What Is Encopresis? What is the Definition of Encopresis?

What Exactly Is Encopresis?

Your child is having some soiling accidents, or they are constipated, or both. And you are wondering what exactly is this strange ailment called encopresis? Does your child have encopresis? Is encopresis treatable? Is it a potty training issue? These may be some of the questions you're asking yourself about encopresis if you are new to the battle.

Here are a few good links that define and explain encopresis:
Web MD has a good overview of encopresis here
Kids Health has some information about how it starts and what to do about encopresis
Boston Children's Hospital presents an overview of encopresis

Here is my definition of encopresis:
Encopresis is fecal incontinence, either caused by withholding or constipation. The constipation can be caused by a number of factors; diet, anatomy, stress, environment and a few others. Technically it isn't considered encopresis until your child is four, but I know in my son's case (and in many others) that he had encopresis from the beginning.

One of the biggest questions you may have about encopresis is whether or not it's treatable. For the vast majority of people, it is a treatable ailment. There are a small minority of people who live with this for years and do their best to "manage" encopresis. I don't know the percentages of each group but I'm hoping that you will fall into the treatable category.

I think there are two categories of children with encopresis. The first is the children who are potty trained and then at some point have an issue that causes constipation. The constipation makes them hold in painful bowel movements and they soil themselves (either by loose stool leaking around hard stool, or just not being able to hold it all in and the stuff at the bottom leaks out). The other category is children who have encopresis from the beginning (maybe from birth or when they went off formula/milk) and who never were potty trained to poop on the toilet. Anecdotally, the second category is much harder to treat.

Now that I have given a short overview of the definition of encopresis (and the links provided above are far more research-based and informative than my definition), I will move on to talking about what to do next.