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) |
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.
If you would like to read a post about the emotional aspects of helping a child with soiling problems, then try this post from the SuperMom Blues: Raising a Child with Encopresis.
Oh boy can I relate here. Sitting on the potty forever. I was spanked and told to stay on the potty and poop like a big boy. Eric you are too old for messing your pants. Shaming me caused deep hurt that has destroyed my self worth even today that effects me. Then in awhile if I could not go my mom would get out the enema and put a few bulbs in me to make me go. I hated that and they were always traumatic events. I felt abused. Enemas were a strange sensation believe me. Always messy events with me crying like I was being killed. Then the total loss of control pooping for an hour non stop with tears rolling down my face.
ReplyDeleteAlso when I was younger and back in those days they did not have small child sized toilet seats I always felt like I was going to fall into the potty. I believe this was the main reason why I started going in my pants.
I'm sorry you had to go through the trauma of enemas, Eric. I can clearly recall being shouted at for soiling and told that only babies dirty their pants. It did nothing for my self-esteem either, and I hated being made to sit on the toilet for ages when I'd messed my pants.
Deleteboy can I relate to this!Being almost a teen and still messing yourself is so embarrassing! I remember my dad always had to check my pants and underwear, to make suure I hadn't pooped in them. This was done after school, or any time before we went out. sometimes even in public, he took me into a public bathroom and did an underwear inspection. This was so humiliating to have this done when entering junior high school!
DeleteWould you of rather changed yourself after you had an accident, or your mum change you.
ReplyDeleteAt the time I probably wouldn't have wanted to clean up my own mess, but looking back I think it would have been better if I'd changed myself as I got older.
DeleteI like the way you put it, “I was about to start ‘big’ school.” That kind of transition can be a powerful motivating factor. I was fourteen-years-old here in the United States when I started high school, and I made a conscious decision that I was now too old to play with toys anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t find toys still to be fun, but perceived that to be something for little grade school children, not big high school teenagers. I’m glad for you, James, that you were able to successfully close that rather embarrassing chapter of your life prior to adolescence.
DeleteActually, the term 'starting big school' is sometimes a bit confusing in the UK, as it can be used to refer to the transition from nursery to primary school at age 5, or from primary school to secondary school at age 11. Obviously, I am using in the latter sense in this post. (Just to make it even more confusing, children in some areas transfer schools aged 10 rather then 11, and some have an additional change of school at 7 and/or 14!)
DeleteI consider myself lucky to have been able to stop soiling before reaching my teenage years. I hate to think what it would have been like to have been walking around amongst my peers as, say, a 15 year old with a load in my pants and stinking of poo. Sadly, I know that there are many teenage boys and girls who have to face this humiliation.
I pooped in my pants a lot when I was in elementary and junior high. One time, I laid a huge poop right in the middle of class. Luckily, it was when I was staying after school to work with my teacher on a project, so no other kids were there. But my teacher smelled it and said peeyooo!! as I walked out of class to change my pants. When I came back, he had opened all the windows and was giving me a suspicious look like he knew i'd pooped. But he never said anything else about it, so maybe he thought i'd just did a really bad fart. It was super embarrasing nonetheless.
DeleteAnother time, I pooped a load in my shorts during gym class. I sneaked off to the bathroom, cleaned up and ditched the underwear, thinking I was in the clear. But my gym teacher found them and interrogated all of us guys about whose they were. But no one fessed up. I was so humiliated, even though I wasn't caught.
I'm sorry you had to experience that, Tommy. I only had one major accident at school, but I can still remember how it felt, knowing that I stank and constantly worrying that someone would find out that I had pooed myself like a baby. I don't know what would have been worse, the teasing of the other children or my teacher's anger with me.
DeleteIt wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started developing some of the typical symptoms of encopresis, but thankfully without the definitive issue of actually soiling my pants, except only once. When I started adolescence, I became very self conscious, and had great difficulty having bowel movements outside the privacy of my own home. It was almost as though I didn’t want others to think that that this basic human need ever applied to me, unlike when I was a younger child and could shamelessly announce before mixed company that I was going to the toilet. Withholding led to frequent bouts of constipation, which made using the toilet even more painful, so I would sometimes wait a day or two before relieving myself. In one instance on a family vacation when I was thirteen, we took a long journey by rail that even went overnight. Prior to the trip, I was too excited to force a bowel movement at home, and so it just built up inside me. Though really needing to go, I wouldn’t even consider using the toilet on the rail car during the day with people going in and out of there all the time. So, I waited until everyone on the train was asleep in the middle of the night to give it a try. No luck, I just couldn’t move my bowels sitting on stainless steel, and when someone knocked on the door, I gave up trying. It got to be so painful by the time my family was driving from the rail station to the hotel, I thought for certain that I would have a major accident in my pants. However, by this age I did have excellent self control, and was able to hold myself and properly use a toilet in the privacy of our rooms; nevertheless, it was big, and it was painful. When I actually did soil myself about a year later, it wasn’t very big, but it was a direct result of the constipation. At home just before supper, I stood up and consciously thought I’d release a fart. Well, it wasn’t gas at all, but a blob of liquid poo (what some people call a “shart”). I immediately went to the toilet, cleaned myself up, and got the worst of it out of my undies; my trousers experienced no damage. Because I couldn’t clean out the brown stain, and the obvious fact that these were my pants and no one else’s, I took them to the laundry and quietly told my mother what happened. Without embarrassing me, she actually seemed a little amused by this one-off incident. I never spoke to anyone about my constipation issues, and I suppose because there weren’t any problems with soiled pants outside this particular instance, no one could guess that I had this problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that happened to you because you were embarrassed about using the toilet as a teenager. Sadly, society has a taboo around talking about having bowel movements, even though it is something every single person in the world does on a regular basis. Young children are exempt from this social conditioning, but it seems once you are a few years past potty training age, the fact that you poo is something you are expected to keep secret and, as you say, pretend this basic human need doesn't apply to you. I hope you are now okay and comfortable with going to the toilet when you need to poo.
