'HELP! I POO MY PANTS'

If you’ve read my earlier post, you will know that in 2014 I decided to write a book for older children who soil, as the only books on the market for kids who had poo accidents were picture books for very young children.  In 2016, following requests from some parents, I reissued these books in gender specific editions called A Boy Like You and A Girl Like You.  They were very successful and have helped many children with encopresis to understand that they are not alone with their problems and that they can, with help, overcome them.  Many parents have also found these books useful in understanding encopresis from a child’s point of view, and helping to start a conversation with their child about their soiling problems.  These books are still available and are recommended for children aged 8 to 12 years.  You can find out more about them by clicking here to read the relevant post.

A new book designed to encourage
younger children to use the toilet
instead of withholding their poo.

In 2020 I decided that there was still a gap that needed to be bridged between the picture books that were available and my books for older children.  I decided therefore to write a new book for younger children who soiled their pants.  This book would have shorter chapters and a simpler storyline than my existing book.  Once again there would be separate editions for boys and girls, as I am now convinced that for an issue as personal as toilet problems, most kids would rather read a book in which the child who shared their problem was also the same sex as themselves.  The title of this book would be Help! I Poo My Pants, it would be designed for children aged 5 to 8 years and the lead character would be 7 years old.

This set of books places a greater emphasis on discouraging the reader from withholding their poo, a major cause of soiling, and encouraging them to go to the toilet instead, including when they are at school or away from home.  The lead character – I shall use Amelia from the Girl version of the book for convenience – frequently withholds her poo when she doesn’t want to stop playing, and feels totally unable to poo in the school toilets, or the toilets at other people’s homes as well as public toilets. 

This, of course, means that Amelia often poos her pants, which she finds very embarrassing and upsetting, especially when it happens at school or in public.  She also wets herself occasionally, when the poo she has withheld in her body presses on her bladder.  She is unable to change herself when she is messy and is reliant on an adult to do it for her.  She finds it particularly humiliating when she has to be cleaned up in public toilets or baby changing rooms, or when she has to wait in the school corridor for her mother to come to change her pull-up, which her teacher insists that she wears at school.

Can Toby, the hero of the Boy
version of the book, find the courage
to go to the toilet every time he
needs to poo, even at school? 

Although the situations are largely invented, the emotional experiences of Amelia mostly mirror my own feelings of being this age, when I was frequently soiling myself and felt very unhappy about my toilet problems.  Like me, Amelia has to learn that she must always go to the toilet when she needs to poo, including when she is on a day out or at school.  She also starts to tell someone when she does have an accident and needs changing, something which I never did myself.

I also designed a series of ‘posters’ to go between some of the chapters to reinforce the message of the book and encourage good bladder and bowel health and bathroom hygiene.  These are similar to those used in the book I wrote the previous year, News from the Loos.

The American Edition of this book is titled Help! I Poop My Pants.  The story is identical to the British version, but the vocabulary, spelling and phrasing of the American Edition has been adapted to make it familiar to North American readers.  Both the British and American editions are available in paperback and for the Kindle and Kindle apps.  Initial sales of the books have been encouraging, and I really hope that these new books help younger children who have soiling problems, as well as their parents and carers.

'NEWS FROM THE LOOS'

Raising awareness of encopresis, and children’s toilet problems generally, has long been an aim of mine.  As of August 2019, this blog has had nearly 35,000 hits.  While many viewers of these pages will be parents of kids with encopresis, I imagine that some people reading this blog will be learning about this condition for the first time.  Other resources, mostly online, have also meant that more adults have heard of encopresis than was previously the case, although it remains one of the lesser known juvenile medical conditions.

There is one group of people, however, who remain almost universally unaware of childhood soiling issues, and that is other children.  Unless they have the condition

The front cover of
'News from the Loos'

themselves, or have a close friend or relative who does, then they are likely to assume that all kids are perfectly able to poo in the toilet and avoid having accidents shortly after they come out of nappies.  They are therefore likely to consider any kid aged around 5 and above who soils his pants to be a ‘baby’ and a legitimate target for ridicule.  The same thing applies to peers who suffer from daytime wetting problems, especially if it happens on multiple occasions.  Most kids know that some children wet the bed, but hardly any seem to know that some also have wetting problems during the day.

It’s probably not surprising therefore, though rather upsetting, that many parents of children who have continence issues often report that their offspring are teased or bullied at school and find it hard to make friends.  From all I have heard about the extent of soiling and wetting problems, I imagine that in most primary school classes there is at least one student who suffers from them, and probably several in some classes.

I therefore decided to write a book of short stories, for kids aged 7 to 11, set around the toilets of a primary school, designed to raise awareness amongst children of wetting and soiling issues, in the hope that reading it will make them more sympathetic to the plight of their classmates who suffer from these problems.  If it also helped educate parents and teachers on this subject then this would be a valuable bonus.

One of the posters in the book,
designed to promote good
bladder and bowel health. (c)

Another thing which I have found alarming is reports that many children drink only a minimal amount of fluids during the school day to try to avoid having to go to the toilet, with potentially damaging consequences to their health.  Worse still, a lot of kids refused to use school toilets if they needed to poo, with some even regarding doing a poo at school, or at a friend’s house, to be a social taboo.  It seems that my message that ‘It’s Cool to Poo at School’ needed to be spread to a much wider audience than just children with encopresis. 

