This
is a slightly amended version of the post on my first blog, in which I wrote in
detail for the first time about my childhood soiling.
 |
| Aged 3 and still in nappies. |
My
toilet troubles began at an early age. Potty training was a slow process for me and I didn't come out of nappies until I was three
and a half years old. But though I was
‘dry’, I was still not completely ‘clean’ and often messed my pants. This occurred between the ages of 3 and 11,
although it was worst up to the age of 7.
It happened because I often
avoided going to the toilet when I felt the need to poo. Instead I would clench my bottom and breath inwards and wait for the need to pass. If I felt the urge again I would repeat the process. I freely admit that withholding began as an act of laziness on my part, not wanting to stop playing in order to
attend to my bodily needs, but it was never an act of naughtiness. I didn't deliberately go in my pants, but I
would soil myself sometime later because of my failure to use the toilet
earlier. I never felt myself actually pooing, I just became aware later that my
pants were messy.
It was a long time before I made the connection
between avoiding using the toilet and having dirty pants, because the need to
poo seemed to go away when I ignored it, making me believe that I had made my poo disappear. This was different to the feeling of a full bladder
which, if I did not go to the toilet straight away, would gradually get stronger until eventually I wet my pants, something which I never did after my toddler years. Because of the time lapse between avoiding
using the bathroom and soiling myself, I really don’t think I made the
connection between the two events for a quite a while.
 |
| A typical withholding position for me when I needed a poo and decided not to go to the toilet. (c) |
I thought at the time, and for a long time
afterwards, that I was the only child in the world who dirtied his pants. But I was later to discover that this was not
the case...
To read about soiling from the point of view of a girl sufferer, take a look at this blog post from Dimity Telfer: The Story of My Life
To read about soiling from the point of view of a girl sufferer, take a look at this blog post from Dimity Telfer: The Story of My Life
did u make skid marks
ReplyDeleteHi, usually when I soiled myself it was full-on poos in my pants, but sometimes it was much lighter, more like skid marks.
Deletehi, my son has enco. he witholds. did u only withold when u were alone?
ReplyDeleteand did u clean yourself when u did do a poo in the toilest?
Hi, I also withheld my poo when there were other people around me, although I would make it less obvious that I was doing so than if I was alone. At school I would withhold while I was sitting in my chair or on the floor.
DeleteFrom the age of 4 I wiped my own bottom when I did do a poo in the toilet. However, I never cleaned myself up after having an accident.
how would your mum check if u had pooed your pants because often when i figure my child has had a accident he doenst want me to check?
ReplyDeleteIf I smelled like I had pooed my pants then she would pull down my trousers, pull back the waistband of my pants and look inside to see if they were messy.
DeleteI hated it when I knew that my Mum was about to discover that I'd had another accident, but I never resisted my mother checking my pants or changing me.
Being cleaned up like a toddler was embarrassing, especially as I got older, and I felt pretty miserable as I usually got told off at the same time, but I did feel better when it was over and I was wearing clean underwear than I had felt while I was still messy.
hi again, what would your mum say to u before she checked your underwear for poo. for example, would she say something like "turn around for a check" or "have u pooed again"
Deleteand when u did soil would u try not to sit down or move to much because u didn't want your pants to get even more messy?
I think she would say something like, "James, you smell. Have you dirtied your pants again?"
DeleteI would not curtail my activities after I had soiled myself and would sit, walk or run around the same as if I was clean. I'm sure that I made the mess in my underwear worse as a result of doing this.
and what would u say when she asked u "have you dirtied your pants agian" because when i ask my child he goes speechless.
DeleteSometimes I would just look down and say nothing, other times I would say, "I'm sorry," which both acknowledged that I'd soiled my pants and tried to apologise for doing it. Either way, my Mum would check my pants to see what I'd done.
Deletehello, would your mum wear gloves while she was changing you after a poo acdident.
ReplyDeletealso, when u had soiled out and about, would u hear people saying stuff like "that boy smells" or would u try and stay away from people?
My Mum never wore gloves when she was changing me.
DeleteI don't remember strangers commenting in my earshot about me being stinky when I had soiled myself on trips out. I guess some people must have smelled my poo, but were probably too polite to mention it while I could hear them.
I neither tried to avoid nor get close to other adults when I had messy pants. Again, I would act much the same way as if I was clean. I did try to aoid the company of other children if I knew I was smelly. I have been in crowd situations while in soiled pants, but if there are a lot of children around then I guess it's had for others to know which kid is the stinky one!
hi, how long after u had soiled did u realised u had soiled.
ReplyDeletealso how would your mum check your pants when u were in public because she couldn't pull your trousers down and pull the waistband of your pants when there were other people around, right?
