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Adventuring with EncopresisSome Disjointed Ideas and Observations For the Enrichment of the Adventure FOR PARENTS Encopresis is a situation wherein a youngster who has been and should be considered “toilet trained” has been having bowel movements somewhere other than in the toilet. These bowel movements do not seem to be isolated accidents – instead, they seem to be happening as a behavior or symptom of some sort of physical or psychological problem.  These are disjointed thoughts about encopresis. Use at your own risk.
1. If you find poop in the pants more than seems a mere accident, consult your pediatrician. 2. Toilet training amounts to learning that a) bowels and bladder should be emptied only in the toilet in the bathroom – not indiscriminately in one’s pants, and b) there are certain feelings that occur in one’s body that mean that one should go to the bathroom where bowels and bladder can and should be emptied. To accomplish this, one needs to have some room in the mind to notice internal feelings in the midst of other things going on. That is, one needs to have “space” available for thoughts about this or that that might just come along in the course of the day. This is not possible when one’s mind is filled with concerns about well-being, scheduling, fears, stressors or what otherwise might seem more important than certain internal sensations. (Yes, even a small child can have issues and challenges on his or her mind. They might not be the same as those in an adult’s mind, but they can seem just as important, none-the-less.) 3. A child can be toilet trained – that is, can know the rules and expectations – but might have too much on the mind a) to pay attention to internal sensations, or b) to remember rules and expectations. A child can be toilet trained and might be too angry or upset to pay attention to internal sensations or to remember rules or expectations. A child can be toilet trained and might be so angry that he or she violates those rules as a way of conveying anger to those around. A child can be toilet trained and yet might feel he or she is not getting sufficient attention without having such “accidents” that ultimately bring an increase in parental attention and focus. 4. Children who have encopretic incidents often find quickly that encopretic incidents are so embarrassing that regardless of why they were having the incidents in the first place, it becomes very difficult to think about the issue. Embarrassment makes it very difficult to work on doing better at avoiding the incidents. 5. Children who have engaged in encopretic “behavior” in order to convey anger or attention needs really do need their issues addressed, even though they are much more complicated once this issue becomes involved. It is best to try to see the issues as separate – working on the encopresis as if it had nothing to do with anger or attention seeking but making certain to address the anger or attention needs as serious concerns that will result in further difficulties if not adequately dealt with. Addressing the encopresis is a matter of at least speaking with the child and assuring him/her that this is just one of the many challenges of growing up and that he/she will be learning new things and growing out of the issue, no matter what, but that you will certainly be working with him/her to make sure that you get through this together. Addressing the issue(s) of anger and/or attention seeking is a matter of making certain that the child does get additional attention without it seeming directly related to encopresis, anger or attention-seeking. The additional attention is best seemingly caused by parental love in general and not any acting out. Or, if there has been some accomplishment like a good grade or an incident of having helped out around the house, then additional attention can be attributed to that. In this, it is important to consider what is being seen as being rewarded – a good grade, a good attitude versus pooped-in pants or acting out.
6. Even if the child decided to use this course of expression to convey anger, it quickly will seem like a very bad idea. It is never helpful to assume that and act as if a child is in full control of encopresis. Children who have had encopretic incidents deal with a great deal of humiliation and embarrassment – even years after the incidents have ceased. Peers remember and remind them throughout their school careers and this can result in a lot of types of school avoidance (gym avoidance, bus avoidance, lunchroom avoidance). 7. Labeling and defining encopretic issues is very important. If you, as a child’s primary authority figure, define encopresis as a hopeless problem, he/she will feel hopeless. If you label it as an act of anger, you arm the child with a weapon against you and define him/her as powerful and angry – which is not in anyone’s best interests. If you label it as an act of attention seeking, you also arm the child and define encopresis as a handy tool for attention but you make everyone feel screwed up and usually helpless and hopeless to boot. Labeling this as something in the control of the child – which it is not, even if it starts out being so – makes the child feel like he or she is a bad child and basically something like evil because he or she may feel that he or she did, in fact, do this on purpose at first but now cannot stop it. The child ends up feeling like he or she can be very good at being very bad but very bad at being good. Not good. 8. Parental cool, calm and collectedness is important in dealing with any struggle they face. Kids are very sensitive to parental composure. It is almost a certainty that if parents are feeling out of balance in any way, their kids will pick that up at some level of awareness and they will be affected. Trying to pretend otherwise will result in greater problems in most instances, not less. Anything that can help you, as the parent, keep your cool, is