Tuesday 2 August 2016

STAYING IN MESSY PANTS

One of the things which the parents of children with encopresis find most difficult to understand is how their offspring seem quite happy to keep wearing soiled underwear after they have had an accident, and carry on activities as if nothing had happened.  Typical comments include, ‘He’d sit in his own waste for hours if I let him,’ and ‘How can she carry on playing when her knickers are full of poo?’  Like many other children with soiling problems, I never told anyone when I’d had an accident and would sit, walk around or play in messy pants until someone, usually my mother, smelled what I had done, checked my pants and changed me.

Having messy pants didn't stop me
from playing.  I was quite content

to sit in my own poo.
You may think that this is a perfectly disgusting thing to do, carrying on playing with a pooey bottom and dirty pants, but at the time it seemed perfectly natural.  Some children can neither smell nor feel when they have had an accident and therefore do not know that they need changing.  This was not the case with me as, although I couldn’t smell anything, I could feel my waste in my pants and knew that I had soiled myself.

When I was very young I liked to think that if I ignored my pooey pants then they would go away.  As I got older I learnt from experience that, sadly, this was not the case, but, for a number of reasons, I still kept quiet about my accidents until they were discovered by others.

One of the reasons for this was that I nearly always got told off when my mother discovered that I’d had another accident.  Sometimes she would also shout at me or threaten to put me back in nappies.  Like the threat to get my teacher to tell everyone in my class that I messed my pants (see How I Stopped Soiling My Pants), I don’t think she would have ever done this, but I didn’t know this at the time and worried about the prospect of being sent to school wearing a nappy.  I was in no hurry to be scolded and tried to put off the event for as long as possible by keeping quiet about the state of my underwear.
Even if she knows that
she is messy and smelly,
and that she needs changing,
a child may be too frightened
or embarrassed to tell
anyone that she has
pooed her pants. (c)
Another factor was the feelings of embarrassment and shame I felt about what I had done, feelings which got worse as I got older and was still incapable of keeping my pants clean all the time.  There was also the feeling of having let my parents down by soiling myself when I knew that I should have used the toilet. 

There was just no way I was going to go up to my mother and admit that I’d pooed myself yet again, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell an adult I barely knew, such as a friend’s parent on a playdate, that I’d had an accident in my pants and needed changing.  If, as a parent, you’ve felt embarrassed when your child has wet him or herself in a shop, then take that embarrassment and multiply it a few times to get how I felt.

Finally, staying in messy pants was a way of coping with what I increasingly thought of as my babyish habit.  By ignoring my accidents and carrying on with what I was doing, I could pretend that my pants were not dirty and I had not soiled myself again.  For that relatively short period I could be a normal child and enjoy playing or reading or whatever I was doing, and put to the back of my mind the fact that I was smelly and messy and had behaved more like a toddler than an older child.
Unless I was really stinky,
 I would play with other
 children when I knew that
my pants were dirty.
My actions varied if I soiled while playing with other children.  If it felt like a bad accident and I guessed that I was really stinky then I tried not to get too close to them.  On the other hand if it felt like I only had a relatively small amount of poo in my pants then I would carry on playing with them as normal.  Sometimes they would comment on the smell, but usually they didn’t.  If they did say anything they usually accused me of having ‘trumped’ (broken wind), rather than dirtying my pants.
As for physical considerations, I won’t say that I liked the feeling of messy pants, but over time I got used to it and did not find wearing them particularly uncomfortable.
Another activity which encopretic children commonly engage in, to the exasperation of their parents, is to hide their soiled underwear, often under the bed or at the back of a cupboard.  This is something I never did, but I can certainly understand why children do this.  If they are likely to be punished for soiling then by hiding their pants they may be seeking to avoid, or merely delay, their punishment.  