DeleteUniversity helped me to deal with this problem in a very practical way. The 1920s dormitory in which I lived had shared toilets at the end of the hallway, where over twenty young men would take care of their business as quickly as possible. I was no longer embarrassed to be a normal human being who each day needs to go number two.
DeleteGlad to hear that you were able to overcome your problems at university.
DeleteHello James—
ReplyDeleteI find your blog helpful in better understanding how a child’s mind works. Encopresis presents some complex underlying issues it seems that can be too difficult for a child’s mind to understand why it’s happening, and feeling too ashamed to even articulate thoughts and feelings. Reading your various stories and responses, it sounds like your final accident occurred quite some time after any previous incidents, and even then it was far less frequent than in your early childhood. In your other posts you said that you wouldn’t tell your mother that you soiled yourself, waiting for her to smell it and check your pants. Moreover, you didn’t really mind the physical feeling of having poop in your pants, only the dread of the scolding you’d receive when it was discovered. Was there anything different with this final accident? It seems like you were more disturbed by your accident than in previous years, when you would just ignore it, and continue playing in soiled pants. How did your mother discover what you had done? Did she still check your pants as she had done before, or did you give her any acknowledgment that you messed yourself? Would she have realized that you were upset by this, or did it still look like you had the “I don’t care” attitude?
I would say that this accident was particularly upsetting for me as it happened in public and the circumstances meant that I couldn't be changed straight away and had to walk around for around an hour in soiled pants. It was a bad accident and I was very smelly, and it was obvious to anyone who came near me what I had done. And I was now 11 years old, so to be walking around in such a state was particularly humiliating and I felt very ashamed of myself - I probably wouldn't have felt the same way if I'd only been 5 or 6.
DeleteMy mother didn't check my pants on this occasion as it would have been difficult to do this discreetly. I didn't tell her that I had messed myself, but it was obvious from the smell what I'd done. I also think she knew that I was particularly upset by this accident and she didn't really scold me on this occasion.
I can’t remember which psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg or Jean Piaget, noted that cross-culturally a significant change takes place in human development when we reach eleven years of age. For example for 5 to 10-year-olds, their major concern when choosing between right from wrong is the desire to be regarded (by adult authority figures) to be a good boy or girl; whereas, 11-year-olds become far more concerned about how they fit into the social order (what those around us deem as acceptable or unacceptable). These observations seem to fit with your stories to some degree. When you were eight years old and soiled yourself on purpose, you knew this was wrong and your mother’s heightened disapproval particularly resonated with you, sitting in the bathtub, ashamed of yourself. On the other hand, your final accident as an eleven-year-old seems to be more striking due to the public nature of your embarrassing situation, rather than the potential ire of your mother, which was somewhat abated in this case. I’m also reminded of a common theme of those who seek to overcome various addictions; they seem to need a point where they reach their personal “rock bottom” before they are truly motivated to change their behaviors. In your case, I’m not sure if you really could have mentally and physically overcome encopresis prior to this final incident. Other things that make me wonder, had your mother been far more calm and patient when you were eight-years-old, might you have been tempted to intentionally soil yourself again after that experience? When you were eleven-years-old, if your accident was not in such a public setting and remained the family secret, might you have not been so motivated to change at that time? If it was the public embarrassment that became your strongest motivation, then as unfortunate as suffering encopresis is, one might see that final horror as actually quite fortunate indeed. I would say the fact that the public setting was far from home, and all those who witnessed your shame were total strangers, never to meet you again, was quite lucky, considering that the final accident could have occurred a month later at school, amongst your peers, whom you would see daily for the next several years. I imagine it would also be more difficult to overcome this disorder if a person had to live with an on-going social stigma, even from one public humiliation, as many commentators seem to note; that is to say, the child could just become resigned to live with his or her disorder, seeing no viable path for change. I’m glad for you that were able to achieve this important milestone, and hope that your story will inspire others to find a way to overcome this as well.
DeleteYour openness and thoughtful responses on this subject reveal a sincere desire to help others. I’m reminded of the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates tells the story of a man who escapes from a cave in which he has been bound his entire life; seeing the truth of an outside world, he returns to the cave in a desire to free the others who remain bound within. People who experience a profound sense of healing can be filled with such gratitude that they wish to help others who suffer the same problems. To further the analogy with addictions, the great success of Twelve-Step programs can be attributed to the fact that their sessions are normally run by those who are recovering from the same issues.
