Tag Archives: anxious child

Bathroom Problems I: Soiling or Encopresis

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Many of the children whose parents consult me suffer from a condition called encopresis, or soiling, a distressing problem that is diagnosed in children older than 4-years old.  Encopresis usually starts with constipation. If a child experiences pain when passing a hard or large stool, it is common for the child to tighten up and hold back in response to the urge to defecate.  This of course makes the constipation worse, and often soft stool from higher in the gut leaks around the hard mass in the colon, causing soiling.

The first step in dealing with this problem is to go to the pediatrician. Good medical care is essential to the treatment of these symptoms. If the constipation is not treated the withholding is likely to continue and may cause anatomical changes in the gut such as stretching of the muscular intestinal wall. Children who suffer from chronic constipation may also develop a disturbed coordination of muscle function in the anal sphincter. Medical treatment often involves stool softeners that draw water into the gut and soften the stool, making it easier and less painful to pass. There are other more vigorous and more intrusive interventions that can be used if necessary.

Pediatricians also often recommend behavioral plans. The most effective behavioral plan is for parents to gently but firmly insist that the child sit on the toilet after mealtimes – usually breakfast and supper – twice a day for 5-10 minutes. The natural movements of the intestines after meals aid in defecation. Sometimes small rewards or star charts help motivate children to follow through with this plan.

If this is a typical pediatric problem, why is it a concern for a child psychiatrist? The main reason is that there are three groups of children who might come to me for another reason who are also prone to having encopresis. The first is anxious children, the second is aggressive children, and the third is children with developmental problems such as attention deficit disorder (ADHD) or  autistic spectrum disorders (ASD).

When I describe anxious and aggressive children as belonging to different groups I am only referring to their outward behavior. Most anxious children are afraid of the destructive potential of their own aggression (even if their general behavior is timid and withdrawn). Similarly, children with aggressive behavior usually struggle with the fear that their aggression will get out of control and hurt someone – especially a family member or themselves.  What is a natural response to the fear of something dangerous getting of control? Control it! In other words, hold it in. Since children make meaning with and about their bodies even more than adults do, they “hold it in” concretely and physically. This psychological meaning almost always occurs simultaneously with the biological meaning of the threat of passing a hard stool. In my office practice, it is common for a child who allows himself to freely play an aggressive theme, such as dinosaurs biting each other, to interrupt the play and go into the bathroom to poop.

Children with developmental problems are even more interesting. In addition to all the other reasons mentioned above, they have difficulty picking up their body’s cues such as the urge to defecate. This is because they have trouble paying attention to their body’s signals and also because they sometimes cannot decipher them. Some children with ASD need to be told to put on a coat or mittens when it is cold outside since they don’t notice the cold feeling without help. (Readers may be surprised when I link the diagnoses ADHD and ASD in the general category of developmental problems, but I think that is the most sensible way to understand them.)

Helping children with their fears and helping them learn to pay attention to the signals their bodies send them is very important, but nothing can take the place of a regular bathroom routine of sitting on the toilet for 5-10 minutes after breakfast and supper. So why do parents find this so difficult to do? One reason is that the child who is afraid of passing a painful stool will object, and parents of fearful children often have trouble insisting that they face challenges that frighten them. Another reason is that the child with attentional problems or the child who has trouble reading body cues will often “tune out” while sitting on the toilet (sometimes get lost in a book). While “tuning out” will sometimes not prevent a bowel movement, the child who is not paying attention to his body will not learn how to respond to his body’s signals. That is why I do not recommend letting a child read or play with an iPad while sitting on the toilet. It is difficult, but it is a good exercise for both parent and child to help the child tolerate this routine.

Being the Parent of an Anxious Child

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Recently I heard an author and editor of The Atlantic magazine, Scott Stossel, talk about his severe anxiety ( Stossel, 2014). What struck me about his story were two things – his description of having had serious problems with anxiety since he was two years old, and also how terrible his anxiety was. He said that the feeling of dread was sometimes so intense that he didn’t think he could go on living. In response to an interviewer asking him what he had found that helped, Scott spoke compellingly about how the first step was accepting the fact that there is no cure, that one has to develop a repertoire of coping skills to deal with the issue and recognize that sometimes you will be OK and other times you suddenly and drastically will not. He even referred to his condition as “temperament”. This rang so true to me.