Even if their parents are very understanding about their soiling problems and would not punish them, the child is still likely to feel embarrassed about the situation like I did and feel unable to report their accidents.  Eventually they are given away by the stench produced by the stash of hidden underwear or the fact that the child is running out of clean pants.  But as Dimity Telfer says in her blog The Magic Within Us about why she hid her soiled underwear, 'When your choices are to be yelled at now or yelled at tomorrow, I chose the second option.  I hid them because I wanted to live for an hour (even half an hour) as if it never happened."

27 comments:

  1. Thank you James! As always your experiences help me to understand my son's feelings and therefore help me to deal with Enco in a better manner!

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    1. Thank you, I'm glad you found it useful. 'Why does my child sit in their own poo?' is one of the most common questions I get asked.

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  2. Thank you Thank you Mr. Parkin. Your blog is a great help to me and i now have a better understanding of my child's condition. I can also explain this to her dad and my family members. Your a Godsend.

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    1. Thank you for your comment, I hope it helps you to explain your daughter's actions to your family members.

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  3. Thank you. I always say to my son, "can't you feel it?!" I feel as if I'm f***ing up my son because I get so frustrated about it. My poor boy.

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  4. thank you for helping others understand this unfortunately I suffered from encopresis for several years back in the early 70s never taken to a Dr and mom got so frustrated she put me back in diapers at the age of 9

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    1. Hi, sorry to hear that you also suffered from encopresis and were put back in diapers, which I imagine was very humiliating for you. I also grew up in the 1970s and there was few resources in those days for parents whose children had soiling problems. I was never taken to a doctor about my toilet issues either, and my mother probably thought as I did, that no other child my age still pooed his pants.

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  5. Gosh, i wish i had known about this 7 years ago. I admire your candour and your matter of fact explanation and insight into what our kiddos may be thinking or experiencing. I would do a 1000 things differently had I known. Again thank you for giving words to our children and insight for us parents.

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    1. Thank you, Lisa, I like to think that sharing my experiences is in a small way helping the children of today who have soiling problems, as well as their parents. Thank you also for all the experiences you share through the Facebook group about being a mother to a son with encopresis, and for buying my book A Boy Like You and recommending it to other parents.

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  6. My 15 year-old son has encopresis. It clears up for 2 or 3 months, then comes back. I'm very careful never to yell or humiliate him, but I just want to cry at this point. Do you think having him read some blogs/articles by others with encopresis might help him? He has seen a gastroenterologist, and a couple child psychologists (all of which gave up on him). He takes Miralax regularly (he says), but nothing seems to clear it up permanently. Any advice?

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    1. It may help him to look at blogs written by others who have had encopresis. My friend Dimity Telfer actually stopped soiling when she was 15 and has her own blog: themagicwithinus.com

      By the time an enopresis sufferer reaches his or her teenage years, the impetus to stop soiling usually has to come from themselves really wanting to become clean and willing to take the steps needed to do so. Sometimes becoming interested in the opposite sex is the catalyst to wanting to stop soiling. Parents of enco kids are probably the only parents who want their child to start dating as soon as possible!

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  7. HOW LONG AT THE MAX and least WOULD YOUR ACCIDENT GO WITHOUT BEING DISCOVERED?

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    1. Usually when I had an accident I would be pretty smelly, so it would quickly be discovered when I was in the company of adults. However, as I spent a lot of time playing by myself I could spend well over an hour in messy pants if I was on my own.

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  8. Staying in messy underwear never bothers me even if that meant the rest of the day at school or out places with my friends. It was only when someone said something to me but that wasn’t very often. That made me think I was good at keeping it secret, but that probably wasn’t the case at all. I’m not sure why people hardly ever said anything, but they must have known.

    One time I remember was going to a friend’s house after school, then deciding to camp out their backyard. I had spent most of the day with messy underwear by the time school was finished, but my house was the opposite direction to his. Going home would have meant missing out on something so I decided to just go to his house. A while after we got there one of our friends suggested we could go camping in their backyard. Everyone thought that was a great idea including me. I don’t even remember considering the idea of least going home to change my underwear.

