6 Year Old Son Peeing and Pooping Pants Again. Please Help.

I think it is a good sign that he is embarrassed by this. My friends son is not.

I would talk to his pediatrician about this if I were you. You need to rule out physical reasons first.

This is the exact same age my son had the same issue. Turns out he wouldn't use the bathroom at school to have a bowel movement. So he was incredibly constipated (softer stuff would just squeeze around the hard impacted mass in his lower intestines) sometimes he couldn't control it and it just popped out in his pants.

Pediatrician and I worked to first to clean him out and second retrain him. Finally, I got him on a schedule where he comes home from school and goes straight to the toilet. (Also at school we visited with the school nurse and she told him he could go use her private bathroom if he felt better there). The classroom bathrooms were right off the classroom and it made him uncomfortable.

It was a fixable problem...and very common in Kinder and 1st grade. Good luck!

I had a friend that was having trouble with her child constantly having accidents and after searching and searching for a reason she found an article called "The Real Reason Your Kid Wets the Bed" by Steve Hodges and Suzanne Schlosberg. My friends child would poop often and they never suspected constipation could be the culprit. After reading this article they had her checked out and found that she had a large amount of BM that was staying in her colon. This also placed pressure on her bladder causing pee accidents. Sometimes children will hold in their BM's in places like school where they don't feel as comfortable or are much too busy. I would suggest making your son a healthy fruit smoothie with Aloe juice in it daily for a while to see if this clears up the problem. This seems to help in our house. If this doesn't help, I would recommend talking with your son's doctor about sending him to a specialist. Best of luck.

your first stop should be the doctor, not the teacher.
khairete
S.

Just curious.... it is more like liquid feces, or is it a standard looking poop? The reason I ask is that if he is constipated, from withholding the poop, then liquid feces sometimes slips past the mass in his colon and escapes. If it is liquid, then maybe he is embarrassed to go poop at school and is withholding?

(Does that make sense?)

(ETA.. Encopresis is just what I was wondering about, also....)

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/encopresis/...

Could it be encopresis?

Your boys difficulty is either emotional or physical.

I agree with others. I would begin with a physical doctor and go forward from there.

Either way get to the bottom of it without damaging his esteem. Sometimes accidents happen and other times they can't be helped. Praying for you.l

I would ask him about school. Is there something different in the routine? You didn't say if he was in K or 1st grade, but it may be that the teachers are expecting more and he's nervous? Or maybe there's a bully in the bathroom? Or there isn't as much free time?

If it's also at home, then go back to basics. Remind him to try. We started saying, "1, 2, 3..then you can get off". Many times, DD needed to go. But she had to try. We made a big deal of everyone "trying" before going on a car ride so it was less about HER and more about "this is what you do." And, to be honest, when I noticed the pee smell, I pointed it out. I asked her what she thought and she didn't like it. I said, "that is why I tell you to go right away and not hold it. Other things will wait." If he's holding it too long, it may become an accident. Encourage him not to wait. When my DD had accidents earlier this year, I also told her a few times how to clean up and made her do it herself. I was calm and direct but firm. She didn't like rinsing her panties? Then maybe she should get to the toilet faster.

Hopefully this is just a phase of inattention and not something more concerning. Make sure he has spares in his backpack at school in case he needs them. Talk to the teacher if it happens at school, if nothing else to ask if the routine changed, if she can quietly remind him to go before recess or whenever, or to just tell her that he has spare clothing and you are handling this concern. My DD's teachers are very responsive and like parental involvement in problems at school. I use email often.

Pediatrician first.

Don't ask the teacher - she's not a doctor, she's a teacher. Maybe ask if there is anything stressful going on, but that would be embarrassing.

This is also common at this age because they are holding it while at school and things get backed up, then leak. It'll take a little time, but your pedi should be able to give you help.

Like many others have suggested, it could be constipation. My son did not like using the bathroom at school, or he felt pressured to go at certain times, not take too long, etc., and he too became very constipated. Have the doctor check him out. Some signs are: stomach may be distended and feels hard and poops are hard. He could also start urinating (or feel the need to urinate) more frequently. Poops may also be liquidy and still be constipated. Our doc explained that this can happen when the liquidy poop bascially flows around the mass. Either way, seeing the doctor is your best bet just to be sure that there is nothing else going on.

I also ended up talking to my sons' teachers which I do now every year and explain that he has had a problem with constipation and to please be lenient with him about using the bathroom. They have all been very understanding and it takes the pressure off of him so that he knows he should go when he feels the urge.

Good luck! Let us know how he is. :)

I would buy a nice Champion centrifuge juicer, and juice carrot and apple. 3 carrot to one green apple. Give him this juice. Start with one juice a day, work up to 2, one in the moring and one at night. Changing his diet to more raw foods, raw fruits , real cooked oatmeal instead of boxed cereal, RAW milk, .etc. Except for a little raw milk on his oatmeal I wouldn't add any more dairy, it is constipating. Raw food has a high water content and live enzymes, and constipation can't occur. ALL humanly manufactured carbs and grain products are bone DRY and dehydrate the body. It takes huge amounts of water swallowed for the gut to process it, and then, all that water -waters down the stomach acid, and low amounts of stomach acid make digestion difficult or impossible. If humans were to eat raw fruit and vegetables (forage) all day long they would not need to even drink water, that is how much water is in fruit and such. If it were me, instead of giving any kind of chemical manmade stool mover, I would give him an enema every day right after a small snack (say a plate of pears).....when he gets home. Get him cleaned out, start a better diet, and see what happens.

Have him checked a the doctor for an infection. Also ask him about anyone that helps him wipe or anything else that involves touching his private areas. Make the question sound as if you were asking him about his feet.

In all my years of child care a lot of kids this age go through this. They have growth spurts, their brain switches from what it's doing to nearly completely learning new stuff, and they are so busy. I think it's pretty normal.

This is why they always have to have extra clothes and a bag that stays at school in kindergarten. I happens in 1st grade for others.

Definitely pediatrician. ASAP. Could be any number of things, but you want to rule out any serious physical problems first.