going to be helpful to your child (not to mention being helpful to you). Generally, I recommend that people try to see things in the larger-picture perspective. In the long run, if life is purposeful, then such challenges are quite possibly part of the purpose and intended to lead to good developments and development. If life is non-puposeful, we take the best shot we can take and in a hundred years, nobody will care anything about anything that happened or happens. Looking at things in the larger picture perspective, you basically have a choice of 1) dealing with challenges the best you can, or 2) freaking out and dealing with the challenges the best you can. It is unlucky, perhaps, to have to deal with unforseen challenges but it usually works better to NOT add in freaking out. The mind works better calm and cool. Freaking out shuts down part of the thinking apparatus and leads to more problems, not less. This is a very general comment on the whole thing. 9. Less generally and more specifically - more directly thumb in the chest - is the fact that it is usually easy to become frustrated, angry and upset with a child who is struggling, and, as a part of his or her struggle, causing a great deal of difficulty and challenge for his or her parents. It is not helpful, though, to see the child as purposefully trying to make life harder for everyone. (It is not helpful to acknowledge the child trying to make things harder for everyone even if a part of the problem is that he or she really is enjoying the problem being shared in a misery-loves-company manner.) It is not helpful to see a child's problems as his or her conscious, willful "choice." Parents are in charge of a child's life and development from minute one to age eighteen. If the child seems to choose to do something counterproductive, mean or poorly thought through, it is the parent's responsibility, not the child's. It has been the parent in charge of all the biological, environmental, psychological, social and experiential inputs and if the child is coming up with poor quality decisions, this is the result of poor inputs along the way. Whether a parent could have been expected to know what would happen or not, it is not the child who has had say about what has happened and how things have come to "add up" in the course of thinking. Just don't go there. It won't help. Don't blame the child for trying to get you upset or whatever. Even if the child thinks he or she has started soiling to hurt, embarrass or upset the parent, it is better to pretend that this is just not true - that it just seemed like this to the child but that it is not, down-deep, true. This will not be in the child's control and it will not help to make the child feel like it is. It will go away with time - even if not worked on. It will go away quicker with some work and luck. It is unfortunate to have happening, perhaps - and perhaps there is some purposefulness to life and this has some purpose that is actually good for everyone. Be cool and hopeful. Positive attitude. Peace, bro. 10. Also, less generally and more specifically -and also more directly thumb in the chest - is the fact that it is folly to be angry and upset with either a child who is struggling with any of life's challenges because of some sort of mirroring or reacting to parental goofs or wiring - or a parent of such a child. That is, it is folly to be angry with one's self in such a circumstance - even if the child is evidencing anger that mirrors a parent's unchecked angry tendencies or evidencing some sort of weakness or weirdness that seems related to the parent and his or her problems. This problem can get incredibly complex and weird when a parent starts mixing in personal issues. We then have parental personal issues, child personal issues, fecal material, hiding and secrets, problems with primal, basic functions, problems with cleanliness and control, problems with relationships - its a mess. Keep this a simple difficulty as spelled out in numbers two and three above - with parent(s) helping child with a simple, little, developmental speed bump. Keep it simple. 11. Hypnosis recording -wise (article ideas are free, hypnosis recordings that might help are available for a bit extra), there are some recordings available here and elsewhere on the internet. Youngster-wise, the recording Two Voices To Imagine has been helpful to many youngsters in helping enjoyably work in an interesting way on mindfulness of internal sensations and optimal self control while maintaining positive self esteem. Parentally self-supportively speaking, Self To Self Partnering is a very helpful aid in fine-tuning and optimizing one's attitudes and behaviors with respect to themselves as they deal with challenging circumstances in life. This recording is likely to be helpful to anyone dealing with any significant struggle and needing to keep their "head on straight," but it can be extremely helpful to anyone who might tend to be sometimes self-sabotaging or self-angry. Also along the lines of support system support is Healing Tree 2. This particular recording focuses on tuning the listener in to inner, poignant feelings about going through and dealing with the repeated, various crises and challenges of life with a gentle redirecting of the perspective on this, away from a sense of things painfully piling up, toward a sense of building resiliency and wisdom. (Nothing is one-size-fits-all in this world, but Head-Cleaners recordings are guaranteed effective and these recordings, especially, are very much worth the minimal risk of finding that you might want to send it back for a refund.) 12. Have some faith in your resiliency and the resiliency of your child. This will eventually work out, no matter what. (Nobody has any encopretic 20 or 30 something friends.) What doesn't kill us, makes us strong. All you can do is all you can do and you cannot expect yourself to be able to do more than that. Period. Life: Not just a job, an adventure.
