Intentional Accidents

This post was approved by the person it’s about! 

He was floundering in his middle school years. He’d not made much progress in a long time. School said he didn’t know any letters, but I observed him understanding some written words and sentences at home and in the community. Home is not school. His father’s death coincided with starting toilet training, an emotional scar. It was a mess. We were a mess.

“Behavior”?

The basic fact was my son peed himself often and went to the toilet a lot. Each teacher and behaviorist commented on “antecedents” of wetting himself. They said it was: “attention-getting” or “escape” from demands. By grade 7, school had him spending most of the day either in the bathroom or on “breaks” with chewing gum sitting on the rug, as a reward. (Parents were not welcome to observe in that public school class.)

It was not just affecting his participation and attention span in school.  Sad to say, “accidents” also reduced his participation in children’s groups, outside activities and with extended family. He was unhappy.

Bad attitude? Attention-seeking? I couldn’t accept that my son was so twisted. (“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars…”)

Medical inattention?

Serious toileting issues continued into his teens, when his other maladaptive behaviors were getting better. I finally collected other kinds of data, and his problem was obviously medical. No one had calculated the sum total number of times he was peeing in the day. He was trying hard, with at least 15 toilet trips in a 14 hour period, regardless of where he was or what he was engaged in. Unless he refused to sleep in order to stay dry, he had multiple leaks nightly.

With this insight, we worked with one pediatric urologist, then a second. Years later, a third pediatric urologist truly listened to me. He suggested what proved to be a “cure.” Within 2 months, this lifelong “behavior” was fixed by an over-the counter drug, without surgery, and not by a behavior plan. 

Detailed data covering the full day and night, viewed without preconceptions, had revealed the problem. Then a doctor needed to listen!

“Cure”?

With better bowel and bladder anatomy, he could sleep through the night. Without urinary urgency, “elopement” in class for the toilet stopped. His attention span and academic performance improved. He developed a social life. He participated on sports teams.

As an adult, he is training to run 10K races, together with a guide for safety. He has been an ice hockey player for 14 seasons. He attends family events and fundraisers. He enjoys day-long seminars on disability issues. He has10 hour days lobbying on developmental disabilities, and he chairs committee meetings on zoom.