For us, it was strong laxatives for a set time, then dropping the dosage until it was all gone, the laxatives gave the bowels a chance to retract.
THIS ISNT MEDICAL ADVICE just our experience. Take your girl to a doctor, the doctor will investigate, as there may be another underlying more serious issue. If it is the same as us, as annoying as it is DONT tell her off for it, explain that staying in soiled undies can make her sick with infections, tell her if she does think she’s had an accident to let you know discreetly so you can help her sort it out. If she’s in another persons care (ie daycare/school), ask her who she feels comfortable with in helping her if you aren’t around, and let them know they might be needed and to not make a big deal of it.
I also wanted to add - for us we believe it was him being berated (not by us, but other family), however it can start with any sort of stress or anxiety. I know of a friend whose little girl slipped and fell into the bowl whilst doing a poo and it scared her that much that she refused to go again - she had the same diagnosis as our boy.
In addition to the laxatives we chose a set time and made him sit on the toilet every single day, even if he said he didn’t have to go. We also had to normalise pooing - which honestly was what helped the most. Things like us telling him when we (the adults) were off to do a poo ourselves so he knew it was something everyone had to do, making him feel proud of the times he did actually go (there was many months of him sending photos of his poops to relatives to “show them off”, which we encouraged)
Also, my boy is 10 now too and has been accident free for about a year.
My daughter had encopresis too, her toilet anxiety started when she was 3, she had gastro and had the runs so bad her poor little bottom got blisters. She was toilet trained at this point but completely regressed and it took us another 9 months to get her to use the toilet again!
She then went off to school and was told off (first few days of prep of all things) for having an accident, it snowballed from then and took a further 2 years to get the accidents under control.
She'll be 9 soon and she still deals with some anxious behavior regarding toileting, but is getting better!
Encopresis is really common in kids but can be really debilitating and humiliating too
It’s such a difficult situation isn’t it! Glad your girl is doing well :) I can remember being so frustrated thinking why can’t he just listen to his body and sit on the toilet.. but he genuinely just didn’t know..