potty issues in school

[smartyjones]

since potty issues seem to be a part in many pandas cases, how are you kids doing in school with regards to the bathroom?

 

my son has refusal issues and had extreme potty phobia since we tried training at age 3. this summer, at age 5, we were able to overcome it with 73 days of desensitization as you would for a phobia. there didn't seem to be a web of thoughts related to it, just a block.

 

he does, however, still refuse to go at school. he's been a half-day student so it's been okay. we're trying to move him into full-day but this could be a problem. we're working on a similar desensitization with the school bathroom. my concern isn't that he'll have accidents - he's got a bladder made of steel - it's that at 1 or 2:00, he'll be difficult, antsy, and bother others like a 3 year old who is potty training.

 

thanks for any advice or stories.

[MomWithOCDSon]

since potty issues seem to be a part in many pandas cases, how are you kids doing in school with regards to the bathroom?

 

my son has refusal issues and had extreme potty phobia since we tried training at age 3. this summer, at age 5, we were able to overcome it with 73 days of desensitization as you would for a phobia. there didn't seem to be a web of thoughts related to it, just a block.

 

he does, however, still refuse to go at school. he's been a half-day student so it's been okay. we're trying to move him into full-day but this could be a problem. we're working on a similar desensitization with the school bathroom. my concern isn't that he'll have accidents - he's got a bladder made of steel - it's that at 1 or 2:00, he'll be difficult, antsy, and bother others like a 3 year old who is potty training.

 

thanks for any advice or stories.

 

My son is 12 and has nearly always had similar potty issues; he was diagnosed with OCD at 6, which we now believe to be PANDAS. He will pee at school and in some public restrooms (so long as they are not smelly and appear reasonably clean), but he absolutely refuses to poo anywhere but home. Like your son, this can get to be an issue mid-afternoon, after lunch, and it can be a bigger problem if he's faced with some mild intestinal bug or particularly anxious on a given day. Well enough to attend school, but potentially in need of some quality potty time in the middle of it!

 

One strategy we've tried is securing permission for him to use the bathroom in the school nurse's office; he knows that this bathroom is more private, used predominantly by office staff during the day, and cleaned within an inch of its life daily. He still would prefer to be home on these occasions, but he has acquiesced to accepting the nurse's office as an "emergency loo."

[LNN]

I always worried when my son went from 1/2 day kindergarten to full day 1st grade - how he'd handle his reluctance to use the school bathrooms. But when it came time, he soon realized he didn't have much choice. Nature won out over anxiety. He uses the stall for privacy, but no other issues.

 

My daughter on the other hand (non-Pandas, almost 5) has a deep fear of automatic flush toilets. My son actually showed he that if you drape a paper towel over the sensor, it won't flush until you remove the paper towel (some kid at school showed him). So apparently school bathrooms are a common source of anxiety - and a source of creative inventions!

 

Worst case, you can always resort to pull-ups. No one would know, but it would give you some protection in an emergency. I realize this is giving in to an irrational fear, but if it's preventing him from going to full day and you've had such an ordeal thus far, it might be an interim step.

 

Also see if you can get your son to articulate what his fear is. For a short time, my son recently started stressing over using the school bathroom - come to find out that last month when they had a fire drill, he was in the bathroom when the alarm sounded and he temporarily got separated from his class. He worried that would happen again and started psyching himself out. I spoke to his teacher and she took the whole class through a series of "what if" scenarios to cover what they should do. It not only alleviated my son's fears - turned out lots of other kids had similar worries. Sometimes the things they worry about are things that never occur to us.

[momto2pandas]

I don't have any solutions, but I'll be interested to hear others' ideas. My ds6 has had poop issues since he potty trained at age 2.5. After his younger brother was born, he refused to wear diapers any more even though we hadn't started potty work yet ("diapers are for babies") but he also refused to poop in the potty, so his solution was just to hold it in. And boy did he hold it in. No matter what kind of reward we offered or gentle OTC laxative we used, he refused to go either in a diaper or in the potty, and he went twice to the ER with toxicity issues after not pooping for WEEKS. Once he had to stay in the hospital for a couple of days. They showed us x-rays of his intestines completely bloated out with poop, and had to restrain him physically while giving him enough enemas to MAKE him poop. He was extremely stressed and humiliated. Boy was that a stressful time. When my younger son began to poop in the potty without ado at age 2.5, I felt like I had won the lottery.

 

Eventually we were advised to up the bribe to whatever it took for ds6 to poop in the potty. So we got a bunch of highly desirable toys, and kept them at home (and some in my purse) where he could see them but not play with them. Once we upped the ante to about $15 worth of toys per poop, he agreed, VERY reluctantly, to poop in the potty. It was an expensive solution but eventually we were able to "reward" less and less and ultimately not at all.

 

Still, he will not poop at school, and he started full days in Sept. His solution, again, is a mind-over-matter one - he just holds it in. As a result, he has been quite constipated - only going every 2-3 days, and sometimes with pain (and almost always getting the toilet stopped up - like trying to flush a baseball bat). Lately that actually seems to be getting a little better, though, with poops maybe 4x/week, and he says that it doesn't hurt any more. Our plumbing hasn't complained so much either.

 

 

 

since potty issues seem to be a part in many pandas cases, how are you kids doing in school with regards to the bathroom?

 

my son has refusal issues and had extreme potty phobia since we tried training at age 3. this summer, at age 5, we were able to overcome it with 73 days of desensitization as you would for a phobia. there didn't seem to be a web of thoughts related to it, just a block.

 

he does, however, still refuse to go at school. he's been a half-day student so it's been okay. we're trying to move him into full-day but this could be a problem. we're working on a similar desensitization with the school bathroom. my concern isn't that he'll have accidents - he's got a bladder made of steel - it's that at 1 or 2:00, he'll be difficult, antsy, and bother others like a 3 year old who is potty training.

 

thanks for any advice or stories.

[ajcire]

My daughter on the other hand (non-Pandas, almost 5) has a deep fear of automatic flush toilets. My son actually showed he that if you drape a paper towel over the sensor, it won't flush until you remove the paper towel (some kid at school showed him). So apparently school bathrooms are a common source of anxiety - and a source of creative inventions!

 

 

 

LLM, we used to use post it notes for putting over the sensor in the bathroom. I think those automatic flushers can be scary!

[Suzan]

My daughter on the other hand (non-Pandas, almost 5) has a deep fear of automatic flush toilets. My son actually showed he that if you drape a paper towel over the sensor, it won't flush until you remove the paper towel (some kid at school showed him). So apparently school bathrooms are a common source of anxiety - and a source of creative inventions!

 

WOW, I think my girls will profess their love for you in the morning when I tell them about this! Heck, I will right now! Thanks!

 

Susan