Why is my son so filthy!

[divadexie]

AARGH I just want to scream!!!

I have had poblems re-toilet training my son because he is too lazy to go to the loo.
I have told him off several times for wiping sh1t on the wall next to the toilet where he had got it on his finger wiping his bum and made him clean it.

I thought we were getting better and I re-touched his bedroom walls where he had made them dirty and bought him a new bed.

Now I have seen little finger wipes of sh1t all over the wall next to his bed!!! GRRRRR

His pooing not in the toilet is 80% control- ie when he has been told he cannot do something he wants or when he doesnt want to do something
and the other is he simply cannot be bothered going to the loo.

It is nothing that is going on at home and elsewhere he believes it is OK to have an accident as my mum told him that a few months ago and he wet the bed at her house last weekend (he has not done that since he started being dry at night).

We are still getting somewhere with the dirty pants situ but he still doesnt wipe his bum properly even if I repeat 'if there is poo on the tissue there is poo on your bum' most times he is going to the loo, but if I am not there to say it he wont wipe properly!

He will not wear a tshirt twice in a row or other clothes but he is happy to wear pants with sh1t marks in them again rather than get clean ones out the drawer!! We now have to make him take his pants off before bed and bring them down so he cant wear them again and I had to stop him wearing jammies for a while which has stopped him being too lazy to get out of bed at night to go for a poo.
I also stopped him wearing pants in the day under his trousers and the fact he knew if he pooed it would fall down his leg stopped him doing it so we got him loose boxers and told him the same. He hasnt done it since.

(ps, yes we tried EVERY single positive thing to stop him doing it, reward charts, presents etc and they only worked for a limited time and we had run out of positive things to encourage him. He still gets positive things, when he has been clean- I mean I have things planned for the holidays but I tell him we are doing it because he has been clean to encourage him to keep going but he will stop being clean if he thinks there are no consequences to pooing)


We have never been dirty, we always make him go and wash his hands after the loo and before tea etc, the house is not dirty ok there might be a pile of washing in the bathroom and some dishes in the kitchen but its not dirty.

I just don't understand why he does this and I am at a loss as to how to stop him wiping his sh1t on the bathroom and bedroom walls!

 

[maybebaby3]

i'm not really sure. i was going to say a reward chart but i see you have tried this maybe you're going to have to take away a privilege for him to realise it's wrong. how old is he? i still wipe my 5 yr old son's bum after a poo.

 

[divadexie]

hes 6 but tbh he HAS to be able to do it himself for when he is at school or a friends house, I can't expect someone else to do it for him. He can do it he is better at wiping his self most of the time.

We even tried at one point taking all of his toys away and letting him have one back for every full day he was clean, it worked until he had most of them back then we was just repeating it over and it clearly wasnt working


we have sat and explained it to him so many times, but its almost like he forgets!
even when he coincidentaly caught a 245hr bug after I tolf him having poo in your pants will make you ill he just doesnt seem to care

some times he really really smells and i know that is going to get him picked on if he does it at school, i have told him his friends will start calling him pooey lewy if he smells and he hated that idea but again it just didnt make a difference


me and my mum took him out the other day to the ice cream factory and the beach and i told him he was going there because he had been a good boy and nice and clean, he knows he gets nice things for keeping clean so i cant understand how that doesnt make him want to be clean



have spoke to the doctor about this after loads of questions he determined its not bowel problems due to the fact he can force himself to do it and that he will grow out of it! great help there!

 

[cooper2010]

My kids still arent the best wipers. We use the moist wipes though and that helps a lot. We just have to be sure not to clog the toliet with them. There have been some issues, not the same where I have told my kids not to do somthing because its not apropriate at school or a friends house. Have you made him clean it up off the walls? Maybe also you could get a hand mirror leave it by the toliet and have him look to see if he is clean. Good luck...hopefully this is just a stage. This sounds horrible but one of my girls was refusing to change her underwear...she just didnt care to do it...until I made her take a wiff of them. She had no idea how funky they had gotten! It worked though!

 

[Lyndz]

I can sympathise. DSS is filthy too. He'll happily wear his socks and pants for 4/5 days at a time (even though his mum puts fresh ones out every day), he just doesn't bother to change them, his teeth are disgusting cos he wont brush them (even though he's told to every morning and night) and he wipes bogies on the bedroom walls, doesn't wash his hands after he's been to the toilet and doesn't wipe his bum properly cos he smells. A few months ago he took a wee in the corner of his bedroom cos he couldn't be bothered to go to the toilet (at his mums house this is). We asked him why he was doing these things and it turns out he was attention seeking, he wanted mummy and daddy to get back together and thought that if he was naughty enough they would have to. They both sat him down and talked to him about it.

