Constipated aspie teen won't take laxative. What to do?

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Are you sre chocolate is a laxitive? I thought it bunged you up.

Three weeks is a LONG time not to go.

kiwifruit and plums are great. The problem is getting him to eat them. Put some magnesium powder in a glass of milk. That wont fail you. I have an extremely stubborn bowel and a lot of mild stuff does not work.

My sons have the same isuse, dried mixed berries worked with them they are very sweet and small so they have less of a problem with the squishy texure. If you have to be sly about it you can make cookies out of fiber-one < the plain kind> and brownie mix the recipe is on the box. Telling my older son that if he didn't start going to the bathroom to poop that it would come out the other way got him to take the laxatives, this is true by the way. If he's got food isuses this is the last thing he'd want to have happen. I hope some of this helps best of luck.

My son takes Miralax for constipation. It completely dissolves in water with no oder, no color, and no taste. I would talk to your doctor about using Miralax, which is over the counter. Then serve your son a nice, tall glass of ice water

That would be cheese for most people; chocolate has a laxative effect.


M.

I would suggest Miralax dissolved in juice. It's not supposed to have an odor or taste, but my son can detect it if i put too much in his glass. You don't have to use the full dose for it to work. Half a cap or even a little less would work. Dissolve it really well until the texture is completely gone. It's safe to use Miralax everyday (according to my son's ped)...but, i only give it to my child when needed.

That's not a good idea. Kids can be stubborn, some AS kids even more so. That compounded with hyposensitivity that some AS people have, and difficulty with communication could cause this situation to get much worse. Fecal impaction can be very painful, difficult or expensive to treat, and can cause permanent damage: it is not something a parent should glibly allow to happen with their child.

Tell him about impaction and haemmorhoids. Seriously.

Miralax disguised in a smoothie is good, and there's chocolate flavoured paraffin laxative called Parachoc. This is intended for children and isn't harsh at all since there's no stimulant, just paraffin to soften/lubricate and get things moving.

Or serve delicious things that are guaranteed to get... err... results.

Prunes are dried plums. Very sweet and yummy, as prune juice or whole fruit

Also mango. Nobody can resist eating mango, or hold it in later

Is he one of those kids who feels grown up drinking coffee? Serve him a few espressos in the morning as a temporary thing.

Liquorice is sweet too if he likes the particular taste.

Or make hi-fiber pasta sauce by cooking vegies with heaps of canned tomatoes, pureeing them and flavouring/disguising it with cheese melted in. Try and pick the vegies outta that!

Ps. Be careful as eating hi fibre foods without plenty of fluids along with it can actually make contipation worse.

The Miralax sounds like a good idea.

However, I think his underlying issue is control. He feels controlled and is exercisign control over one of teh few thjings you cannot force him to do. My suggestion is to open up areas for him to exercise free choice and control in other areas of his life.

I don't understand. What's so hard to understand the part "If you don't want to do anything about it?" It would teach my child to not b***h to me about their problems if they don't want to do anything about it. I don't like hearing anyone complaining about their problems if they refuse to do a thing about it or follow advice. I don't understand why some people do it. It's like Munchausen Syndrome except they are complaining about real problems they have but they don't want to do anything about it so what are they doing? Bitching about it to get attention or sympathy. That doesn't work with me, it irritates me and it's hard to respect them.

Since aspies are literal they should understand the part "if you don't want to do anything about it." The literal translation is what I exactly said which is if they don't want to do anything about their problems, they can't b***h to me about it because I don't want to hear about it if they aren't going to do anything about it and listen to me.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 21 Aug 2009, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I use psyllium husk. It's natural, really helps, and doesn't give me all the cramps and bloaty-ness that I've experienced with most over the counter solutions.

You can get it in capsules, or in dried form. The dried powder is great for putting in things like smoothies. Maybe he'd be up for making his own yogurt smoothie? I used to love making them as a kid (and still do!) and that way he could get some fruit in his diet too.

Prunes etc... never helped me. I have an autistic son, and through him I realized I was / am on the spectrum. I was often constipated, but I'm glad mom didn't give me laxatives as it might have made me dependant on them at my current age?

I’m posting because, looking back and hearing how so many autistic kids have BM problems, could this actually be IBS? It’s what I was finally diagnosed with later in life. Certainly being autistic causes much stress in the life of our kids. Please post what ya’all think?

What to do? I don’t know, I struggle with that problem often myself. But I suggest staying away from anything that in the long run makes it worse. He has a long life to live ahead of him, and being laxative dependant would suck.

This thread really hits home for me, because I had chronic constipation as a child. It lasted from the time I became aware of my surroundings to roughly age 11. I had a fairly normal diet: fruits, vegetables, starches, and meat. The diet was more carb-heavy than what is recommended today, but nothing truly unhealthy. McDonald's and other fast foods were an extremely rare treat (read: few times a year) as a reward for good grades. But I'm getting sidetracked here.

My parents tried to remedy the situation somewhat, by giving me fiber tablets. Somehow, I believed they were "very strong chemical laxatives", and when I asked my parents about it, they said yes. (By this point, I already lost trust for natural remedies, and my parents knew it. So I'm kind of glad they went along with my belief.) Surprisingly, this worked wonders. An hour or so after taking them, I had really effortless bowel movements. My parents didn't "declassify" what they gave me for constipation until I was well into my teens. I'm wondering at this point whether or not the results would be this good if I knew they were just fiber tablets, as opposed to "strong chemicals". With that said, my parents did give me a chemical laxative one time, when I was having an extremely bad case of constipation, and the effect was the same.

If your aspie son were younger, I'd recommend doing the same. Give your son some harmless fiber supplements, and tell him they're strong chemicals to make him go to the bathroom. But since your son is a teenager already, he'd figure out the truth pretty quickly. But my case goes to show you: power of suggestion can be an amazing thing.

Thanks for the excellent ideas. My son's ped finally told me to do the sneaky Miralax thing, so I did. I was supposed to basically do a "clean-out" routine on him by putting the stuff in every drink he had for a day, until he had watery diarrhea. Well, I got it into two drinks in a row, but couldn't bring myself to give him another dose the same day. It is sort of working, but I think he noticed the texture of his orange juice was different, and may be catching on. It worked better in the Gatorade.

Yeah, you have to make sure it is completely dissolved. Mixing it with a warm beverage (or warm water and then adding that to juice) works well, too.

I found something on the Sunsweet (a company that makes dried fruits, but mostly prunes) website. I thought would be helpful in this thread. It's something called PlumSweets, which are prunes (a.k.a. dried plums) covered in dark chocolate. They taste good covered in chocolate, so your teen might not even realize he's eating prunes, at least not at first. (Present it as a healthy alternative to candy you discovered by accident.) If he eats handful of them for dessert, he'll get plenty of health benefits. And hey, according to the new school of thought, dark chocolate is good for you, so that's an added bonus. There's also plum juice. It has great laxative properties, and without the stigma attached to prune juice. Perhaps your son will respond well to that.

Here are some links.
PlumSweets: http://www.sunsweet.com/products/info.asp?product=plumsweets
Plum (not prune) juice: http://www.sunsweet.com/products/info.asp?product=plumsmart_light

Last edited by Aspie1 on 24 Aug 2009, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chocolate contain 0 fibre on ins own. I watched a program with the Anatomist Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young which had a chocolate addict. It took the addict 4 days to poo (they did a test with sweet corn).