Tips to Manage Bedwetting and Stooling Accidents - Weekend Wisdom

Question: A listener wrote in asking about encopresis and enuresis. These tips are for handling bedwetting or soiling accidents once your child is successfully potty trained.

Resources:

• Bedwetting and Related Toileting Issues (Article)
• Helping Children Heal from Trauma
• Sleep Issues

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

- Hello, and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney, and I am your
host for this episode. Weekend Wisdom is a short podcast we release every week that
answers your questions. When you send us a question at info @creatingafamily .org,
we will dig through our archives and try to find an answer that suits the need
that you're expressing and help you strengthen your family. We take these answers
from personal experiences of raising our own kids. We take them from the expert
interviews that we've done with lots of professionals in the field and from the
other resources that we create for you weekly. If you have a question, please send
it to info @creatingfamily .org. Today's question is about Encoprenesis and Endurisis,
which are the fancy medical terms for stooling accidents and urine accidents after a
child has already been potty -trained. We want you to know that, first of all, both
conditions are very common for typical children, as well as neurodivergent children or
children impacted by trauma. The tips that I'm sharing for you today are going to
help you handle these bedwetting or soiling accidents once your child is successfully
potty trained. And then we'll tackle issues of potty training for kids that have
been exposed prenatally to substances or have different neurodivergences like ADHD or
developmental delays in another episode of our Weekend Wisdom. So when you're trying
to tackle bathroom accidents with a child who has been touched by trauma, prenatal
substance exposure, nor a divergence, or any other atypical childhood experience, it's
crucial to set a foundational premise. And that foundational premise should be, we
cannot compare our children's progress through these developmental milestones with other
children who are developing pretty typically. That includes other children in our
homes. So if you've potty trained biological children who went through the potty
training stage fairly quickly and easily and didn't really have a lot of accidents
afterwards, that's not going to be probably the same experience that you have with
the child in front of you right now. And that's not to say that every child is
going to struggle with bedwetting or soiling accidents. It's just to set the
expectation that you can't compare these children to other children that you've helped
potty train. So our first tip is kind of an intangible one, but it's to set your
expectations realistically. For example, let's say that your child is chronologically
four years old, but maybe has the gross and fine motor skills of a two year old.
Maybe they have the expressive language skills closer to an 18 month old. So it's
really important that you realistically consider what it is that you're asking them
to accomplish? Can you adjust your expectations that they stay dry overnight down to
their very least developed skill? Is it reasonable for you to expect an 18 month
old to stay dry overnight or to call out to you at night when they need to pee?
This is not a concrete tip, and I understand that staying nimble and responsive to
this child that you have right in front of you can feel kind of like you're
shooting in the dark and you don't really know what you're aiming at, but
consistently evaluating your own expectations against their skills and abilities that
they've demonstrated across all of their development can help you proceed according to
this child's timeline. And that's the crucial part of setting realistic expectations
is that you want to be meeting the needs of this child that you have in front of
you right now, even if that child has very uneven development across their skills
and abilities. The second tip is to investigate this child's why. For example,
nighttime wedding can be a result of really, really deep sleep or an immature
central nervous system. It might be a genetic issue and if you have an open
adoption or you have contact with the child's biological parents, you can find out
if there's been a history of slower development in the overnight awareness that is
needed to wake up and use the toilet for nighttime wedding. If your child is
soiling their pants, consider what else might be going on. Is it because they're
completely engrossed in their video game or are they afraid that they'll miss their
turn at playing on the swing set at school? Do they have the mind -body connection
that they need to sense the urge to go and then the follow -up skills to act on
that urge? Can she act on those skills quickly enough to get to the toilet or wake
up when she's in deep sleep, even if everything around her is very distracting?
Those are all really necessary skills that kind of have to come together to help a
child avoid a urine accident or a soiling accident. In our community of adoptive
foster and kinship families, there are several other whys that you have to also
consider. For example, is this child new to your home? Are they afraid of the dark?
And do they have a good reason to be afraid of the dark based on their past
history? Do they not know how to ask for help because maybe they don't have the
experience of safe adults that they can ask for help. Sometimes their past history
