HELP!!!! MY CHILD HAS ENCOPRESIS

In July 2012 fellow former encopresis sufferer Dimity Telfer suggested I join a Facebook group of which she herself was a member.  The group was called HELP!!!! My Child Has Encopresis, and was set up to provide a forum for parents whose children, of all ages, had soiling problems.  Although I was not a parent, Dimity felt that my input would be useful as an ‘adult survivor’, and that many members would be interested in hearing about my childhood experiences.

The group provides a vital forum for parents
 of children and teenagers who soil (c).

I agreed to join and quickly received a warm welcome from many group members, who were keen to hear my story and try to see encopresis from a child’s point of view and understand how their own children may be feeling.  The fact that I was male was also seen as an advantage as more boys suffer from encopresis than girls (in the group there is an approximate 60/40 split between boys and girls who soil).  As it is mostly mothers who do the lion’s share of the work in trying to help their child with their toilet problems, some found it particularly useful to read about the experiences of a child of the opposite sex to themselves.

I quickly discovered just what an amazing group it was, offering advice and support in a totally non-judgemental atmosphere, with members sharing their experiences on what worked for their child and what didn’t.  One of the best things about the group was that it offered an environment where parents could freely discuss their child’s toilet issues, which they often felt unable to talk about with their family and friends.  Sadly, soiling in children past potty training age remains largely a taboo subject in the real world, and the older the child the harder it is to talk about to others who have had no experience of toilet problems in their offspring.  This makes encopresis a very isolating condition, both for the child and his or her parents.

Many members find comfort just from being among others who are going through similar experiences, while others are delighted to be able to talk about their child’s soiling with others who ‘get it’.  It is also a good place to vent frustrations on bad days when, for example their son has refused point blank to try to use the toilet and has soiled himself five times during the day or their daughter has pooed her pants in a public place and refused to change herself.  The flip side of this is that parents are also able to celebrate their child’s toilet successes, big and small.  Few people outside the group would understand a mother getting excited because her 8 year old daughter has kept her knickers clean all day or her teenage son has taken himself off to the bathroom and done a poo!

I had never thought that anyone would want to know the explicit details of how I had pooed myself as a child, but I was asked various questions about my juvenile toileting habits that I was happy to answer as candidly as I could.  One of the rules of the group is that nothing is TMI.  It is a principle I have adopted when writing this blog.  Some people may be shocked to read a blog in which soiling is discussed so frankly, and using words like ‘poo’ instead of euphemisms like ‘Number 2’, but I have found this approach to be one which parents of children who soil appreciate and find usefu

The 'sister' group offer a friendly and
supportive environment for the parents
 of children and teenagers
 with daytime wetting problems. (c)

In July 2016, four years after joining, I was invited to become an Administrator of the group and I was happy to agree.  I remained an Admin for eight years, until I stepped down in order to concentrate on my other volunteering roles in the 'real world'.

Also in 2016 I decided to set up a ‘sister’ group for parents of children and teenagers who wet themselves during the day, another taboo subject.  Daytime Wetting in Children and Teens operates on similar principles to the Encopresis group. I am still the Admin of this group, and try to ensure that it offers a friendly, welcoming and non-judgemental
environment.

A POOEY BOTTOM AT NURSERY

I loved the year I spent in the nursery of my infant school, although my memories of this period in my life are patchy.  One memory that is clear in my mind involved a poo accident, but, for once, I was not the culprit!

The toilets and washbasins set up at my nursery
was similar to in this picture, but with coats
hanging up instead of towels as it was also
the cloakroom. (c)

The nursery toilets were in the cloakroom, outside the classroom.  There were two cubicles, one each for boys and girls, denoted by pictures of a football and a princess’s tiara, an example of gender stereotyping that would be frowned upon today.  The washbasins were outside the cubicles in the communal area where pupils’ coats were hung.  This set up unfortunately offered no privacy to any child who had an accident, as the nursery assistant would change them while they stood next to the sink.  The nursery, which was in a separate building to the rest of the school, was accessed through the cloakroom, so any parent or visitor who happened to time their arrival shortly after a pupil had paid the price for neglecting their toileting needs would be confronted with a young child’s bare bottom facing them as they entered the building. 

And so on this day, when I was 4 years old, I entered the cloakroom and immediately saw a half naked girl from my class with her back turned towards me, a pooey bottom facing me and a pair of messy knickers at her feet.  I can’t remember her name, so I shall call her Holly.  Squatting in front of Holly, probably having just pulled down the girl’s pants and getting ready to clean her up, was one of the nursery assistants.   As I walked into the cloakroom, the assistant was saying to Holly, ‘You really should have gone to the toilet.’  It took my young brain a second to process this information before I realised what it meant: Holly had pooed her pants!

