POSITIVE OUTCOMES

I wouldn’t wish encopresis on anyone, and certainly not on my younger self.  Yet, despite the painful and embarrassing experiences of soiling myself as a child, there have, I think, been some positive outcomes.  In this final blog post I would like to consider these.

The things I did as a child,
including soiling myself,
have made me very patient
 with children as an adult.

Firstly, I think that my childhood experiences have made me very patient with children, which was undoubtedly useful when I did voluntary work in local primary schools, day nurseries and playgroups.  If any of the children did or said anything silly, I remembered back to some of the things which I did when I was their age, which may be considered silly when viewed through adult eyes, but which made perfect sense to me at the time.  I am particularly patient when it comes to children’s toilet issues and think nothing of it when I see a girl or boy past the usual age for potty training who is still wearing nappies or pull-ups, and would never punish any child in my care for a toilet accident, no matter how old they were, or feel anything but sympathy for that child.

I believe this empathy with the feelings of children who wet or soil themselves began at an early age.  As I said in my post A Pooey Bottom at Nursery, I never teased Holly when she pooed her pants at school, nor did I ever mention her accident to her or to anyone else.  Similarly, I never said anything to Melanie about wetting herself during rehearsals for the school’s nativity play, outlined in Soiling at School, or to a 7 year old friend who wet his pants while we were walking home from school.

I also think that encopresis has given me an appreciation of bowel control, and a determination to hang onto it, that is stronger than in many other adults.  For example, while a lot of adults dislike having a bowel movement while they are at work, or try to avoid using public toilets if they need a poo, I am happy to park my bottom anywhere when nature calls.  I have seen the consequences of withholding and I have no intention whatsoever of repeating the mistakes of my childhood.  Good bowel control is now too important for me to jeopardise it again.

Using my experiences to help today's
children who soil, and their parents,
has been the silver lining to the
cloud of encopresis. (c)

However, undoubtedly the biggest positive from my experiences has been the ability to help the children of today who have soiling problems, and their parents.  Although there must be thousands of adults who had similar issues when they were younger, there are few who are willing to share their experiences, which is perfectly understandable.  Though I was hesitant at first, choosing to write about my childhood soiling was one of the best decisions I have made and I am delighted that so many parents have found my reminiscences useful, and that older children who soil have found comfort and help from my books A Boy Like You and A Girl Like You.  I could not have written these books if I had not suffered from encopresis myself as knowing exactly how it felt to frequently poo yourself when you were 7, 8 or 9 years old was a key component to their success.  I have been asked more questions by parents about my toilet problems than I care to recall, which I have been happy to answer as honestly and candidly as I can.  Now this blog is complete it should hopefully be useful to more parents who are struggling to help and understand their feelings of their son or daughter who is suffering from this condition.

Someone once told me that I had to go through the painful experiences of encopresis as a child in order to help others as an adult.  While my younger self, and my mother who frequently had to clean me up, may never have thought that anything good could have come out of my withholding and soiling habit, I am very pleased that even the cloud of this humiliating condition has proved to have had a silver lining.

THE RIGHT TO GO

Imagine this: you are spending the evening at the theatre with a group of friends.  You are enjoying the show, but the drinks you had during the interval have inconveniently made their way to your bladder.  Afraid that you are not going to be able to wait until the final curtain, and having no wish to suffer the discomfort of a full bladder for longer than is necessary, you decide to excuse yourself and make use of the theatre’s toilets.  Getting up, you clamber over your friends and the other patrons on your row and make your way to the nearest exit out from the auditorium. 

You are in for a shock, however.  An usher is standing in front of the exit, blocking your escape, and he refuses to let you pass.  Slightly embarrassed, you explain that you need the toilet and when he still refuses you say that you are desperate and cannot wait.  He is implacable.  ‘You should have gone during the interval,’ he says.  ‘You’ll have to wait until the show is over now.’

