Young AS kids and toilet time (questions about #2).

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Sorry for being a board hog ... this will be my last post of the day!! I am just so excited to connect w/ others that might have insight.

Do any of your young AS kids have issues with pooping? Specifically holding it in?

Our boy has struggled with poop from day #1, it was like it hurt him. Even when it was soft. Now that he is potty trained, he with-holds his poop for DAYS. His attitude totally changes after a few days of no-poop. He gets more anxious and prone to acting off. He is a different child once he poops -- MUCH more mellow and focused.

So far our method is to get him relaxed and let him read books on the potty. He gets very upset if we put a diaper on him.

Could it be diet? We had to resort to an enema a week ago and I felt so bad about it.

(I had the same issue as a kid, so my guess is it runs in the family.)

Poop is one of the first things we get control over so it's not at all uncommon for any kid to enjoy this new control and lord over it a bit to much. My older son has the same trouble to the point we thought it was a blockage when he was about 7. We had the doctor explain how poop works and why it needs to come out and what happens when it doesn't. We also added prunes and other dried fruits and berries to his diet. He loves them and they seem along with the new information to have done the trick nicely. I still ask him how all thats going now thats he's 12 and get the and the I'm fine most of the time but ever once and a while he's like mom buy me more dried fruits. We also make sure he has them we he goes camping with his scout troop or if we're taking a road trip. Oh one more thing make sure he's getting alot of water dehyration makes going poop much harder.

my son also has problems with poop. hir regular poop is evry 3-4 days. basicaly he drinks miralax evry day to keep it soft. it helps so we do not have the "emergencies". otherwise he drank prune juice from early age and it didn't help completely.
interestingly he would avoid doing number 2 in day care so he never did it there evan after 2 years there. he says he doesn't like to do it there.
i am not sure if it is more of an issue of cleanliness (my son doesn't like his hands dirty or wet) or privacy.

Wow. This poop thing has become a huge part of or family life with our aspie son. He is now 13 and since he has begun to go through puberty and attend a stressful middle school, he has been having lots of poop-related issues. He now expects me to wipe him, he goes into the bathroom in the morning now and decides he will just sit there and poop, even if there is no urge. He will be in there for 30 mintes or more and will sometimes be late for school because of it. Constipation is an issue, but now he thinks he has a blocake. Only last week, we made trips to a psychiatrist and his pediatrician to determine if his bowels were backed up. He had an x-ray on Friday and we'll find out the results on Monday. The pediatrician told us to start a "clean-out" program involving enemas, suppositories and ducolax, which went very badly so far. We spent hours yesterday trying to get hm to agree to the little Fleet enema. Now he thinks he does not have a blocakge. Bottom line s we don't really know how much of this is physical and how much just hs perception, as plenty of poop is there every time he goes. It seems as if hs Asperger's symptoms are getting worse during puberty. I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt as I am an aspie too and had bowel issues when I was a kid.

my son was the same why, he wasn't fully potty-trained (number 2 was the problem) until he was nearly 5. he used to hold it in or let a little bit out at a time on his pull ups. what finally worked was a reward chart and not putting him back on pull ups. we make sure he gets a lot of water and he likes beans (thank god) and wheat bread with lots of fiber. he pretty much goes every day now. he is a germ phobic so he hates getting dirty, i told him how dirty it was to soil oneself and how much germs poop has and now he WANTS it out of his body. like the previous poster said, most of it was all a control issue also. once he was in control of some of his life, he began to let go of this one. good luck.

My son was the same way. He would sit on the toilet and scream (and I don't mean cry, no, he would literealy SCREAM, like someone was chopping of an arm) it was very traumatic for him to poop. he would go days at a time. one time we had to give him a suppository because he was so constipated from holding for like a week.
We eventually, after trying everything else we could think of, explained how the digestion system worked, and drew him pictures of what happens to the food he eats, and explained to him why we poop. After that he decided that pooping wasn't so bad and he doesn't hold it anymore, which sometimes makes it a little inconvenient when he decideds he needs to go at the grocery store and has a twenty minute marathon while I wait for him to finish. But I guess we really have to take the good with the bad

We've had poop issues with our son too. He refused to poop in the potty until about 3 1/2 or so. He also used to only poop at night in his bed and pull-ups didn't always do the trick. I still have nightmares about those messes and still keep a plastic mattress cover on his bed, just in case. He's 4 1/2 now and is fully capable of handling the whole potty situation by himself, but still asks for help because he is scared of getting poo on his hands when he wipes. He also asks for help to get the water for hand washing to just the right temp. so that it's not too cold and not too hot, but only after pooping - he has no problems washing his hands at other times throughout the day.

I definately relate to the whole personality change after a poop. We still need to remind him to go because it is never high on his priority list, and we can usually tell when he needs to because his behavior gets to be pretty bad. Once we realize that a poop is probably in order and he begrudgingly goes, he is a totally different person - much happier and more agreeable.

Thankfully, he loves fruits, veggies, yogurt, and whole grains, so backup has not been too much of an issue, although he does have man-sized poops and often bleeds a bit afterwards. Sorry if that's too much of a visual - but we're on the subject . His doc has reassured us that that's OK, but it still worries me a bit.