I was shocked by this for a number of reasons.  Firstly that another child had pooed herself like I often did.  Although I had no reason to think that this was anything other than a one-off accident, it still surprised me that Holly had done it as, although one or two of my classmates had wet themselves at nursery, I thought I was the only child who pooed in his pants.  I was even more surprised that it was a girl who had messed herself.  I believed in the nursery rhyme about little girls being made of ‘sugar and spice and all things nice,’ and never thought that a girl would dirty her knickers.  Indeed, I think it was a revelation to me that girls pooed at all!

And then Holly turned her head and looked at me and, for as long as I live, I shall never forget that anxious look on her face.  Even my immature brain could make a good guess at interpreting Holly’s expression: she was upset that someone had seen her being changed and now knew that she had pooed herself, and was worried that the whole class would soon know what she had done.  The fact that the witness was a child from her class and, even worse, a boy, probably worried her even more.  I looked at Holly and said nothing to her.  Nor did I laugh or giggle at her, or, indeed, make any sign to her that I had taken any notice of what I had seen.  Even forty years later I can clearly remember feeling a certain amount of empathy with her (even though I hadn’t heard of the word at the time), and feeling sorry for her.  I think I would have been more likely to go up to Holly and give her a hug than tease her.

I never told anyone that Holly had 
messed her pants at school, and for
a short time I felt less alone with
my poo problems.

When I went into the classroom I told absolutely no-one what I had seen, not on that day or any subsequent day.  Indeed, it was two decades later before I mentioned it to anyone, when talking with a colleague who was about to enter teacher training about young children having toilet accidents at school (she was resigned to the fact that she might be required to change wet pants, but was horrified by the thought that she may have to clean up a child who had pooed herself!)  Nor did I ever say anything to Holly herself about her messing her knickers.  I’m sure that this was because I knew what it would have been like to have been in her shoes, or rather, her pants!  She may not have thought so at the time, but I think she was lucky in that the boy who walked in on her being changed was the one child in the class who frequently pooed himself and knew all too well just what it was like to be in that situation.

In years to come, when I was still soiling my pants at an age when other children didn’t even seem to have one-off poo accidents, this incident would provide me with little comfort.  But, at the time, for a short period, I didn’t feel quite so alone with my habit.  And Holly had taught me, with an explicit demonstration, that girls do, in fact, poo!

THE DAY I POOED MYSELF ON PURPOSE

In my first post, Why I Pooed My Pants, I stated that I didn’t deliberately go in my pants.  For the most part this is quite true, but there was one occasion when I did poo myself on purpose, although, as you will see, I was not soiling a pair of clean pants.

                    

I was 8 when this happened and it took place at the home of my maternal grandmother, the only grandparent I ever knew.  She lived in a Victorian terraced house, which has since been converted.  There was no bathroom and only an outside toilet.  The fairly small back garden had no grass, few flowers and mostly consisted of paths leading to the toilet and the outside gate, and areas of soil and rock.  I was playing alone in this garden when I got the familiar feeling in my underwear that told me that my pants were messy.  I ignored it and carried on playing.  Even if I had wanted to go back inside the house where my mother and grandmother were talking I would not now do so, as this would result in my accident being quickly discovered.

I was able to play happily on my own
for hours - which was a good thing
when I was messy and smelly!

Fortunately, I could always entertain myself, and did not need toys or other children or adults to have a fun time playing.  I had a good imagination and don’t ever remember being bored during the whole of my childhood, I could always find something to do.  I loved the long summer holiday from school and did not need my parents to spend large amounts of time or money to keep me entertained.

While I was playing I felt the need to poo again.  I was only a few metres from the toilet, but did not think for one second of using it.  I was already in a crouching position when I felt it, but this time I didn’t withhold, as I still often did when I was away from home.  Instead I pushed and, for the first time in my life, I pooed in my pants on purpose.  It was a good thing there was no-one in the next garden looking over, or they would have seen a strange sight, an 8 year old boy crouching down and deliberately messing himself. For the first time ever I actually felt the poo leaving my bottom and entering my underwear.  I must have known that I was being very naughty doing this, but I did it anyway.  When I had finished I resumed playing in my freshly soiled pants.

