Seems like it should be a support group. I raised two healthy children who are grown as my husbands other two children are also adults and now we recently received my husbuands son who is 7. He continues to pee and soil his pants during the day but does not have accidents at night. We are about to resort to the pullups due to the fact both of us work and daycares do not take kindly to children of this age who do not use the bathroom. It is a bio hazard to other children regardless how clean any child is. I am sure part of it is seperation anxiety except we learned from his former teachers he was doing it while with his mom as well. HELP! We are going nuts.

My brother has a similar problem, but for him it was only at night. It was happening almost every night up through middle school. He's 17 now, and it very rarely happens now. He has had development issues since he was born. They thought he had ADD or ADHD and put him on just about every drug ever created, and nothing helped. Eventually they decided he had a brain chemical deficiency and with this particular instance there is not drug to take. Since coming off of all the medications he has gotten a lot better, in both his actions and emotions.

As for your particular case, I would follow LW's advice. Make sure there isn't any physical problems, then move to a psychologist or something. It could be an emotional problem, like wanting more attention, or it could be a chemical imbalance of the brain like my brother's situation.

We have seen many specialists and have been told nothing is wrong (other than he has a lot of accidents). Duh. We make our son clean up after himself after he has pee accident. There has to be consequences to learn.

The bad parents we are, we did get special reusable underwear where you insert a disposable pad into ("Poise pad"). It looks just like underwear and keeps accidents contained but is not comfortable when wet. Regardless of the cause, may he be lazy or not responsible, his accidents were hurt his ability to socialize with his peers. These special pants have helped contain his problem so his peers are less aware.

http://www.b4ns.com/index.php?PageType=Product&Supplier=Suprima&ProductLine=BodyGuards&Product=S1255

some kids will have accidents (especially with pooping) to express their unhappiness or disapproval with something the parent has done. They "punish" their parents for not letting them have candy or play with playdough on the carpet, etc.

Can that be an argument for evolution? Especially if the kid starts throwing it?

As for the problem at hand...I advise a doctor and/or psychiatric evaluation...I'm not a child expert at all, so I don't have any personal experience or advice.

~Zoo

Ok, I stopped reading the comments about half way through, but I'll just put in my two cents and if its already been covered, you can ignore me.

I actually had this problem as a child. My mom took me to a doctor (which I would recommend just to rule that out) and that wasn't the problem. It didn't take long to break me of my bed wetting, but day time was still a problem. My reasoning was that I didn't want to stop what I was doing to go. One thing that my mom did was have me keep a calendar so I could see how often I was doing this. I sort of grew out of it, or maybe my bladder just got bigger! I learned to recognize before it was too late and realized how social unacceptable and inconvenient it is to have soiled pants. But I actually struggled with it into my preteen years.



I actually attended a seminar about discipline last week that talked about this. The basic premise is that behavior is an attempt to get something we want or avoid something we don't want to do. If you can figure out the motivating factor behind his behavior then you can work to teach him another way of achieving that goal (i.e. if he just wants attention etc.)

Did the doctors feel like it was NOT a medical problem?

Your poor little guy. I am glad he is doing better, but that has got to be rough dealing with that at 9 years old.

I've been reading this thread trying to gain any kind of insight. I have a five year old that is completely potty trained at home. He very rarely wets the bed as well; perhaps once every couple of weeks. Four weeks ago he started kindergarten at a private school and for three weeks he did fine. Now, the past two weeks he has had "accidents" almost every day. Usually #1, but occasionally #2. The teachers say that he goes into the bathroom before recess but doesn't go. He waits until he gets outside and stands in a particular spot and wets himself. It's always the same spot (under a tree). It's gotten to the point where we've been warned that if it keeps up he will no longer be allowed to come to school.

Now, getting him potty-trained was an ordeal. We tried EVERYTHING imaginable to train him. We did all of the hugs, kisses and rewards, etc and it didn't work. He would use the toilet for a couple of days, demonstrating that he knew the concept, but then he would just stop using the toilet and do it in his pants. Finally, we started depriving him of things he enjoyed, but that didn't work. Finally we started spanking him, sometimes fairly severely. It was horrible. I hated doing it. But, it wasn't until then that he finally started using the toilet on a regular basis. Over the last three months he ALWAYS uses the toilet with the exception of an occasional "accident". That's OK.

He loves going to school and I've kept him home from school a couple of times as punishment which is devastating for him, but it hasn't helped. Right now he's sitting in his room with all of his toys put into storage as punishment. Later this afternoon we have an appointment with his doctor to see if there is any kind of medical issue. My wife and I are desperately at our wits end. He KNOWS he is supposed to use the toilet, but simply chooses not to. I don't want to have to resort to spanking him so that the choice to pee in his pants results in consequences too great to make whatever reason he does it worth it. It's a horrible feeling to spank your children.

Please, if anyone has any kind of insight, please share it with me.

Sorry for the long post.

