Topic : 07/11 What’s Up, Doc?

This is a real condition that many kids have but it can be overcome.  People cannot just assume the kids arent "potty trained" , it is different than that.  It is easy to judge if you do not have personal experience with this.  Become educated before making judgement.  I do agree that the parents need to do more to help those boys overcome this.  I only know of younger children (6 and under) who develop this and are afraid to sit on the toilet for some reason that needs to be figured out.  These parents have let this go on way too long and I think maybe a bit of laziness on their part has allowed this to go on. 

It is not easy to go through what this family is going through.  The parents are frustated and wondering why is this happening.  The children are probably embarrassed and confused.  I have a 5 year old who has been dealing with severe constipation and encoproesis eversince she has been potty trained at 2 years.  She has been treated by a pediatrician who put her on several stool softeners and benefiber.  Also did the having her sit on the potty and push thing after meals and every so often.  Also have changed her diet several times.  First eliminating milk and going to soy then back to milk but only 12 ounces with a pediasure drink that has fiber in it.  She also has been doing laxatives and enemas for a long time--too long.  A 5 year should not know what an enema is or does.  The pediatiricain refered her to a gastroenterologist where she has had a biopsy done of her rectum, a barium enema done and that was no picnic, and lastly a CT scan done which showed her colon was not normal.  Her colon has sharp turns and is in a wavy pattern instead of a box shape.  With her colon like that it is hard for her to feel the urge or push out the stool so it sits in her colon for a long time.  He refered her to U of M but they didnt tell us anymore then we already knew and made it like we had to retrain her which is not the case but not sure if they had the results of the CT scan because he asked if U of M told us the results which they didnt.  We are going back to the gastroenterologist in Sept and we are going to ask for other options to help her get back to somewhat of a normal life.  We have also increased her stool softerner miralax and benefiber and neither seem to be helping her.  She will go for weeks without a good bowel movement unless she is given an enema and she screams at the word and during the process.  I feel horrible when she has to have one.  Her diet also has now been eliminated of peanut butter, cheese, rice and bananas which are supposed to be constipating foods.  It has made no difference.   She is going to be in kindergarten this fall and she also went to head start and the school system knows it is a medical problem but for her sake I hope it can be corrected so children will not make fun of her for her episodes.  We have also done the reward thing which didnt work due to her medical issue.  She has been wearing pull ups when she has bad epsiodes and underwear with liners during the not so bad episodes.  Just want her to be able to feel herself go.

You are right when you say that you only got to see a very small part of what is going on.  The producer that came to the house tried to tell the story in a 90+ second chunk of tape and a 7 minute segment.  How do you put YEARS of frustration into that short of a time frame?  We easily could have taken up the entire hour discussing what we have done and what we have attempted to do over the years.  Here's a fun one, try giving an enema to a kid who is absolutely dead set against it.  It turns into an argument of epic proportions.  Again, their are so many aspects to this story that we just did not get the chance to explain due to time constraints. 

We have always explained to the boys that the proper place for this was the toilet and not their pants.  We watched over them and when we saw what we thought might be some sign that they had to go, we would shag them into the nearest bathroom.  At a certain point in their lives they start wanting privacy and obviously you have to respect it.  At that point, we told them, "don't flush because we want to see the proof that you actually went."  Sometimes they complied sometimes not.  When they didn't comply we would call them on it. 

We have taken away privileges, TV, computers, video games in response to not going to the bathroom.  We did the yelling and screaming about it but that only made it worse. 

The one thing that has seemed to work so far has been getting them to sit down and go just before they take their shower in the morning.  By getting them into that routine, we have had more success than anything else we have tried.  As I stated in an earlier message, these kids are intelligent and polite young boys, not the "retards" that a lot of the posters have been claiming. 

The oldest last night mentioned that he came out to this forum and read some of the hateful and spiteful comments from people do not know us.  He was pretty upset with what he read.  I told him to not get too upset about it since they were uninformed about the problem and our situation. 

These two, along with my wife are my best friends and my life.  I will do anything that is within my ability to help them solve the troubles they have.  That is a part of what being a parent is all about.  You are there for them when they need you and you put their wants and needs in front of your own.