It must have been a few days since I had used the toilet because shortly afterwards I felt that I had to go again.  I crouched down and added to the waste in my underwear.  In the same way that you may say that a baby has filled his nappy, some parents refer to a child who has soiled himself as having ‘filled his pants’.  It was not a phrase that was usually used in my house, but it would have been particularly apt on this day.  Indeed, I was treating my underwear like it was a nappy.  It was a good job that I did not also need a wee that afternoon or I probably would have just done that in my pants as well and created an even more horrendous mess.

Not surprisingly, when I was called into the house my mother was quickly alerted to what I had done.  She was used to discovering that her son had pooed himself, but even she was shocked by how badly I stank.  When she looked inside my pants and found out how much I'd pooed in them and how messy I was she was furious with me.

With no bathroom, no hot running water and no spare pants, changing me at my grandmother’s home would have been nearly impossible.  Instead I had to endure an humiliating half-hour bus ride home in my soiled pants, absolutely reeking of poo.  Looking back, I’m surprised the driver allowed such a stinky child on his bus.  We sat near the front, which meant that everyone who got on smelt me, and my mother reprimanded me throughout the journey.

Aged 8, I deliberately pooed my pants
for the first time in my life, behaving
as if I was wearing a nappy.

Cleaning me up that day was going to be no easy task and my mother decided that I would need a bath.  ‘How do you expect me to get these clean?’ she asked me, holding up my pants in front of me.  We were not a rich family and supermarkets did not sell cheap underwear in those days, so throwing out my pants everytime I soiled them was not an option.  Seeing my underwear caked in my poo really brought home to me just what I had done.  I sat in the tub feeling ashamed of myself.

I know I behaved badly that day, and I thoroughly deserved the scolding I received.  Why did I do it?  One mother on Mumsnet whose 9 year old son always withheld his poo at school said that if he came home in dirty underwear he would sometimes just do the rest in his pants.  He knew he would be moaned at for soiling himself anyway, so it was a case of ‘in for the penny, in for the pound.’  Maybe that was the way I was thinking that afternoon.  Or perhaps I disliked the thought of using the toilet when I already had a pooey bottom, and of pulling down my messy pants and pulling them back up again.  But I suspect that the real reason was that it just seemed the easy thing to do at the time.  Once again, I did not think of the consequences of my actions.

It has not been easy to write about this, as it is one of my most painful memories of my childhood, certainly the worst that was a result of my soiling habit.  The only good thing that came out of it was that I was never tempted to do it again.

THE “DON’T CARE” ATTITUDE

An observation some parents make is that their child who suffers from encopresis doesn’t care about their condition, is quite happy to continue soiling himself or herself, isn’t bothered whether their underwear is clean or dirty and makes little effort to overcome their toilet problems or even be willing to talk about them.  Children or teenagers refusing to change themselves, or not asking someone to change them, after accidents or not using the toilet when they are just yards from the bathroom are additional factors which often lead parents to conclude that their child just couldn’t care less about their soiling habit.

Many parents think their children
do not care about their soiling
problems, but I suspect that this
is often not the case. (c)

I think it is likely that my own parents thought that I didn’t care about my toilet problems.  In my previous post, Staying in Messy Pants, I explained why I didn’t report my accidents and carried on sitting, walking or playing in my soiled underwear until someone smelt what I’d done.  I can also clearly remember at least one occasion when I felt the need to poo while I was right outside the bathroom, which was unoccupied, but instead of going inside and using the toilet I crouched on the landing floor and withheld my poo and then carried on playing.  Withholding had become a habit for me and proximity to the bathroom was not a consideration. 

I also rarely talked about my soiling at the time.  Regardless of whether I was clean or messy, it was a subject I really didn’t like discussing.  Partly this was embarrassment, but partly because I couldn’t offer any explanation of why I did what I did.  When I was very young I didn’t know that my dirty pants were the result of not using the toilet, and even after making the connection my juvenile brain could not explain why I continued to withhold sometimes when I was aware of the consequences of so doing.  It is only as an adult I have been able to make sense of the decisions that I took during my childhood with regards to my toileting.

When my mother checked my pants and found they were messy I would say I was sorry, but couldn’t answer questions like, ‘Why didn’t you go to the toilet?’ or ‘Why do you keep doing this?’  While I was being changed I stood in front of my mother as she cleaned me up, saying very little.  We didn’t have a shower in the house, so I had to be washed using a flannel and a sink of soapy water.  My habit of playing in dirty pants meant that I was often messier than would otherwise be the case and the clean-up tended to take quite a while, during which time I gave little response to my mother’s comments and questions about my latest accident.