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    1. Maybe other people were too embarrassed to say anything about the smell, or they did not want to embarrass or upset you, or they didn't know what to say in such a situation. Or maybe they just couldn't believe that an older child had pooed his pants.

      I wouldn't have agreed to hang around with friends after I'd had an accident and hadn't been changed, as I would have spent the whole time being anxious that someone would smell me and guess what I'd done. If I had to be around other children when I had pooey pants, I would try to ignore the fact that I was messy and smelly and pretend that I was clean.

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    3. According to an ex-classmate I was protected by one of the school bullies who threatened to beat anyone up that gave me a hard time about it. The ex-classmate told me at a party years after leaving school. She was quite drunk at the time and didn’t hold back with telling me everything she knew about me and what I did. According to her it wasn’t the smell that gave me away it was the soccer style shorts I wore and the way I sat. She went into great detail about what she used to see and seemed strangely fascinated about it. At the time I wondered why she used to hang around me and just found her annoying. She used to go to my house after school quite a lot, but I was completely oblivious to the real reason why.

      Until she enlightened as to how much she knew, and I assume the other students at school I somehow convinced myself no one knew. Maybe that was my way of dealing with thinking I was the only once still soiling their underwear. During the break between finishing primary school and starting high school I thought I had finally managed to stop but my first day back at school destroyed any confidences I had. I remember walking home deciding there wasn’t any point trying to stop. No one had said anything the entire time, so I also decided it was ok. Instead of going straight home I went to local skate park and began going places most afternoons after school.

      I think at the time it gave me some sort of control of my situation, but it also exacerbated and prolonged it.

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  9. Did it ever happen in your sleep?

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    1. No. I can remember my pyjamas occasionally getting slightly soiled, but I never had full-on accident in them in my sleep.

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    2. Never at home but a couple of times during sleepovers and on high school trip to the centre of Australia. Most of the places we stayed were roadside camping areas which always had a lot of other campers. Peeing was ok because I could sneak behind a tree but not pooping.

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    3. Thanks for sharing your story, James. I recognize myself in this last part about hiding her soiled underwear. It is surprising how you can have strange reactions when you're a child. I still see my mother’s horrified face in incomprehension when she found my briefs full of dry poop under my dresser or my smelly quick-washed pajama bottoms, drying under my bed... and I, who had no idea how I could justify that.

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  10. Was there ever an occasion were someone other than your Mum discovered an accident?

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    1. There were times when other family members and family friends would notice that I smelled and suspect that I'd had an accident. As far as I can remember, it was always my Mum who checked my pants and changed me if necessary.

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  11. Would you of taken an offer of wearing pull ups/nappies just at home for protection as no one other than your family would see you wear them and they would offer security.

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    1. Pull-ups did not exist at the time. I may have agreed to using sanitary pads to protect my underwear from soiling, but I would not have wanted to go back to wearing nappies. In any case, there was zero chance of my parents offering me this.

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  12. Hi James,

    I don’t remember thinking much about it at the time, but diapers would have been a lot easier. When I was around 10 or 11 my mother made me do my own washing, probably thinking it would give me incentive to stop pooping in my underwear. It didn’t and I continued doing it during high school. It probably sounds gross, but I just hid my underwear in the back of a cupboard in my room, until I washed them. That was often only when I ran out of clean ones, so wearing diapers would have been much easier.

    I do remember thinking they were something babies and little kids wore, not someone in high school, which was a little odd considering.

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    1. Hi,

      There was no chance of my parents allowing me to wear diapers when I was 8, and I don't think I would have wanted this. In any case, Pampers had not yet arrived in the UK and most parents still used cloth diapers.

      By the time I was 8, I was only soiling my pants infrequently, usually on days out. Had they been invented, then my mother allowing me to wear a pull-up on such days may have been sensible. It would have helped to contain the mess and still allowed me to pee independently. As it was, she just had to take spare underwear and hope that I didn't need it.

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