'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.

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!

SOILING AT SCHOOL

Children who are at school and who soil themselves frequently are almost certain to have accidents in the classroom.  For most kids with encopresis, and their parents, this is likely to be one of the most stressful aspects of the condition.  No child past nursery age wants to poo their pants in front of their peers, particularly not on a repeated basis, and be awarded nicknames such as ‘class baby’ or ‘stinky kid.’  Yet this can be the reality for some of the thousands of children who suffer from soiling problems.

Soiling can lead to a child being teased
or isolated at school, even when she is clean. (c)

Schools can vary a great deal in how they deal with pupils who soil.  The best schools employ staff who are willing to change young children out of soiled pants, provide private toilet facilities, devise a signal for a child to give if they need to leave the classroom quickly and work with parents to maintain a child’s dignity and assist them with their continence issues.  At the other end of the spectrum are schools who force parents to leave their place of work and come into school to change their child, refuse to allow children access to the toilet during lessons, blame parents for not potty training their child properly and even suspend pupils for having accidents.

I was amazingly lucky in that soiling caused me very few problems at infant school, even though I was having a lot of accidents elsewhere at the time.  While I sometimes went home in slightly (for me!) dirty pants, I only ever had one major accident at school.  Was this because I was more likely to use the toilets at school than at home?  Not a bit of it!  I can’t recall a single occasion when I opened my bowel in the toilet at infant school, I would simply withhold my poo while sitting in my seat and then carry on working.  In fact, as I had a relatively strong bladder for a child and went home at lunchtimes, I rarely used the school toilets at all. 

I hardly ever visited the school toilets
during my years at infant school, 
and never once sat on one to do a poo. (c)

My one major accident actually occurred on a field trip to an outdoor activities centre when I was 7 and soon to leave infant school.  My mother had told me beforehand ‘make sure you go to the toilet if you need to,’ but I did not feel the need do so.  However, towards the end of the visit, I realised that I had pooed myself.  And then I did what I always did in such circumstances, I carried on what I was doing as if nothing had happened, although I did try to avoid getting too close to my classmates or the teachers.  Despite this precaution I still expected the smell to give me away.

But I was again remarkably lucky: no-one discovered that I’d had an accident.  Nobody, child or adult, remarked on the odour I was carrying around with me, either during the remainder of our time at the centre or on the coach back to the school where our parents were waiting for us.  With her well-trained nose, however, my mother knew straight away when I got off the coach that I had soiled my pants.  I told her that there were no toilets at the centre.  Not surprisingly, she didn’t believe me.  Walking home with a friend of my mother and her daughter, my mother tried to explain the fact that I smelt of poo by telling her friend that I didn’t wipe my bottom properly.  It was probably no more convincing than my own lie.

If my accident had been discovered then I would have received a stern response.  My teacher was rather strict and was unsympathetic when it came to her pupils having toilet accidents.  The previous Christmas one girl, whom I shall call Melanie, wet her pants during a rehearsal for the school nativity play.  The whole class were sat together back in the classroom when the puddle on the stage was discovered.  ‘Melanie, have you wet yourself?’ called out our teacher as soon as she entered the room.  When the girl said ‘no’, our teacher demanded, ‘Let me feel your pants.’

Aged 6, I withheld my poo at infant
school but avoided soiling myself
in the classroom.

While the rest of the class watched transfixed, poor Melanie had to clamber over us all and stand at the front where our teacher put her hand up the 6 year old’s skirt and felt her underwear.  ‘You have!’ she exclaimed, before sending Melanie off to find the caretaker and tell him what she’d done.  ‘Filthy creature,’ our teacher added for good measure as the girl left the room.

Even today, the thought of my Year 2 teacher calling out, ‘James, have you pooed yourself?’, before checking my pants in front of the whole class and declaring them to be messy fills me with horror.

Why did I only have one accident at school despite my reluctance to park my bottom on school toilets?  I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that subconsciously my body knew that accidents in the classroom would be far more embarrassing for me than the ones I had at home and made extra effort to ensure they didn’t happen.  Whatever the reason, I’m very thankful to have largely avoided the humiliation of soiling at school.  As I stated in my earlier post, How I Stopped Soiling My Pants, at junior school I found the courage to use the school toilets when I needed a poo.

Sadly, many other children are not so lucky when it comes to avoiding soiling at school.  Dimity Telfer's worst experience of soiling herself happened at her school when she was 13, which she describes in her blog post: My Worst Day With Encopresis.

HOW I STOPPED SOILING MY PANTS

Not surprisingly, one of the main questions parents ask me is how I eventually overcame my soiling problems.  I outlined this briefly in my first post, Why I Pooed My Pants, but many parents have appreciated a more detailed explanation. 

I can only write about my own experiences and, in my case, the effort to become clean had to come from my own willpower.  My parents never sought medical advice about my soiling and I was never on regular medication for it.  My mother did occasionally give me a laxative, usually Chocolate Ex-Lax, when I was badly constipated and had not used the toilet for several days.  This did make me poo, but I usually had no time to reach the bathroom and resulted in some very messy accidents in my pants.

The habits I picked up in my toddler years
stayed with me for a long time.

As I previously stated¸ for a long time I didn’t make the connection between withholding and soiling my pants.  Even after I had made the connection between withholding my poo and having dirty pants I continued to have problems for a long time.  Avoiding going to the toilet when I didn't feel like it had become a habit and like all habits, such as thumb sucking in children or smoking in adults, it was difficult to break.

By the time I had made the connection I had pooed my pants on numerous trips and many times at home, been stinky around other children and often suffered from constipation and stomach aches.  I hated the moment when I knew that I had messed myself and would soon be told off again.  But I still sometimes withheld when I felt the need to poo.  Like so many children I often thought only about the present moment, not the time later in the day, or on the next day or the day after, when I would suffer the indignity of having my pants checked before being cleaned up like a toddler by my mother and scolded at the same time.

Aged 7, I believed I was the only
school aged child in the world
who pooed his pants and began
to feel I was babyish and disgusting.

By the age of 7 I was starting to feel really babyish.  I also began to think of myself as a disgusting child for pooing myself instead of using the toilet.  I truly believed that I was the only school aged child in the world who dirtied his pants and my problem was making me really unhappy.  This was not helped by my mother threatening to ask my teacher to tell everyone in my class at my new junior school what I did and saying that they would laugh at me.  I don't think she would have carried out this threat but the thought horrified me.

Ultimately, however, the initiative to deal with the situation came from myself and my desire to be like other children.  I started making more of an effort to solve my problem, forcing myself to go to the toilet at home even if my initial instinct was to withhold.  Also, in my first term at junior school I pooed in the boys toilets for the first time in my life.  For most 7 year olds this would be no big deal, but it takes courage when you've spent years avoiding sitting on school toilets.  On my way out two older boys entering the toilets complained about the smell: 'I bet he's done a poo,' one of them said.  Yes, I had, and I was proud of it!  I had done a poo at school and it wasn't in my pants!  And I was happy to leave the stink behind in the boys toilets this time rather than carry it around with me!

Making the change wasn't easy, the withholding habit I had picked up as a 3-year old had become deeply ingrained, and there were times when I relapsed and had accidents.  Also, my bowel needed time to recover from years of withholding and I sometimes soiled myself without being given any warning that I had needed to use the toilet.   However, by my 8th birthday I was largely clean at home as well as at school, where I'd been lucky enough to have few problems anyway.

Most of my accidents after that happened on trips away from home.  My toilet problems while out and about will be the subject of my next post.

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