But my lack of response didn’t mean that I didn’t care about my soiling problem.  By the time I was 7 I cared deeply about it, desperately wanted to stop doing it, really wanted to be like other children.  Even though I could happily carry on playing in messy pants, I hated the moment when I knew that I’d had another accident, hated the moment when that accident was discovered and hated having to be undressed and changed by my mother.  But I was unable to articulate these feelings into words that would have made any sense.

I was generally a happy child, but I desperately
wanted to stop pooing my pants.  Trying not
to think about my toilet problems too much
was a coping mechanism for me.

Generally speaking, during the years when I was soiling myself fairly frequently, I was a happy child.  I loved my infant school, could amuse myself for hours, got on well with other children, particularly girls, and these were among the happiest days of my life.  When I was clean I tried to avoid thinking about my toilet issues as much as possible, and even when I needed changing I tried to put them to the back of my mind.  This was another way for me of coping with the situation.  If I had been constantly thinking about how I still pooed myself when I was 6, 7, 8 and even older, bearing in mind that I thought at the time that I was the only school aged child in the world who did this, I think I might have become clinically depressed.  Thinking all the time that I was babyish and disgusting would have been a terrible burden for a little boy to carry and I’m glad that I didn’t do this.

So I remained happy and tried not to think about my poo problems too much.  When I put on clean pants in the morning I didn’t wonder whether I would mess them during the day, and when we went out I didn’t worry about whether I would have an accident and have to be changed in a public toilet.  As a result, while encopresis undoubtedly blighted my childhood, it did not ruin it and I have many happy memories to look back on.

It is impossible for me to know what goes on in the minds of other people, particularly other children or teenagers.  Maybe some genuinely do not care about their toilet issues, and maybe some have been soiling themselves for so long that they have lost the will to try to improve the situation, or simply do not know how to do so.  But I guess that some children who soil, while they may give the impression of not caring, actually care deeply about the situation and, like me, would desperately like to become completely clean.

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 fellow former encopresis sufferer Dimity Telfer said 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."

SOILING AT SCHOOL

Children who are at school and who soil themselves frequently are almost certain to have accidents in the classroom.  For most kids with encopresis, and their parents, this is likely to be one of the most stressful aspects of the condition.  No child past nursery age wants to poo their pants in front of their peers, particularly not on a repeated basis, and be awarded nicknames such as ‘class baby’ or ‘stinky kid.’  Yet this can be the reality for some of the thousands of children who suffer from soiling problems.

Soiling can lead to a child being teased
or isolated at school, even when she is clean. (c)

Schools can vary a great deal in how they deal with pupils who soil.  The best schools employ staff who are willing to change young children out of soiled pants, provide private toilet facilities, devise a signal for a child to give if they need to leave the classroom quickly and work with parents to maintain a child’s dignity and assist them with their continence issues.  At the other end of the spectrum are schools who force parents to leave their place of work and come into school to change their child, refuse to allow children access to the toilet during lessons, blame parents for not potty training their child properly and even suspend pupils for having accidents.

I was amazingly lucky in that soiling caused me very few problems at infant school, even though I was having a lot of accidents elsewhere at the time.  While I sometimes went home in slightly (for me!) dirty pants, I only ever had one major accident at school.  Was this because I was more likely to use the toilets at school than at home?  Not a bit of it!  I can’t recall a single occasion when I opened my bowel in the toilet at infant school, I would simply withhold my poo while sitting in my seat and then carry on working.  In fact, as I had a relatively strong bladder for a child and went home at lunchtimes, I rarely used the school toilets at all. 

I hardly ever visited the school toilets
during my years at infant school, 
and never once sat on one to do a poo. (c)

My one major accident actually occurred on a field trip to an outdoor activities centre when I was 7 and soon to leave infant school.  My mother had told me beforehand ‘make sure you go to the toilet if you need to,’ but I did not feel the need do so.  However, towards the end of the visit, I realised that I had pooed myself.  And then I did what I always did in such circumstances, I carried on what I was doing as if nothing had happened, although I did try to avoid getting too close to my classmates or the teachers.  Despite this precaution I still expected the smell to give me away.

But I was again remarkably lucky: no-one discovered that I’d had an accident.  Nobody, child or adult, remarked on the odour I was carrying around with me, either during the remainder of our time at the centre or on the coach back to the school where our parents were waiting for us.  With her well-trained nose, however, my mother knew straight away when I got off the coach that I had soiled my pants.  I told her that there were no toilets at the centre.  Not surprisingly, she didn’t believe me.  Walking home with a friend of my mother and her daughter, my mother tried to explain the fact that I smelt of poo by telling her friend that I didn’t wipe my bottom properly.  It was probably no more convincing than my own lie.