I decided, therefore, that my new book should also promote good bladder and bowel health, at school and elsewhere, amongst ALL children.  As with my previous books, I would not be shy in talking about weeing and pooing, and the children in the book would set a good example in always using the school toilets, whether they needed to go Number 1 or Number 2.  Of course, the stories do not only involve bodily functions and also cover themes such as friendship, honesty and helping others.  Menstruation is featured in one story, as I believe that both girls and boys should learn about periods before the age when a girl is likely to start having them.

The toilets at Parktree Primary School, where the stories are set, are unisex, which made it easy for the girl and boy characters to interact.  They are kept clean and well maintained and children have access to them at all times.  The teachers are aware that a child’s need to use the toilet does not always conveniently occur at break times and allow their students to leave their lessons if they need to do so.  Additionally, the staff work with the families of children who have toilet issues to help them cope at school.  This is an idealised situation, but it is an ideal to which I think all schools should strive and which parents should demand.  As I said in my post The Right to Go, every child should have the right to use a safe, hygienic school toilet whenever nature calls.

One of the posters in the book,
designed to discourage teasing
and bullying of children
with continence issues. (c)

I also designed a series of posters to go between the stories, mostly featuring kids of a similar age to the intended readership.  The children in these posters ask readers to wash their hands, drink enough water and wipe their bottoms from front to back.  They also offer advice for relieving constipation and urge kids not to tease their classmates who wet or soil themselves at school.

To make the stories seem realistic and help convince children that their peers really do have problems like the ones described in the book, I invented a School Librarian, Penny Spender, from whose notes the stories were written.  The book and the school, however, are wholly fictitious, although a few of the stories are inspired by actual events.

The resulting book, News from the Loos, will, I hope, in some small way, help to end the taboo around children’s continence issues and encourages the use of school toilets.  And, most important of all, I hope it’s a fun read for kids!

'A BOY LIKE YOU' AND 'A GIRL LIKE YOU'

Type ‘soiling’ into Google’s search engine and you will get over 5 million results.  Outside of cyberspace, however, encopresis remains a topic that few people want to talk about and it never seems to be discussed on television.  I have stated before how when I was a boy I thought I was the only school aged child in the world who still pooed his pants.  Three years ago I got to wondering how many other children felt the same way and were miserable as a result.  I suspected that the answer was rather a lot.

I did a bit of research and found that, while there were picture books available for young children who soiled, there was nothing for the many older children with the same condition.  Also, while children’s writers such as Jacqueline Wilson had showed that a bedwetter, like Tracy Beaker, could be a heroine, there seemed to be no mainstream books in which the lead character was a child who pooed her pants.  It looked like there was no-one for the older child who had encopresis to identify with, no-one who shared their problem and could act as a role model.  I decided that it was time to turn my own experiences into something that could help the children of today.  It was time for a child who soiled to become a heroine!

The cover of the 
original book.

In 2014 I self-published A Child Like You, in both paperback and for the Kindle and Kindle apps.  I tried to make it realistic, but positive.  Beth, the lead character, has painful memories from when she first began soiling, but she is now able to manage her condition and is well on the way to becoming completely clean.  Her thoughts and feelings largely mirrored my own, although her experiences were also based on those of other children with encopresis, such as taking off her soiled pants and hiding them, which I never did.  Drama was provided when another girl smelt that Beth had messed herself in assembly and she feared that the whole class would soon know her embarrassing secret.

The reaction to the book was overwhelmingly positive.  Many children who soiled were delighted to read a book in which the lead character had the same problem as them, and could often identify with what was happening to Beth and how she was feeling, and several parents told me that their child did not want to put the book down or had read it multiple times. Some readers were amazed to find out that other kids had this condition, having previously believing that they were the only one. 

Parents themselves also found the book useful, both in understanding the problem from a child’s point of view and in helping to start a conversation with their son or daughter about their toilet issues.  Some parents even told me how it had encouraged their child to try to poo on the toilet and to change themselves after an accident. 

The only negative comment was from some mothers of boys who said they found it difficult, or impossible, to get their son to read a book in which the main character was a girl.  Although I knew that girls tended to be less resistant in reading a book with a male protagonist, I did not want to simply change Beth into a boy.  While they are outnumbered by their male peers, I know that there are a lot of girls who soil, and I did not want to deprive them of their heroine.  I also felt that for an issue as personal as toilet problems, children would better be able to identify with a fellow sufferer who was the same sex as themselves.

The gender specific titles
offer the same story from the
perspective of both
a boy and a girl who soil.

The solution I decided was to split the book into two separate gender specific titles.  The result was A Boy Like You and A Girl Like You, which I published in April 2016.  In the new edition for boys, Beth has become Justin, but the story is the same with the sexes of all the child characters reversed.  I also took the opportunity to amend the original book, introducing some new material based on my conversations with parents, such as the belief that withholding poo makes it disappear, which was a misconception that I also had as a child, and altering some passages which I felt did not completely work in the original version. 

As with the original book, these new editions were endorsed by ERIC, the children’s bowel and bladder charity, who agreed to stock the paperback versions of the British Edition in their online shop.  An American Edition, in both paperback and on the Kindle, is also available.  The story is identical to the British version, but the vocabulary, spelling and phrasing of the American Edition has been adapted to make it familiar to North American readers.

The new versions have proved even more popular than the first book, parents with boys who soil being particularly grateful for a ‘boy friendly’ version, and I continue to receive favourable comments.  In my original blog I wrote that if just one child who soils his or her pants is helped by reading this book then it will have been well worth the effort to write it.  It has clearly done more than that and I am delighted that the new versions are continuing to help older children who have this terrible condition.  I make no money from them, but I am always thrilled when I hear from another parent telling me how reading one of these books has helped them and their child.