3 year old withholding

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We’re looking to hear from people with similar experience to our own for any advice to resolve our 3.5 year old’s withholding habit.

Since July last year our son has been treated for withholding. We’re attempting to manage the situation with laxido and senokot to get his bowels moving once a day. However, even on the medication he manages to withhold his poo for up to 2 days and it appears to make him lethargic and extremely irritable. He tends to get like this after one day of not passing a stool.

For the past 3 weeks he has developed a tendency to vomit once every 2/3 days. I can’t link the sickness and nausea to any types of food and a trip to the GP suggested this was another symptom of his withholding. Is it normal to develop additional symptoms and for him to be sick so regularly?

His symptoms are beginning to have an impact on his lifestyle - he’s at nursery 3 days a week and when he’s there he will not do a poo. Now that he’s being sick I suspect he’ll be sent home a lot more frequently too which will be difficult to manage.

It’s extremely exhausting to constantly nag him to drink his medicine and to coax him to use the toilet. Our lives are consumed by his bowel habits. I feel at a loss because we’ve made almost no progress in 6 months, if anything, things are now worse with the vomiting.

Any advice welcome, even reassurance that there’s an end in sight!

Thanks

[Atz2505]

Hi just wanted to say I'm having similar issues with my 3yr4m daughter and it has totally taken over our lives and is incredibly stressful. It can feel isolating as a parent when no one really understands.

You've probably tried these things already but I have cut milk throughout the day as she had the option of milk or water at preschool. I've replaced her morning cup of milk with a very large cup of pressed Apple Juice and I have made a playdoh tray for toilet time after breakfast that she only plays with while sat on the potty. I have found that if I leave her during toilet time and potter about doing washing in another room, if she is left to walk about and play with the playdoh usually she will then get herself to the potty to poo as she must feel relaxed (I leave her bottomless). I have noticed that if she's given screen time to encourage toilet time this does not work as she withholds when watching TV.

We had one month of daily morning poos which we were elated with but she has since had Tonsillitis which has set us back.

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*****Update*****

I’ve been meaning to update this post for a while now. Last year our then 3 year old was diagnosed with coeliac disease (it took me more than 6 months to get a blood test for our child and in the end we had to take him private)

It turns out that all the symptoms I described above were caused by him consuming gluten. Now that he’s on a GF diet his symptoms have pretty much disappeared and he is gaining weight and growing again.