I think I knew that my pants were messy pretty soon after I had soiled them.
ReplyDeleteIf we were in public and there was nowhere discreet to check my pants, then my Mum would rely on her sense of smell and take me to the toilets to inspect my pants and change me.
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteYour website has excellent information and resources.
My Nephew is 13 and has problems with soiling his underwear. I thought he had stopped until we were at the local markets. As we sat watching a craft demonstration, I began to suspect he might have done it in his underwear, but the smell was barely noticeable and could have been someone else. When we got in the car my suspicions were raised more, but again the smell was barely noticeable and soon disappeared.
I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I suggested we could go home before we went to the community event. He declined that offer, which made me wonder if I had made a mistake suspecting him. It wasn’t until we found somewhere to sit that I realized my original suspicion was right. In the past he has denied it when questioned, so I didn’t ask him directly. I also didn’t want to embarrass him as he is quite sensitive.
My sister has tried everything, but nothing has worked, and as I discovered on the weekend, he is still doing it. She seems to have given up, so I decided to do some research myself and found your website. After talking with my sister, we decided the best approach was for me to talk to him. After first denying it, he finally admitted he is having problems.
I referred him to the site and since then he had further opened up.
Hi, thank you for your comment.
DeleteI am very pleased that this site has helped you, your sister and your nephew. I found it very difficult to tell anyone when I had soiled myself. I hated walking around in public in messy underwear, like you describe your nephew doing, but it still seemed preferable to telling someone what I had done. Hopefully opening up about his problems will be the first step for your nephew to overcoming them.
Best wishes,
James
Hi James,
DeleteDid you attempt to hide your pants pooping from your mother? My nephew is making improvements, but he is also hiding it. After he gets home, he disappears under their house and I discovered why. Hidden in one of the hard to get to corners he must be stashing his underwear and there are several of them. I am not sure if I should discuss it with him or his mother. What do you think is the best approach? I think he is making improvements so maybe it will just resolve itself in time.
I never hid my soiled underwear, but I know that a lot of children and teenagers who have soiling problems do this. I am glad to hear that your nephew is improving. I think you should discuss the situation with him hiding his underwear with his mother. If a way can be provided for him to deal with his soiled clothes without embarrassment or being scolded, eg a bucket he can put them in with the assurance that no comments will be made about the contents of the bucket, then this may dissuade him from hiding his underwear in the way he is currently doing.
DeleteThat’s a good idea. His mum does mean to get mad at him, but she does and that might be why he is hiding them. I have talked to her about your suggestion of the bucket and although she doesn’t agree she is willing to give it a try. I am staying at their house for the next couple of months, so I have placed a bucket in the bathroom I use. I told him I found the underwear he had hidden under the house and told him about the bucket. He now knows he can put them in there and nothing will be said. I will let you know how it works out
DeleteI hope that having the bucket dissuades him for trying to hide his soiled underwear, and he continues to improve generally in using the toilet. Best wishes to you all.
DeleteHi James,
DeleteJust thought I would give you an update on my nephew. At first, he was a little reluctant putting his underwear in the bucket but not anymore. Once he realized he wasn’t going to get in trouble he started putting them there in the afternoons and nothing is said
Hi. pleased to hear that the idea seems to be working so far. Let's hope that he now makes further progress in reducing the number of occasions on which he soils himself, and eventually becomes completely clean.
DeleteHi James,
ReplyDeleteSo far it doesn’t seem to have reduced his soiling. It’s also apparent he has been doing it a lot more often than I first realized. I supposed it’s a little early to tell, so I will keep you updated.
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteDo you think some people never grow out of it?
I have been doing it since I was around 12 after some big changed in my life, parents divorcing, new location and school. Even since then it’s something I have done, and I have found ways of hiding it.
I have heard of numerous cases of teenagers who have soiling problems, and a few adults in their early 20s. For a short time I worked with a 21 year old young woman whom I think may have had encopresis as she often smelled like she had messed herself. However, I haven't heard of cases of people who are aged much older than this.
DeleteHi James. Do you think the cause of your accidents was constipation? Reading your blog it sounds like your constant withholding let you to being backed up quite often so poo would leak around into your underwear, which is why you never felt the accident actually occurring.
ReplyDeleteI had frequent soiling and occasional wetting settings until the age of 14. I would always feel the accident happening but would just loose control after holding on too long. Although I deeply cared about my accidents like yourself, and desperately wanted them to stop, I would still hold in hold in my poo when I was not at home or in the middle of something, and could never offer a good explanation to my mother as to why it kept happening. When I was around Ten a GP said it was caused by chronic constipation, which also put pressure on my bladder hence the wetting and soiling, so diagnosed laxatives. This did very little other than make my accidents are lot more difficult to clean for my mother! Numerous more GP appointments and being put on higher doses but they kept on happening. Eventually they stopped when i was 14, and had my final poo accident aged 15, although still had the odd smear or dribble.
