My sister called this morning and was super frustrated with the longstanding poop issues with her son, who will be 6 in a couple months. Sounds like he never wants to go, so he tries to just hold it. And ends up pooping in his pants. She thinks he doesn't ever want to stop what he's doing to go poop, but by now (it's been 3 years!) there's definitely some degree of power struggle going on too. They try to watch and remind him when he looks like he needs to go, but he doesn't want to be told that he needs to go.

They have tried pretty much everything they can think of. Including rewards of all sorts, which never work bc as soon as they make something into a reward, he stops caring about it. Or maybe if he really cares about it, it'll work for a week or even a month but not forever. They also have many times built into his daily schedule for him to sit on the potty, but he says he never feels like he has to go then. Then he might poop his pants 30 minutes later. And maybe again 30 minutes later. She thinks his system might be so screwed up by all the holding it that it's not functioning properly. He is pooping his pants multiple times a day!

She said she read online that parents should take a step back and put the kid totally in charge of the whole process, which they did for a week. But it totally backfired because it was like she gave him permission to never use the toilet again! Which seemed perfectly lovely to him. He just filled up the laundry sink with poopy pants. Ugh!

Anyone BTDT and have any tips or useful info to share? She has mentioned it to the ped several times but always felt like she was getting brushed off ("eh, he'll get over it"). It's been driving them crazy for a long time now, and they are out of ideas.