Quest005

Question:

How do you handle a 9 year old boy who defecates in his pants during the school day (each day) with no medical cause identified?
 

Answer:

To do justice to this question I would need much more information. Since I don’t know more, I can only make some guesses. Sometimes soiling pants is an indication of sexual abuse. Sometimes a child who soils is passively aggressively saying, “You can’t control my bowel movements.” if a parent is being too controlling. Sometimes children start soiling their pants when a new child is born into the family. They have adopted the belief that the baby is loved more, and mistakenly believe acting like a baby might help them receive more love. Sometimes children feel neglected. This hurts. Soiling is way of hurting back or of getting some attention. Even negative attention is better than none.

As you can see, I can’t answer adequately without knowing what else is going on in this child’s life. Ido know that a misbehaving child is a discouraged child. This child needs encouragement — not punishment. Even though it will make this answer very long, I’m going to include a piece I just finished for our soon to be published book, Positive Discipline in the Classroom A Teacher’s A-Z.