I think like yourself I finally was able to break my withholding habit after years of many more embarrassing changes than I wish to remember. In hindsight, although I was constipated at times, which were the cause of my bigger accidents, I think my overall problem was more behaviourally linked which was maybe why laxatives did very little to stop them.
I think constipation was a factor in some of my accidents, particularly the ones which consisted of liquid poo leaking around solid stool in my rectum. However, most of my soiling was full-on soft poo accidents in my pants. I was occasionally given laxatives when I hadn't pooed for several days, but, like you, this tended to result in very messy poo accidents, as I often couldn't reach the toilet in time.
DeleteYou do sound very much like me with your own soiling problems, both in cause and how you were eventually able to overcome them, although I didn't also have wetting accidents and stopped soiling when I was 11. I am sorry that you continued to have these issues into your teenage years, but I am glad that you are now over them and feel able to write about them.
Hello James. I wonder, were your lack of wetting accidents because you had a particularly strong bladder, or did you just not withhold when you had to wee, using the toilet as needed? Did you ever stand at the toilet to wee with an as yet undiscovered mess in your pants? I had a strong bladder as a child, and can only recall one instance in my childhood of wetting myself, when I was seven-years-old, which was not really my fault.
DeleteI didn't withhold urine. If I needed to wee and I ignored it then the feeling wouldn't go away like the feeling of needing to poo would, it would just get stronger, so I always went to the toilet fairly promptly.
DeleteI can also only recall when time I wet myself after potty training. I would have been around eight or nine and I fell over on the way to the bathroom and began to wee as soon as I hit the floor. I felt like I was frozen there, unable to move, until I had completely emptied my bladder onto the living room carpet. Afterwards I got up and went to my bedroom and, similar to when I soiled myself, I ignored the fact that I had wet pants and wet trousers. And, unlike when I was messy, I got away with this accident!
And yes, there were a few occasions when I stood at the toilet doing a wee with a mess in my pants. Afterwards I would carry on what I was doing, still messy. Had I been a girl and had to pull down my pants to sit on the toilet to wee and seen the mess, then I'm certain I would have pulled them back up afterwards and made no attempt to clean either my pants or my bottom.
That’s a good story. At first it seemed a bit comical, the idea of a kid falling down and wetting himself, then it struck me as rather tragic that you remained in urine-soaked clothing until it dried in order to delay your mother’s wrath, which thankfully never came. If she did discover that you had wet yourself, I imagine she’d have been just as mystified by your ignoring it the way you would when you soiled yourself, never realizing you did so because of her inevitable negative reaction. Your behavior makes perfect kid-logic.
ReplyDeleteThe only time I ever remember wetting myself happened during a summer vacation, when my family checked into a not very nice motor lodge late on a very stormy night. We hadn’t been in our rooms for more than a few minutes when the power went out, so my parents had my siblings and I just go straight to bed. We didn’t change into pajamas, but just slept in our underwear. I recall that I wanted to wee before getting into bed, but it wasn’t at the desperation phase as yet. It didn’t happen involuntarily while I was sound asleep, but during that semi-conscious state before being fully awake. I knew where I was, laying on my belly, not really able to move, feeling a strong need to release my bladder. Somehow, I convinced myself that if I let go, it would only make a small wet dot on my undies, and nothing more (like most seven-year-olds, I had no sense of volume). Of course, my underpants were soaked. Because of the storm the night before, my parents didn’t bring in our luggage for just one night, and didn’t want to rummage through to find a clean pair of briefs for me, so I went “commando” that day. Strangely, while having an accident was embarrassing in and of itself, it was more bothersome to be wearing blue jeans without underpants—the jagged brass zipper rubbing against me was pretty uncomfortable. There was no scolding from my parents, nor teasing from my siblings over this one-off bed wetting experience.
I don't think my mother would have been very pleased if she had thought I had started wetting my pants as well as soiling myself. I imagine that your parents thought that you had wet the bed while fully asleep and didn't want to punish you for something you had no control over. It was nice that your siblings also didn't tease you.
DeleteI don't remember ever wetting the bed as a child, but there was a chair with a lift-up seat in my bedroom and one night I got out of bed, removed the teddy sitting on the chair, lifted up the seat and wee'd into the chair, thinking it was the toilet, before lowering the seat and putting teddy back and getting back into bed.
My mother guessed that I had been half asleep when I did this and she didn't punish me, but it was the end of the chair as she believed it would be impossible to get the smell out of the fabric lining inside.
That is funny! 😊
ReplyDelete