- Some Worthy Words of Wisdoms - 2. Reward, punishment and extinction are the three basic elements of behavior modification and learning. These are very simple concepts and very easily understood and they should be kept in mind in any endeavor involving a developing creature. "Reward" is simply something added after a behavior that results in an increase in the likelihood of that behavior being seen again. "Punishment" is something that is presented to a developing critter, resulting in a decrease in the critter's behaviors - especially the behaviors right before the punishment. "Extinction" or "extinguish" is what we call it when behavior is simply ignored - not noticed, not responded to. If a behavior gets no reward or punishment - if there is no reward after a behavior, the behavior less likely to occur again and is said to have been extinguished. These three ideas - reward, punishment and extinction - are very important, very basic ideas to keep in mind in all contacts with a child. For those with an interest in refining the amount of things you need to think about, it is helpful to note that punishment is very, very difficult to do right - as is extinction. To work best, punishment needs to happen right after - or better, right when - or even better, right before - a behavior is going to occur. That's a tough quirk to deal with. Reward, on the other hand, can happen pretty much any time after a behavior - you just mention the connection between the reward and the rewarded behavior. You can say, "Wow, you know, I was thinking about how neat it was that you remembered to take some time to go to the bathroom last night - you know? when you were playing PlayStation? It was really neat to see you being so smart - so mature and so responsible. Good job." Dealing with challenges and stressors is hard. Kids are not built to take on a lot of stress and challenge but they can and will - and they can and will do best if they have a cheerleader parent or two being proud and impressed with even the tiniest little steps in the right direction. The nice thing about such reward -type stuff, too, is that you can undo an outburst of anger and frustration that you let rip accidentally by balancing it off with rewarding praise about getting things very right. If you are clear and not silly (e.g., "Oh, what a smart little boy that you can breathe without choking."), pointing out positive steps in development can WAY overshadow outbursts of frustration. 3. Self-Image, and the power of such stuff is very, very important. Before we make a move, we zip through an assessment of our situation in a millisecond. We assess what is going on and who we are. If we see ourselves as cool, calm and collected, this affects how we act. If we see ourselves as struggling against hopeless odds, this, then colors our actions. This is important to recognize because when we give a child the impression that he or she is struggling valiantly with a tough situation that is going to make him or her wiser and stronger - when we give a child the impression that he or she is developing strengths and abilities - he or she makes choices on this basis - we "set him/her up" to succeed. He or she acts as if he or she is, in fact, a valiant little hero, working against hard odds, learning and developing, and likely to be successful. When we convey to the child the impression that he or she is hopelessly overmatched by the challenges of life, he or she is going to act and make choices accordingly and it is going to be the case that we've set the child up to fail. This is a nifty piece of strategy for life - shaping expectations. It doesn't help to predict something that does not happen - e.g., I know you are going to have an accident-free week this week. when it is possible that the prediction might be wrong. It is helpful, though, to predict that things are going to get better - that accident-free weeks are coming and so is a greater sense of confidence ("We're doing the best we can do and you are being very patient and brave, even though this is hard situation that is hard to understand all the time."). The bottom line is that telling a child that he or she is a little loser and challenging him or her to prove you wrong is simply wrong. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Counter-productive, sabotaging-the-kid and making all sorts of problems for yourself -type wrong. Predict that growth is happening - that your child is growing up without needing to know how - and you will see accelerated growth and development as compared to predicting that you child is the Little Engine That Can't. 4. Reward - some further words are worthy here - is also an important issue with respect to impractical, inopportune, unwanted consequences of encopresis or other such. "Unintended rewards" can result in complications that undermine and misdirect the best of efforts to avoid them. No matter how loving and caring a child is - and no matter how mature and responsible he or she likes to be - the more you reveal that a particular parenting challenges like encopresis is "getting to you," the more you inadvertantly hand your child a hammer and suggest he whack you with it. Again, I do not mean to say that we're speaking of bad children or messed up minds. It is simply the case that any parenting challenge that is challenging a parent is likely to be challenging the child, and is simply the case that any child - any person of any age - is going to find that such challenges cause feelings of powerlessness and out-of-controlness that feel bad. And, in such situations, it is going to feel good, then - rewarding - to find there are ways to have a bit of control and power at times. When a parent, embroiled in working on a parenting challenge like encopresis, lets the child know that he or she (the parent) is buckling under the stress, the challenge (encopresis, for example) takes on an added complexity and a sort of a weapon is discovered amidst the chaos - a weapon that can be weilded to wound and to achieve a sense of at least some mastery. Ironically, it is helpful in one sense if the child begins to recognize that he can weild this weapon because he or she, in doing so, is actually developing control over the situation - a negative control, yes, but control none-the-less. Weilding the encopresis, for example, means noticing what you are doing, when and where and having a little control over the experience as a whole - all good things, develoments developing in the right direction. I point this out not to foster a parental fostering of encopretic behavior but as a softener to think of if it does seem that your child may have a bit of control at times that he is using inappropriately. The primary point here is to first and foremost avoid letting a child know that things are out of hand for you. It doesn't mean that you cannot have permission to once in awhile "pop your cork" and run screaming from a room in frustration - if you really must. But you should, if you do, return to the room and tell the child that you had a moment of silliness and that you certainly have control - as much as you need to get through this at any rate - and everything is going to be all right. It is very detrimental for both parent and child for the parent to allow him- or herself to really believe that things are beyond hope. That is abjectly silly and counterproductive. You can say with authority - if not your own, use mine - that things will be fine. They will be. Things have always been fine and they always will be. (You can say this because there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary. You have always survived everything life has thrown at you. Okay, so you may not have survived with the flair you might have wanted, but you did survive. If you stop a moment and listen carefully, that's you breathing.) Encopresis and Hypnosis and emails Adventuring with Encopresis  |
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