DeleteI’m glad that you pointed out the gradual nature over several years that it took you to overcome encopresis. There might be some significance that your efforts were particularly increased at the age of seven, which has for hundreds of years been considered the “age of reason” at which most human beings are expected to clearly differentiate between right and wrong. Again like many who suffer addictions, overcoming an issue like this can really take some time. In your case the sensory feelings seemed to have been quite a hurdle. For example, parents trying to potty train their toddler can be aided by their child’s feeling of a bowel movement as it’s taking place and growing dislike of wearing a messy diaper. Unfortunately for you, even as an eleven-year-old you didn’t feel the actual bowel movement as it happened, but only felt it as a load in your pants; also you stated elsewhere that at least as a younger child, while being aware of the mess, you didn’t particularly mind how it felt, only fearing the reprimands that would inevitably follow upon its discovery. No matter how much your existential desire was to be a normal boy who only defecates in a toilet, your own physical feelings were working against you it appears.
Sadly, those who do not suffer such things tend to have little sympathy for those who are faced with the daunting task of overcoming such deeply ingrained self-destructive habits. The naïve criticism typically is, “Why doesn’t he just stop doing that?” Even sympathy itself does little good if there isn’t any attempt or desire toward healing. I hope that sharing your journey will help others find a similar path.
Thank you for your comments. I think I should just correct one thing that you said. As I have stated, I did not find the physical feeling of wearing soiled underwear particularly uncomfortable. But I hated the fact that it meant that I had messed my pants again, and this would have been the case even if my parents hadn't reprimanded me. I'd compare this to someone suffering from insomnia who is lying awake at 2 o'clock in the morning. He does not find lying in bed physically uncomfortable, but he hates the fact he is awake when he wants to be asleep. I hated the fact that I had pooed in my pants instead of in the toilet.
DeleteApart from that, I agree with everything you have said. I think any ingrained habit is difficult to break, and it took a long time for me to achieve my desire to become 100% clean. And yes, people who have never suffered from such problems might ask, "Why can't he just use the toilet like any other kid?" but it just wasn't that simple for me.
Hi James, why do you think your mum changed you until the age of 12, instead of you doing it yourself?
ReplyDeleteI soiled myself frequently until the age of 14 and my mum would almost always change me herself. Like you, I hated having to be changed like a toddler, something that got increasingly embarrassing as I started to go through puberty and enter my teenage years. I would plead to my mum to let me change myself, but she would refuse. She would say that if I was going to behave like a young child, I would be treated like one, on the hope this would stop me having accidents. In addition, I don’t think she trusted me to clean myself properly. Like you, I would carry on playing in my dirty underwear, often for long periods of time, resulting in a much worse mess. I remember a few times where I soiled myself because I didn’t want to stop playing on my xbox, and then sitting in it for over an hour like nothing was wrong until my mum came into my room and smelt me. I think it would of been highly challenging for me to clean up my own mess, on occasions like these, without the help of my mum.
Do you think you would of rather change yourself or be changed by your mother when you were an older child?
Hi Charles, thanks for your comment. I can imagine that it would be even more embarrassing to be still soiling yourself when you were 14 and have your Mum change you, even though your pleaded with her to let you change yourself. I hope you didn't also suffer the humiliation of soiling yourself in public and other people knowing that your Mum was changing your pants.
DeleteWe do sound very similar, ignoring the accidents we had and carrying on as if nothing was wrong, As you say, this had the effect of making the mess much worse and the clean-up took longer when our Mums found out that we'd soiled ourselves.
I'm not sure why my Mum continued to change my pants until I was 11, and it is no longer possible to ask her. I don't think it was because she deliberately wanted to embarrass me to try to get me to stop soiling. She did make it clear that it was a horrible job for her, once asking me, "How would you like to clean up someone your age after he's dirtied his pants?" It must also have been a horrid task for your own mother, especially when you were really messy, but she must have felt it was worth it to try to encourage you to stop soiling your pants.
I suspect that it was a combination of two things. Firstly, my Mum didn't think I would be capable of cleaning myself properly after a soiling accident. We didn't have a shower in the house, and I think it would have been difficult for me to reach behind me to clean all the poo off my bottom using face clothes. Secondly, I think she probably thought it was part of her parenting responsibilities to change me, whether I was 3 or 11 years old.
Looking back, I think it would have been better if she'd given me at least some responsibility for cleaning myself and my messy pants, and this would probably have made me think twice about avoiding using the toilet. But at the time, embarrassing as being cleaned up by my Mum was, I would have hated it even more if she had made me clean up my own messes.
Hi Luke, thank you for sharing your story.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you had to go through that embarrassing accident. It sounds like you did exactly what I would do after I had soiled myself. I would also just sit there and ignore it and hope that nobody notices. Of course, the smell meant that sooner or later what I had done would be discovered.
Also sorry to hear that you got punished by your bio father and that he deliberately humiliated you in front of a friend, but at least your foster dad was understanding.