Six year old- pooing once a week

[Valley1234]

Hello- i'm wondering please if you have any suggestions; my son gets angry when i ask if he doesn't need to poo. I have tried to explain the importance of drinking water- we eat tonnes of fruit/ veg- but just not getting anywhere. Twice a week he goes- but it is always a very big drama. Please any suggestions- thankyou so much.

[Yippieyay81]

Hi you might want to try a few more changes to his diet. Things we’ve tried are prune juice, adding fibre to the diet (porridge, nuts & wholewheat pasta/bread/rice, lots of water. My daughter also drank a lot of cows milk which can cause constipation so we’ve switched to oat milk. Maybe see how you get on & if things don’t improve go to gp? Good luck!

[limegreenscooter]

We’ve had success with establishing regular toilet sits and a reward system for drinking water. Our daughter sits on the loo three times a day for 20-30 minutes, after breakfast, lunch and dinner. It doesn’t matter if she does anything — the aim is to getting her going to the loo. We give a her an activity to do — her favourite is watching telly on iPad but she also reads books, plays with Playmobil and plays iPad games. These activities both help to look forward to sitting the loo and discourage her from sitting on her hands. We also reward her for drinking water — she gets a marble for each glass she drinks and when gets a certain number of marbles she gets an ice cream. After 6 months of doing this, she now asks to go the loo (she used to kick and scream about going to the loo) and she poos most days. In the early days, our anti-TV / anti-sugar beliefs made us doubt we were doing the right thing, but we can now see it was worth it. We’ve still got a long way to go, but we’re in a much better place than 6 months ago.

[SallyCal]

Our now nearly 6 year old withheld between the age of 4 and 5 due to a painful episode and she was then petrified to poo. Although I felt at times we were making progress with reward charts and trying to get her to establish a routine (she is very stubborn so wouldn't do anything sometimes even for a reward) things only got better for us once we got Movicol. Once she could poo without it hurting she was so much happier and we are now on a small maintenance dose. I was adament we could fix it ourselves but it ruled our lives and I wished I had seeked out the help and medicine much earlier as things are now so much better. Good luck and let us know how you get on. xx