of scary or painful or uncertain experiences will inform their ability or their
development of the ability to use the words that are necessary to ask for the help
they need. And third, consider how to use what you know about this child and about
their why or their context by taking some time to observe and collect other
information about them that will help set both of you up for success with nighttime
wedding or daytime stueling accidents when you track their daily toilet habits during
the day because, again, this is a child that you think is fairly typically potty
trained for daytime dryness. When you track those daily toilet habits,
you can also learn a lot more about what's going on inside of them. It's a lot of
data collecting, yes, but it really helps. So when you're doing these observations,
you can ask yourself some of these questions. Is there a time of day that they
struggle the most to stay dry or not have an accident? Is there a food that seems
to go straight through them? You could be looking at maybe a lactose intolerance
issue. Does your household routine allow them enough time and space and peace at the
end of the day to empty well before they go to bed? Or is there an activity that
captures them so completely and fully that they really can't tear themselves away and
make it to the party in time? And so when you think about all of those things,
that will help you make a plan for delaying those accidents or addressing those
accidents in a way that helps them find more success. So fourth, when you see an
accident occurring or when your child reports that an accident has occurred, and
again, please remember, these are just that. These are accidents. It's not that the
child cannot control themselves and be very careful to not assign intent or won't
language around those potty issues. So when an accident does occur, make as small a
deal of it as you possibly can. You wanna make it very matter of fact, very
simple, not a lot of big emotion or drama. Be gracious and compassionate because it
can be very embarrassing for them, especially if they sense that you're disappointed.
Your child is going to need constant reassurance that these accidents do happen and
that you will always have their back even when they struggle to find success. It
will also be really helpful for you to establish and maintain a very consistent,
simple, easy process for them to clean themselves up to help you change the bedding
in the nighttime and things like that. A very predictable routine will help them
feel safe and it will normalize that accidents do happen. They'll see that you're
prepared and they'll feel safe knowing that you're prepared because things like this
happen. It's also helpful if you can accomplish the cleanup in the dark or with as
little light as possible, because the goal, especially of nighttime wedding, is to
get everybody back to sleep as quickly as possible. So if the child has nighttime
accidents, have some things set up in place before you go to bed that will help
you deal with the accident quickly. That could be an extra set of pajamas and an
extra pull -up already stashed in the bathroom. That could be a plastic bag to hold
soiled or wet clothes until you can get to them in the morning. Whatever it is
that helps you get back to sleep and helps your child get back to sleep with as
little fuss as possible will be one more thing that kind of helps you step into
success towards that process. We have a really great guide that offers a lot more
detail for handling nighttime and daytime accidents. If you go to creatingafamily .org
and type bedwetting into the search bar, we created a two -part series just recently
that will be helpful for handling these accidents and for the issues related to
raising a foster adopted or kinship child that may be struggling with these
accidents. The most important thing is to take heart because most kids grow out of
stooling and urine accidents around eight years or so. And that's considering your
child's specific challenges and specific abilities with that uneven development that
they may be experiencing, but it won't last forever. And if you feel like this is
just not getting better, or if it's getting worse, or if it's just taking much
longer past eight years old, seek your pediatrician's advice and see if there's more
going on. Sometimes there are physiological things going on. And if it's not getting
better as their brains and bodies mature, then that would be a really good
indication that they need extra support or extra help. Thank you for listening. I
hope that this was helpful. It's a lot of data collecting and a lot of observation
on our part. And then using that information to support the child and help them
feel safe and loved unconditionally without any shame. Our culture does have a lot
of shame around urine accidents and stooling accidents for kids. And it's really
important that they not feel any of that in our homes. And so take heart, hang in
there and set yourself up for success by keeping those expectations low and having a
good stash of cleaning supplies in the bathroom so that you can handle it quickly
at night. Thanks for listening and don't forget to check YouTube at our channel at
Creating a Family. If you found this information helpful, please leave us a rating
or a review. These reviews help us tremendously in the algorithms getting more
information like this out to other families who need it. And like I said, we will
cover the issues of potty training kids with neurodivergence in another weekend wisdom
episode. So I hope you'll come back for that. Thanks so much and have a great day!