If my accident had been discovered then I would have received a stern response.  My teacher was rather strict and was unsympathetic when it came to her pupils having toilet accidents.  The previous Christmas one girl, whom I shall call Melanie, wet her pants during a rehearsal for the school nativity play.  The whole class were sat together back in the classroom when the puddle on the stage was discovered.  ‘Melanie, have you wet yourself?’ called out our teacher as soon as she entered the room.  When the girl said ‘no’, our teacher demanded, ‘Let me feel your pants.’

Aged 6, I withheld my poo at infant
school but avoided soiling myself
in the classroom.

While the rest of the class watched transfixed, poor Melanie had to clamber over us all and stand at the front where our teacher put her hand up the 6 year old’s skirt and felt her underwear.  ‘You have!’ she exclaimed, before sending Melanie off to find the caretaker and tell him what she’d done.  ‘Filthy creature,’ our teacher added for good measure as the girl left the room.

Even today, the thought of my Year 2 teacher calling out, ‘James, have you pooed yourself?’, before checking my pants in front of the whole class and declaring them to be messy fills me with horror.

Why did I only have one accident at infant school despite my reluctance to park my bottom on school toilets?  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that subconsciously my body knew that accidents in the classroom would be far more embarrassing for me than the ones I had at home and made extra effort to ensure they didn’t happen.  Whatever the reason, I’m very thankful to have largely avoided the humiliation of soiling myself at school.  As I stated in my earlier post, How I Stopped Soiling My Pants, at junior school I found the courage to use the school toilets when I needed a poo.

MY FINAL ACCIDENT

It’s probably no coincidence that my final accident was also one of my most embarrassing.  It happened in public on holiday in Scarborough in the north of England when I was 11 years and 3 months old.

Aged 10, I was still not
completely free of poo accidents.

By this stage my accidents were few and far between, but I was still not completely clear of them.  One evening during that week long holiday my parents and I were on a walking tour of a beautiful park.  Around half way around I soiled myself.  I had been avoiding using public toilets for bowel movements during the holiday, thinking I could always wait until we returned to our chalet with its private facilities.  But my body had other ideas.  As always, I did not feel myself doing the deed but I felt the poo in my pants and knew that I’d had another accident.  Shortly afterwards the smell told my parents what I had done.

My mother was carrying no spare pants for me and, in any case, I was now a bit too old to be taken into the Ladies to be changed (my father is disabled and could not have changed me.)  There was also no way my mother was going to risk taking me behind a bush to try to clean me up.  I’m grateful for this, I think I would have died of humiliation if anyone had chanced upon me being changed and seen my bare pooey bottom.  There was nothing else for it, I had to walk the remainder of the tour in messy pants.

I did not enjoy the rest of the park one bit.  I was due to start secondary school in a few weeks time and I would soon be hitting puberty, but here I was in public, with lots of adults and younger children nearby, smelling of poo, walking around with my own waste sitting in my underwear, feeling like an unreliable toddler and waiting to be told off again when we returned to our chalet.  I don’t know what the others in the park thought of an 11 year old boy who had clearly messed his pants – no-one stayed near me long enough to express an opinion!

I hated being made to sit on the toilet
 after I had been cleaned up. (c)

Back at the chalet, my mother changed my pants.  It was always my mother who changed me, I can’t ever remember anyone else ever doing so.  If you are thinking that I should have been cleaning up my own messes long before this age, then you are probably right.  However, I don’t think I had it easy just because I didn’t have to change myself.  Standing lower half naked in front of my mother when I was less than two years away from being a teenager, being changed like I was a toddler and scolded at the same time was an embarrassing and unpleasant experience.

My mother often made me sit on the toilet to try to poo after she had finished cleaning me up, and she did so on this day, leaving me on my own while she took away my soiled clothes.  When I was younger I hated this, and always begged her to let me get off.  It always seemed like a punishment and I rarely produced anything as I had already done it all in my pants.

This time I sat there thinking.  This couldn’t go on.  I was 11, I was about to start ‘big’ school, I couldn’t keep having accidents like this.  What if the next one happened in the classroom at my new school?

Of course at the time I did not know this was going to be my final accident, indeed it was a long time afterwards before I knew for sure that my soiling problem was finally at an end.  It took a bad accident in public to make me resolve to complete the journey to becoming fully clean that I had begun several years before.  I never avoided public toilets again.