I pondered on the sweet children I have seen over the years who have had severe anxiety. Some of them have gotten better, and some of them – “stubbornly”! – have not, or at least, are still up and down. Scott Stossel correctly described the problem as a spectrum. All of us have anxiety, but whereas for some it is typical nervousness related to environmental stressors, for others the anxiety is debilitating. I will discuss the treatment of these conditions in another blog posting, since I disagree somewhat with his sense of the limitations of treatment. Right now, I want to talk about the role and the experience of parents with an anxious child.

First of all, I agree with Scott that this problem – barring cases of posttraumatic stress – is largely an issue of temperament. Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman talk about how the newly recognized “sensory reactivity disorder” can be seen as a feature of temperament, since both the sensory disorder and also high reactive temperament, have significant heritable features. I don’t say, “inherited”, since we know that the matter isn’t as simple as that. Environmental (and epigenetic) factors have an important role even in the womb, and certainly after birth, when anxious caregivers have a powerful effect on the developing capacity for self-regulation in the infant (Nelson, 2013) (Beebe & Lachmann, 2013). Individual differences tend to be a “blend of temperament and environment” (Snidman, 2011). It appears that the part of the brain that registers threat in response to environmental stimuli – the amygdala – has a lower threshold of reactivity in these children. It is well known that high reactive temperament and the related insufficient development regulatory competencies may complicate a child’s attempts to cope with adverse life circumstances and even everyday transitions (Kagan et al, 2007, Kagan, 1989).

What I would like to focus on here is the effect of an anxious child on his parents. I am not referring to parents just getting anxious when their child is anxious. I am referring to complex patterns of emotional communication that are initiated in infancy and become established and then have a continuing influence on future development – both of the child and of the parents – so that over time, the trajectory of development and associated behaviors become increasingly distorted (Beebe & Lachmann, 2013) . And the people involved don’t even notice it, because they are so intent on staying connected. Many parents of super anxious children tell me that they “walk on eggshells”. What they then explain is that they are afraid of triggering an explosion in their child. But, what I think they really mean is that they are afraid of losing the connection, afraid of losing the child.

Also, they get worn down. When you “lose energy”, as in all living systems (which humans are) you tend to retreat to a simpler but less complex and effective level of functioning.  I don’t use the word “regress” because that could imply a global move to a previous level of functioning, whereas when I use the term “retreat” I mean that the idea that the higher level of functioning remains in the individual’s repertoire but he/she does not at that point have enough energy to attain and maintain it. In my practice, I sometimes talk to parents about “being on the front lines” in an attack. If things are not going well and you are in the front lines, you may tend to just shoot rather than – from the more protected position of the generals – plot new strategy.

So from the beginning, when the child cannot sleep or has trouble with feeding, the parents bend over backwards to help the child sleep – such as sleeping with the child – or eat – such as accommodating severely restrictive diets. These parents are trying to protect their child’s survival. However, what they can’t allow themselves to realize at the time is that they are contributing to the distortions that are developing. The child who will explode if you don’t accommodate his demands does not learn to tolerate frustration. The child who “only eats chicken nuggets” doesn’t learn to like other foods.

Before you begin to blame the parents, though, consider what it means to have a child who “will” not eat, “will” not sleep. Sooner or later, you give up and accommodate the child’s demands. That is, unless the parents have support in changing these pernicious patterns.

The support the parents need is in the form of relationships. There are many therapeutic techniques that are recommended, but I am skeptical of all of them that follow manuals and are short term. The children who get better from these techniques – and there are some that do – are on an “easy part of the spectrum”. The parents of children on the hard part of the spectrum need ongoing support to change their responses to their children. They need the support of a long-term therapeutic relationship that encompasses them and their child. I will continue with this subject in a future blog.

References

Beebe B, Lachmann F (2013). Origins of Attachment, New York: Taylor & Francis, pp. 95-139.

Nelson C A (2013). Biological embedding of early life adversity, jamapediatrics.com JAMA Pediatrics Published online October 28, 2013 E1

Kagan J (1989). The concept of behavioral inhibition to the unfamiliar, In Reznick, J, Ed., Perspectives on Behavioral Inhibition, University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-25.

Kagan J, Snidman N, Kahn V, Towsley S ( 2007). The Preservation of Two Infant Temperaments into Adolescence, Monographs for the Society of the Research in Child Development, 72 (2).

Snidman N (2011). Lecture on Temperament, U Mass Bos Infant Parent Mental Health Post Grad Certificate Program.

Stossel S (2014). My Age of Anxiety – Fear, hope, dread, and the search for peace of mind. New York, Random House.