It is impossible for a child to
fully concentrate on her 

schoolwork if she needs to
go to the toilet. (c)

Defeated you return to your seat.  Maybe it would have been wise to have made use of the facilities during the interval, but you didn’t really need to go then and, in any case, the queues were fairly long and you have never liked a crowd when you use the loo.  You resume your seat, but you are unable to enjoy the rest of the play.  Your concentration is focussed solely on the steadily increasing pain from your bladder, and your growing fear that you are going to have an embarrassing accident in front of your friends, which will probably be part of the conversation of dinner parties for years to come.  You also hope that your companions do not notice your hand placed firmly in your crotch, and your legs crossed ever tighter as you desperately try to avoid wetting yourself in your seat.  The only other thought occupying your mind is your sense of anger towards the usher.  What gives one human the right to deny another access to the toilet?  Surely being able to use the toilet when you need to is a basic human right, isn’t it?

Wetting his pants in the
classroom is one of the most
 embarrassing things that
can happen to a child. (c)

The above scenario may seem ridiculous, but every day in schools children face a similar dilemma, needing to wee or poo during lesson time but being refused permission to use the toilet because ‘you should have gone at breaktime,’ or not bothering to ask because they know the answer will be in the negative.  Such children are then unlikely to be able to concentrate on their work, as the increasingly strong signals from their bladder or bowel occupies their attention, and they worry about whether they are going to have an accident in front of their peers.  For a child who is past nursery age, wetting or soiling your pants in class is one of the most humiliating experiences imaginable, and peers are not likely to let the poor kid forget their accident in a hurry.  And yet the child has done nothing wrong except needing the toilet at a slightly inconvenient time.

Every parent will know that when a
young child needs to go, he needs to
go NOW, but watering the grass is not
an option for him in the classroom. (c)

For several years I did volunteer work at various local primary schools, working with children aged from 3 to 11.  If a child asked me if they could go to the toilet I always said ‘yes’ without hesitation.  The teachers, however, were not always so accommodating.  In a Year 2 class in one school a 6 year old boy repeatedly asked during a lesson if he could use the toilet but the teacher refused him permission: ‘playtime is the time for going to the toilet,’ she told him.  The poor boy had to keep returning to his desk, increasingly desperate and unable to do much of the task he had been set.  In a different school, a 7 year old girl had to wait to use the toilet because of the rule that only one child of each sex from the class were allowed to go to the toilet at a time.  The girl was clearly desperate for a wee as she hovered near the classroom door, unable to keep still and lifting up first one foot and then the other as she tried to avoid the humiliation of wetting herself in front of her classmates.  It is one of the most harrowing sights I have ever seen. 

Let's encourage kids to poo at school
if they need to. (c)

As well as the risk of having a embarrasing accident in the classroom, there are also health issues involved in forcing a child to wait to use the toilet.  Withholding urine can cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) and continence problems, and, as we have seen in my case, withholding poo can cause constipation and soiling problems.  The need to poo, in particular, can strike at any time, and a child should be encouraged to open their bowel as soon as possible when the need arises.  Many children who otherwise have no toilet issues are reluctant to use the school toilets when they need to poo, preferring to wait until they get home, by which time the urge might have gone, risking constipation problems, or they may have soiled.  Personally, I think that children should be encouraged ask to go to the toilet when they need to poo during lessons and should certainly not be denied permission.  I’ve thought up my own soundbite for a campaign around this issue: ‘It’s Cool to Poo at School!’

You can probably guess that I am fully supportive of ERIC’s ‘The Right to Go’campaign, which calls for schoolchildren to have access to safe and hygienic school toilets at all times, as well as highlighting every child’s right to good care for a continence problem at school.

Children should have
access to safe and hygienic 
school toilets at all times. (c)

Of course, it’s better for the smooth running of a lesson if children use the toilets during their breaks and I’m not suggesting that they should not do this.  But there will always be times when the need to go does not coincide with playtime or lunchtime and all teachers should make allowances for this.  Also, some children will feel uncomfortable going to the toilets when they are crowded, particularly for a poo.  Such children should not be made to suffer because of this and arrangements should be made to allow them to attend to their toilet needs in a manner that is comfortable for them.  And yes, there will be the odd pupil who deliberately uses the excuse of needing the toilet to get out of lessons they do not enjoy, or for nefarious activities such as smoking, but these should be dealt with on an individual basis, and not by punishing the whole class by stopping everyone going to the toilet in lesson time.

I’m sure that there will be teachers who disagree with me and predict chaos in the classroom if they allow their pupils unrestricted access to the toilets.  But ultimately it comes down to the question I posed in my imaginary scenario at the theatre: what gives one human the right to deny another access to the toilet?  

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.