Could it be some kind of attention thing hun? I really do have great sympathy for you

 

[divadexie]

weve sat down and talked about it and most of the time he will have excuse after excuse why he did it.
i dont think it can be attention seeking as he gets heaps of attention, the annoying thing is that he is doing it more often now, in the holidays where he gets much more time and attention than when he is at school!

Today we had a nice day, went on the bus to see my sister and went out for lunch, he bought a lovely yellow car in poundshop, some hotwheels type thing. My sister had asked him a few time if he needed the loo and he said no. After this I could see he needed a wee so went down to the toilets and told him to go for a wee in the toilet.
When he came back he was stinking!!! Told him to go and get cleaned up, he said there was too much poo in his pants to clean so I said well put them in the bin and go and get clean. When he came back, I put his car in the bin I was so mad that he just did that after a nice day!

He later told me he did it because I didnt tell him to go for a poo just a wee!!!!!!! my god!!! He got told off for that when we got home because he knows fine well to go to the loo if he needs a poo, its not that he only ever poos when we tell him to go and try for one.
We had bought him some big boy pants, boxers like daddys, and I told him that unlike pants, these ones wont stop the poo.
As if just to test this idea, when he went to bed in his shorts and needed the loo he waited until it was too late (while in the bathroom) and let it go down his legs. I caught him cleaning up and got really cross at the state of my carpet -that we have been wanting to replace for ages, hate carpet in the bathroom. but that worked a little to my advantage as it took him ages to clean it up and told him he wasnt going back to bed until he cleaned all the poo off my carpet. At least he will now believe me that if he doesnt have pants then he will get filthy and hopefully the boxers will help.

I explained to him again, what will happen at school when people notice he has pooed, and how he will have no friends and no one to sit next to because he will smell of poo and he said he would be sad if he had no friends at school, i just hope he starts to listen, because i was picked on at school for not fitting in and school was hell for me

 

[mommy2lilmen]

wow I woulda thought you were talking of my 4th son. Hes 8 and he still is filthy. He does not care to wear cloths for days at a time. I make comments that girls wont like him and so forth. He doesnt wipe his bum cus hes scared fot he bathroom. so he will poo fast and run. talk about nasty. if he does poo and attempt to wipe it goes on the wall to. it drives me batty, hes 8. Idk what to do at times and i get lost. I am sorry your in that situation to. I do hope it is a phaze, it is a phaze lol It has to be,. ..
like a saying I beleive, boys are boys..they dont notice alot of things and take life lightly..kinda a shame they do that, but it is just the innocence in them. drives me crazy still

 

[Whisper]

Have you tried putting him back into nappies ? TBH i have absolutely no experience of this though but i think i would try that with my daughter if she was doing the same.

I mean he poops in a nappy and surely is going to be uncomfortable for him. Not sure what else to suggest maybe call your health visitor and see what they recommend?

 

[BlueHadeda]

I've stalked this thread, unsure if I should reply or not. But, maybe I should?!

My daughter was potty trained at age 3, but had lots of wee accidents after this. It always seemed as if she just waited too long. Too engrossed in play. We tried everything to get her to stop this. Even therapy! Age 4 and a half, she started having bowel accidents as well. Also, seemingly waiting too long, smearing the underwear.

Around age 6, we couldn't take it any longer, and took her to a urologist. From there on, she's been put through the wringer for 18 months. Tests, doctors, experimental therapies, medications, etc. etc. Until at long last she was diagnosed with an Occult Tethered Cord. This is when the spinal cord is tethered in the back, instead of floating free. It influence the workings of the nerves leading down to the bladder, bowel and legs. After time, the nerves gets damaged. Permanently sometimes. My daughter had the "occult" version of tethered cord, meaning it didn't show up on MRI. Which is why it took them 18 months to diagnose her. She didn't have some of the more obvious skin markers on her lower back that could've indicated this (birthmark, coarse hairy patch, dimple, etc.). She had an untethering operation this year April, and the improvements were immense. If you're interested to read more, you're welcome to stalk my blog (in my siggy).

The reason why I posted this whole long story, is to make you aware that there are physical conditions that can cause these types of issues with children. I'm not saying it's the case with your son. I just wish someone told me earlier, that there could be really something wrong with my daughter. I just assumed it was under her control, and that she was just being very naughty and lazy.

One major trigger we've since learned about my daughter, is constipation. The moment we don't have this under control, she has bowel accidents. Even though it doesn't seem like constipation. The word for this is encopresis, and there's lots of info about this if you want to google it.

Good luck, it's never nice struggling with this in a child that's past potty training age.