It is most likely ADHD that is the cause here. I'm ADHD, but was never diagnosed. Two of my three boys are ADHD and display the symptoms of your boy.

My boys used to wet uncontrollably daytime but dry at night mostly. Their minds are too busy to hear the bladder calling. 

They don't care about being wet and that is the ADHD. You need to be extra attentive. An alarm, working with teachers to allow extra time for pee breaks in class time and going for a pee together will work.

Pull-ups are only useful if the boy is happy - never as a threat.

Getting good meds is also key here and Ritalin is not the best for this. My boys' meds are one per day and they allow them to be civilised humans.

They are both hightly intelligent and this is a side effect of ADHD. Come along to http://offtopix.org if you want more help and assistance.

I'd love to hear about your kids - maybe we can fathom this out together.

Marc

 

 

It is most likely ADHD - don't be worried. Come along to http://offtopix.org for some constructive help. My boys are now coping - yours can too.

Marc

My 7 1/2 year old son doesn't have night time "accidents" what-so-ever....it's daytime....and it's just about every day! I had everyone tell me that it's because of the new baby in the house....BUT the baby is 3 months old....AND this has been ongoing for the past 4-5 years. And he hides it! We have tried punishing him. We have tried rewarding him for not having an accident. I have put him in pull-ups...and it almost doesn't seem to phase him what-so-ever. The problem is...that he is waiting until the last minute to go. He doesn't want to stop what he is doing, until it starts to push it's way out already....then by the time he actually gets to the bathroom...he has already started....even a little bit each time makes a huge stain.

The kids at school several years ago starting calling him stinky. We thought it was because we had caught my son just getting into the shower, quickly drown himself in some water and then getting out....without using soap or washing his hair. After establishing that he was still getting called stinky at school, we thought that maybe he had a BO problem. So we bought deodorant...not anti-persperant....just deodorant. He told us that he was still being called stinky...but we thought that maybe he "smelled" for so long that the name may have just stuck with him. We then moved to a house where he had to go to a new school with new people to meet...and on his second day of school...he came home saying that he was being called stinky again. So I went through his entire underwear drawer...my son usually put his own clothes away...and EVERY SINGLE PAIR OF UNDERWEAR had a yellow or brown colored staining tinge to it! That was the route of his "stinkiness." He had been hiding it by volunteering to put away his own clothes.

I too have asked him why he does it. And his reply back to me is that sometimes when he goes to the bathroom someone else is already in it. SO then I've asked him why he waits until the very last minute to go to the bathroom in the first place....and he replies with I don't know.

I've done run out of options...I feel like I am absolutely at witts-end with this. I can't seem to figure out how to get him to understand that he needs to go to the bathroom when he first feels like he has to go. My husband seems to egg into it too, because I will tell him that he needs to wear the pull ups to school...he comes home later and he has regular underwear on that "Daddy told me that I could put them on for school." My husband when questioned says that he doesn't want him to be teased at school. But he is already being teased at school by being called stinky. Am I really just being a mean mommy by making him wear the pull ups? I'm thinking of it of being more of a preventiveness from being called stinky...because the pull ups pull away the smell and the moisture so he doesn't look like nor smell like he has had an accident

He wants allowance and he yells at us that we always treat him like a baby....but I feel like I still have a baby...he is just able to back talk us back.

As of yesterday, I made him throw, into the trash can by the street, all of his big boy underwears. All of them. He is now wearing the boxer shorts styled pull ups...and my hsuband will not be able to give him the underwears to wear to school only because he won't have any in the house. He is small enough that I can buy those 4T or 5T training pants from the toddlers department...and we will start the whole process through again before he can obtain real big boy underwear. It just seriously sickens me to think that I still have a 7 1/2 year old that just will not go to the bathroom.

I've tried the being nice thing and not making big deal about it, which let me tell you...I needed to go vent my anger in the basement, but we've been letting it go on for way too long. We have tried everything. We have tried paying him an allowance for not peing his pants...up to $7 per week. We have tried taking him to a psychologists and doctors. We have tried spanking him. We have tried making him hand scrubs his dirty underwear. We have tired making him smell his own dirty underwear. We have made him sit in his own filthy underwear. We have made a star chart and for every day he made it to the bathroom all day he would get a star and for every 5 stars he got a video game. We have made him go back to the every 30 minutes to 1 hour to go sit on the pot for 1 full week or until whenever he actually starting to go on his own. We remind him. We catch him most often doing the pee pee dance and we will ask him and he will say no, then 2 minutes later, "I have to pee." It's almost like he is utterly being lazy. We have physically put him into diapers...not pull ups. I don't know what else to do.

I'm not quite 30 yet, and I've gotten gray hairs over this...it is absolutely driving me nuts! I don't know what to do or how to go about correcting this. It's embarrasing to take him out anywhere or to have someone watch him because he pees on their couch or floor or chair or bed or swing set or whatever. I mean I wouldn't feel so bad if he was only 3 or 4...but seriously in second grade and still consistantly having accidents. Oye!.