Does anyone else's older kid still deal with encopresis? Feeling really alone in this
My son is 13 and we are still dealing with encopresis. I know most of the posts here are about younger kids and I completely get that, but I feel like we fell through some kind of crack where nobody talks about what happens when it doesn't resolve by elementary school. He was first diagnosed when he was 7. We did the whole process, worked with his pediatrician, things improved for a while. Then middle school started and something shifted. The stress, the schedule, not wanting to use the school bathroom, all of it seemed to pile on at once. He's been having setbacks for about eight months now. The hardest part honestly isn't even the practical side anymore. It's watching him carry so much shame about something that is not his fault. He's 13, so he won't really talk to me about it. He gets so quiet when I try to bring it up. I try not to push but I also don't want him to feel completely alone with it. We're back working with his doctor. I'm not here looking for medical advice, more just. has anyone else been in this with an older kid. Does it get better. How do you even talk to them about it at this age without making things worse.
Replies · 11
I don't have a teenager so I can't speak to that part, but I just wanted to say I see you. The shame piece is the part that breaks my heart the most no matter the age. My daughter is only 5 and it already shows up in her face sometimes and I just. yeah. Sending you a lot of warmth tonight.
Thank you. The shame thing really does transcend age doesn't it. I'm sorry your little one is carrying it too.
First, thank you for posting this. You are definitely not the only one, even if it feels that way. Just speaking generally and not about your son specifically, because his care team knows him far better than I do: encopresis in adolescents is more common than most people realize, it just gets talked about even less because the kids are old enough to feel deeply embarrassed and so the families go quiet too. The withholding pattern that often drives it doesn't magically stop at a certain age. And the transition into middle school is genuinely one of the harder triggers. New bathrooms, rigid schedules, crowded changing rooms, social anxiety. It's a lot of pressure landing on a system that is already sensitive. The shame piece you're describing is so real and so worth naming. A lot of kids this age genuinely believe something is fundamentally wrong with them, not just their gut. If his care team isn't already looped in on the emotional side, it might be worth asking whether they have any thoughts on that, whether a counselor or therapist familiar with chronic health stuff in kids could be helpful alongside the physical management. That's not instead of the medical piece, just alongside it. You sound like a really thoughtful parent. He's lucky to have someone paying this much attention.
The counselor piece is something I've been sitting on for a while. His pediatrician has gently mentioned it and I think I've been waiting for him to be more on board with the idea. But maybe I need to frame it differently for him. Not as a gut thing, just as a stress thing, which is true anyway. Thank you for laying out the why so clearly.
Okay so my kids are only 2 so I genuinely cannot imagine the teenager piece but I just want to say middle school bathrooms are legitimately horrifying for any reason. Like there is not a single adult alive who would voluntarily use a middle school bathroom. The fact that your son is navigating that while also dealing with this makes complete sense to me. That's a lot.
This actually made me laugh a little, and I needed that. So true.
We came out the other side of a really hard stretch with my daughter (she's 5 now, so younger than your son, but still). What I want to say is that the fact you are here asking how to talk to him without making things worse, that question alone says so much about you as a parent. A lot of parents go into fix-it mode and push too hard. You're already thinking about his dignity. One thing that helped us was I stopped making any conversation about it feel like a check-in or a report. We'd just be in the car or doing something else and I might say something like, 'this stuff is really common, way more kids deal with it than you'd ever know.' Not asking anything. Just planting it. She started talking a little more over time. Maybe that works differently at 13 but I don't know, just sharing it in case. Really rooting for him and for you.
The car thing. Yes. We actually do some of our better talking in the car, I think because neither of us has to make eye contact. I've tried to drop small low-pressure things that way. I'll keep doing that. Thank you.
The car thing has actual backing, just as a general note. Side-by-side activity, no eye contact required, tends to lower the perceived pressure for kids and teens. You both landed on something real there.
Coming back to this because I kept thinking about it while doing the bedtime circus with my two. Does his school have any kind of accommodation for bathroom access? Like can he just leave class without having to ask or draw attention? I don't know how that works with older kids but it seems like it could take at least one layer of the pressure off.
We actually got something like that set up last year, a quiet arrangement with his homeroom teacher. He hasn't used it much, I think partly because even having to hand over the pass feels like too much to him. But it's there. I keep hoping it takes some of the edge off just knowing he could.