Any success stories?

[deliaok]

Anyone out there have any great success stories? My son is almost 7 and has almost daily pee and poo accidents. We spent about 1 1/2 yrs going to Boston Children's Hospital and a child behavioral psychologist. Rewards, punishments, sticker charts... nothing works. Still struggle if it is physical or behavioral. It's exhausting!!

[Barbiecar]

We are in the road to recovery having read and adhered to the book The Ins And Outs Of Poo. We are also under a paediatric gastroenterologist through the NHS who has supported my calls for a colonic transit test. This revealed through an X-ray that my daughter definitely has a distended bowel. We are on Movicol and Pico supfate and I am reducing the dose literally on a 3 monthly basis. Now down to one sachet of Movicol and 4 ml of PS. The biggest change came when I set a timer after every meal for her to go and sit on the loo for 10 mins, blow up balloons to help her push and latterly give her her tablet to play with to relax her and give her the incentive to stay there til something comes. We also have the Pooland app that she liked to watch (maybe too young for a 7yr old). Retraining her on how to push, after every meal has made the biggest difference. I spent one term of school going in every lunch time to make sure she did it. She is becoming more independent but still needs reminding occasionally. A sweet after every poo still helps. It required intensive support and the Pico sulfate was also a game changer because it stimulates the bowel to go whether they like it or not. You need to stay on the case and finding the right way for you, but I urge you to read that book and be assertive with the paediatrician! You will get there .

[Child_2012]

Yes we have now it success! (Son is nearly 8) - overactive bladder diagnosed and oxybutynin had solved wee accidents plus measures drawn on his water bottle so he is actually drinking in the day. We took a good hard look at his diet and made sure enough fibre so Pooh's in a good place. The main thing that we changed was our behaviour around it - no rewards, definitely no punishment but above all no pressure!! Once the pressure was off the improvements really came, with the medication. Hang in there - he must hate it and needs you to be his rock/safe place to manage this

[Littlerabbit100]

It’s probably too early to say we have a success story but we seem to be on the right road and so far have had just over a month with no accidents (poo or wet). My son is 6 1/2 so very similar age to your son. He was diagnosed with constipation 3 years ago and given movicol which he didn’t get on with (he had a stomach bug soon after starting it and associated the medicine with sickness) he was moved onto lactulose and we managed to get his constipation pretty much under control but still had accidents both sorts all the way through.

He went to a paediatrician and had a battery of checks they said everything was fine it was just behavioral in that he gets distracted and doesn’t notice the need to go and leaves it to the last minute then has an accident.

The paediatrician was about 18 months ago at the start of reception year at school, nothing we did helped and we reached break point about 4 months ago when the accidents at school were virtually daily (poos and wees). The light bulb Moment came when we realised he was drinking next to no water at school and we just couldn’t get enough into him and make up for that deficit at the weekends and evenings. At this age they need to drink 1.1 to 1.3 liters a day and it needs to be gradually drunk throughout the day (we found if he downs a load it just goes straight through him and he is constantly running to the loo and not getting there in time).

We tried enlisting the school to help remind him, despite being a great school generally and him having a care plan on file relating to the constipation they were useless at reminding him. We tried rewarding him that didn’t work. But I think he was overwhelmed with how much he had to drink.

So what’s worked for us is having a clear schedule for the drinks. he has a cup of water at home before school, one at breakfast club, one at after school club and one in the evening. The really key thing for us was during the school day he has a 500 ml bottle which we have marked up to show him how much to drink by breaktime, lunchtime and afternoon playtime then bottle finished by the end of the school day.

He’s managing that well and enlisted a good friend to help remind him too. It seems to have expanded his bladder capacity so he can hold on now rather than the immediacy of needling to go, he seems to get more warning of needing both wees and poos and as I said at the start he’s over a month accident free, which is the longest we’ve ever had by far. The other good thing not sure if this is an issue for you too but we are very nearly dry at night too, just dribbled in his nighttime nappies no actual weed.

Sorry for the very long reply but given the apparent similarities in our stories I thought the detail of how we’ve reached this point might be useful as 6 months ago I wouldn’t have thought we could have solved it this way and had no idea how little he was actually drinking.

Good luck

[deliaok in reply to Littlerabbit100]

Thank you so much! We will definitely consider hydration!! We haven't even dealt with nighttime yet and often give him more to drink at night to make up for what he is probably not getting in the day.