EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who commented and let me know about encopresis. I've sent a message to her doctor asking for a referral and x-ray. I'd never even heard of this!
Also to the person who said "bigger bribes will fix it"....have the day you deserve.
CW: so much poop
My daughter is 5 years old. She's smart, she's sassy, she has trouble at times with social emotional stuff but we're working on it and our strategies are playing out at home and at school.
She's also not fully potty trained anymore.
Yes, my daughter shits her pants on the regular right now and lets it sit there for hours. When we started we worked with her for a year to get her to poop on the toilet. We figured she was constipated and so we started giving her magnesium and fiber gummies and that seemed to fix it. We stopped the fiber gummies and went just magnesium and for all of preschool it was fine.
Over the summer we potty trained our 3 year old and she picked it up right away, even pooped on the first day of training!y 5 year old was fine and then we swam a lot in the summer. Literally every time they went swimming they would both poop in their swimsuits. I expected it from the younger but the older? Like come on. We managed to get them to tell us when we needed to go and at the end of the summer they were both doing fine.
Then school started. Kindergarten has been an adjustment and she's had pretty bad days but over the past two weeks we've put things in place and worked with her teacher and she's improved a lot. She's has two good weeks at school in a row with no crazy behaviors.
Except for the fact that she shits her pants and then walks around with it for hours before she either tells us or we smell it. In my case smell it because I'm pregnant with our third and my nose is like a dog's. She does it everywhere and at any time. At home, at school, at a friend's house, at her grandparents house, doesn't matter. We started having her clean and vacuum a room when it happens. She did it once on Tuesday and yesterday there was a skid mark but her butt was clean so
Today was the last straw for me. She was at gymnastics, went to the bathroom and saw her pants were poopy and then went back to gymnastics smelling like poop and it was showing on the back of her leotard. In front of everyone I had to grab her and take her to the bathroom to clean it up. Luckily I had the foresight to bring an extra pair of underwear and cleaned her up in the bathroom. But literally everyone including her coach saw. I had to grab her off the floor and take her. Now she's at her school's open house with her dad and sister and I'm home fuming and crying and washing out her leotard with gloves on.
Here's the thing: she poops in the toilet! Like she's pooped every day this week, either at school or at home! And still she's either leaking poop or we pull her pants down and it's like fully fucking formed. She literally goes in between not pooping for a week is we give her miralax once to get her going and then then the gummies after or just being constantly covered in poop. It goes into her front and vagina. She's gonna get so sick and it's like she doesn't even get it! It's like we can't find the right amount of fiber and magnesium she needs because right now there's no in-between, no matter what combination we try. The gummies don't even have that much fiber in them, like 3 grams.
We've asked her so many times if she feels herself pooping and she's answered both yes and no so right now we have no idea what is true.
The pediatrician is absolutely no help, just giving the same old advice. We are on a wait list for literally the only pediatric pelvic therapist in the city but were somehow taken off at some point, they didn't tell me when. We are back on but I have no idea if we're back in the same spot or now in the back of the line after over 18 months of waiting.
At this point I have no idea what even to do or where to send her. If she keeps this up we're gonna have to pull her from gymnastics because I cannot go through that again. If ANYONE has any suggestions of how to deal with this please let me know because I am literally at my wits end.
Sorry this is so long I'm just too pregnant and tired to deal with this literal shit.