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.

ERIC - THE CHILDREN'S BOWEL & BLADDER CHARITY

There are many excellent charities operating in the UK and across the world.  Everyone has their favourite, often based on personal experience or circumstances.  There are many charities I admire, particularly those working to improve the lives of children, such as the NSPCC and Barnardos.  But without doubt my favourite charity is ERIC – The Children’s Bowel & Bladder Charity, a small UK based charity which does brilliant work in an unglamorous area.

ERIC provides a lifeline for parents
 being driven potty by their child's
wetting or soiling problems (c)

Set up by The Children’s Society in 1988, ERIC, which now stands for Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence, originally specialised in helping families to deal with bedwetting in children and teenagers, but has since expanded to cover other toilet problems in young people such as daytime wetting, constipation and soiling. 

From its offices in Bristol in the west of England, ERIC’s helpline, website and publications are a lifeline for parents and children dealing with continence issues.  Wetting and soiling issues in children and teenagers are a distressing problem for the young person concerned as well as for their parents, who often feel unable to discuss their child’s condition with their families and friends, and sometimes also have difficulty dealing with the medical profession.  ERIC’s helpline, in particular, is a great help to parents both in providing a listening, non-judgemental ear and offering expert advice.  Their staff and volunteers are happy to talk about wee and poo all day and have helped countless desperate families over the years.

But it is not only because of the excellent work that they do that I love ERIC so much.  They are also great in looking after their supporters.  They do not bombard you with requests for donations, but treat you with the human touch.  I have had several personal emails, and even handwritten letters, from various members of staff.  They keep you updated on the work they are doing and really make you feel valued.

The only sad thing is that ERIC was not around when I was a child.  I’m sure with their help I would have been able to overcome my soiling problem quicker, and they would also have been a great source of comfort and help to my mother.  Although she often got cross with me when I had accidents, my mother is a wonderful person, always helping others and devoted to her family.  My soiling undoubtedly caused her anguish and, like me, she probably thought that no other school aged child still had accidents in his pants like I did.  There was no internet to turn to for information and, like so many parents, she felt unable to discuss my poo problems with others.  Being able to speak to an organisation like ERIC would, I’m sure, have brought a great sense of relief to her.

Advice on toilet training is another
of ERIC's specialities (c)

ERIC can also help with potty training, and their online shop sells bedwetting alarms, travel potties, vibrating watches and even pee and poo soft toys and keyrings.  They also sell a wide range of protective pants and swimwear suitable for containing poo accidents.  And finally, they have a wide range of books covering all aspects of children’s toileting, including my own books for older children who soil, A Boy Like You and A Girl LikeYou, which will be the subject of a future post.

For more information please go to ERIC’s website, www.eric.org.uk, or click on the box on this website.

ERIC, 36 Old School House, Britannia Road, Kingswood, Bristol, BS15 8DB, United Kingdom.  ERIC is a Registered Charity (no 1002424) and a Company Limited by Guarantee (no 2580579) registered in England and Wales.

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.

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.

WHY I POOED MY PANTS

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)

For a long time I had wanted to stop soiling myself but didn’t know how to do it. Once I had made the connection I then made more of an effort to start using the toilet when I knew I needed to poo. It wasn’t easy as avoiding going to the toilet had become quite a habit, and there were times when I still did it. However, before my 8th birthday I was mostly clean, other than on trips as I disliked using public toilets for bowel movements.  My very last accident occurred on holiday at the age of 11.  By that stage I had suffered the embarrassment of being messy and smelly, and gone through the humiliation of being changed by my mother, more times than I would wish to remember.  I had put my parents through a lot of worry and heartache, not to mention some horrible laundry and clean-ups, and I had been shouted at and told off on numerous occasions.  But at least the nightmare was over and I could forget about this awful chapter of my childhood.

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