My 9 year old son has been pooping in his pants sometimes twice a day. He is otherwise a normal happy healthy kid...we don't know what to do. Does anybody have any insight?
He needs to see a doctor. Nine year olds, without disabilities, do not poop their pants unless there is a medical problem.
ETA: I would consider stress to be a medical problem if it is causing an otherwise normal child to poop his pants.
My son has gone through the same thing and we have finally begun to notice that he does this when he is stressed. He will hold it until he cannot and then loses the feeling of having to go. By the time it does happen its too late. Sometimes it is just laziness because he may miss out on something or he just doesnt want to quit playing.
Give him a reminder and put him on a schedule and I will admit that it took until my son was just over 11 for him to realize what he was doing. If we do happen to see an issue then we start reminding him to go again. Yelling and punishing does not work but made it worse for my son because it stressed him out more.
You will get flack for this question like the first post and my son went through testing and it was nothing medical, and you may also get others telling you he is being sexually abused. Talk to your doctor, put him on schedule or whatever else you think may or may not work. You know what is best, but also know that you are not alone in having a child especially a boy doing this at this age.
Good luck!
Google "encopresis" and see if the description applies.
Good luck!
My 6 year old had issues with this - it was more than a smear, but less than poop. It turned out he was constipated and had encoperisis. The poop was clogged but some was coming out as well. Call your doctor and ask about it, and they may give you a miralax and diet regimen to try for a few weeks to help get things moving regularly. It worked for us.
Just curious.... is it actually solid feces, or is it more liquid, like diarrhea?
The reason I say this is that he actually may be constipated to the point that he isn't able to go, but liquid feces is sneaking out as he is possibly passing gas...
At any rate, I would think that a trip to the doctor is in order.
Does he get in trouble for this? Mine had issues with this as well, but he was trying so hard to fart for his friends that he would actually poop every now and then. Once we addressed that issue all is well again. Is there a reason he is scared of going to the bathroom?
Wondering whether your son has any explanation for this. If he's not fully aware that he's pooping, it could be a case of encopresis (a complication of constipation) and he really can't feel that it's happening, and he'll need careful "unblocking" of his over-full colon, probably best with a pediatrician's guidance. Look up that term and see if it fits.
If he's just not getting around to going to the bathroom, he needs retraining. Here's a carefully-structured process for correcting this behavior: http://www.rogerknapp.com/medical/pottytrainingrefusals.htm
Wishing you success!
Our pediatrician had the kids start drinking Myralax every day. When they are especially having problems with poop they even have them drink it several times per day.
This really helps with them.
