I NEED HELP!!!! PLEASE.

Call your daughter’s pediatrician and ask for a referral if they have not dealt with this problem before. This may be an indication of many things but this is not the best place to deal with with this.

Definitely, you need to talk to a doctor, specifically an experienced doctor. Maybe a family practice, maybe a pediatrician, maybe a child psychiatrist — but someone who has lots of experience and will take you and your problems seriously. Start with your regular doctor and keep insisting until you work up to someone who knows anout this.

www.danasview.net

what you are describing (fecal smearing) is somewhat common with autisitc children My wife and I count ourselves fortunate in that my boy didn’t do this more thana few times. Unfortunately, I am not really sure how to counsel you to end it, other than to suggest you got to a forum that specializes in autism and inquire there. The link above has several listed.

In the short run, one thing you can do to slow down her “mining for artwork” is, yes, duct tape. Once you put a diaper on the little dear, wrap duct tape around the top of the diaper a couple times, snug enough to prevent her little hands from sneaking in. Remember to keep it off her skin. You will have to cut it off of her, but that is a small price to pay I am sure you will agree compared with cleaning the walls, furniture, etc.

You say your daughter has chronic diarhea… Forgive me for being somewhat graphic, but please describe it, colour and consistancy. There are several possibiliies for this, and all are medical issues, although I am willing to bet you a trip to Disney you will have one helluva time finding a dr. who will listen, let alone understand.

One possibility is she has a fecal mass in her large intestine or colon. This can be determined by a standard xray, and if present treated with a mild laxative and a daily warm water enema. What happens is the mass nearly blocks te bowel, so that the only thing that can get thru is a very loose bit of material that can squeeze around the edges. One symptom of this is near constant toe walking.

Another possibility is a profound food allergy, specifically the proteins casien (milk) and gluten (grain). Many parents of autists have reported a huge reduction in fecal smearing AND chronic loose stool when they use the GFCF Diet. Please bear in mind that this is *not* an instant fix, but will take several weeks before you see much improvement. See the link above for more information.

Another possibility is chronic inflammation of the lower gi tract. This can be viral (Wakefield’s Disease), bacterial or yeast. All can be treated (again see the link above) Once the bad bugs are gone, you can supplement with a pro-biotic to bring the good bugs back (we all have micro-organism in a gut which make proper digestion and elimination of waste possible).

Good luck to you Jessie’s Mom, and please know that if no where else, here you are amongst friends and allies. Please keep us posted on how things go.

A couple of addenda to what Dad wrote:

Nobody here is a doctor, and nobody can diagnose over the internet. All we can do is offer suggestions and ideas for further research. Please work on finding a good doctor. A *good* allergist/rheumatologist will know about these autoimmune things. Unfortunately there are also a lot of bad ones out there, so you have to keep looking and working.

I am not autistic but I do have the gluten and lactose problems (celiac disease). These things may coexist with autism, but they may be a separate autoimmune disease on their own. Believe me, it is awful. The entire digestive system tries to empty itself and then remove its own lining, from both ends.
By the way, there is a misconception even among some doctors that all people with celiac disease will be terribly underweight, so those of us who are on the opposite end of the spectrum are often misdiagnosed for years. In fact about a third of celiac patients are underweight and another third are overweight (the continually empty stomach can make you hungry so you overeat); so don;t take weight as a diagnostic criterion.
Research under the words “celiac” and “gluten intolerance” on the internet and see what you find. CAUTION — internet medical advice is often worth exactly what you pay for it. Do NOT take anything as fact until you have checked with an experienced and qualified medical professional. Be especially careful of promised miracle cures, which are very often a waste of money and are sometimes extremely dangerous.
My daughter inherited the celiac tendency, although she does not have the full-blown syndrome yet; if she ate propertly, she was moderately healthy, but if she ate wrong, she had pretty bad bathroom accidents too.
I have to keep absolutely strictly to the no-gluten no-lactose diet. In my particular case, if I avoid all glute period and use denatured milk products such as cheese (and I am thinking of trying yogurt) AND treat them for 24 hours with double the recommended dose of Lactaid drops — available at your drugstore — I can eat a healthy diet and not have to run for the facilities every thirty minutes. For my daughter, I had to raise her from six to eighteen months on soy milk — and not just any soy milk, but one particular hard-to-find brand that she could digest. She was allergic even to human milk. (Note to self-proclaimed “experts” who don’t believe in allergies — a six-month-old baby cannot read the labels to tell which brand of soy milk she is getting, and the digestion doesn’t lie.) When she rejected the taste of the soy milk, I had to get her eating cheeses and taking chewable or dissolvable calcium supplements (available at your drug store.)
You can try this diet whith your child and see if it helps. In particular, if the feces have a truly awful smell — not just outhouse, but much more awful — this *may* be a symptom of lactose intolerance. Dad is right, it takes several weeks for the lining of the digestive tract to regenerate so the results are *not* overnight; and you have to read every single label on every single food, one can of soup or pack of snacks can put you back for days, so it takes a while to learn to do this right.
But since none of us is there and none of us is a doctor, please take this merely as suggestions and research aids, NOT a diagnosis.

The duct tape around the diaper is yes, a simple and practical temporary emergency measure. Certainly worth trying.
BUT — if the child does have the lactose and/or gluten intolerance, the stuff that is coming out has not finished digesting and it is full of unprocessed stomach acids. It can eat away at the delicate skin. One *possible*reason (again we are not there, so take this as a possiblilty only) that the child may be putting hands on the bottom is the soreness and rawness; if this is the case, the feces all over the hands and the smearing are a *result* of something else, not the intent of the action — the child may simply be trying to clean off.
Under no conditions ever should the child be left sitting in a dirty diaper for any length of time, not even minutes. The message is wrong, and if the stomach acids are the problem this can cause acute pain and even infections and injury.

But some other questions came up when I thought about your posting:
In what ways is your child handicapped? Can she walk? Apparently she doesn’t speak, but does she understand and respond to language?
How was she diagnosed as delayed, and on what criteria? Age 3 1/2 is *extremely* young to be labelled LD and apraxic — I know one particular case of a normal child who did not speak at all until after three years old, so on what basis is this diagnosis being made and by whom?

In particular, this depends on the child’s handicaps, but I ask, why is a child over age three still in diapers? If she is physically handicapped or unable to comprehend, that is one thing. But I have also seen mistaken attempts at kindness, not training a child who is capable of it. It is possible that the child can understand more than she can say and she does not want to be in diapers any more, maybe is trying to give the message “get this off me.” Again this is only a possibility, but something to consider.

Do the research, check the facts, and please get good medical advice and be careful of snake oil and dangerous “natural” drugs — remember that arsenic and deadly nightshade are natural too. Good luck.

If you remove gluten and the diarrhea continues — and you notice any indication of blood (or she seems to be in pain), you might want to consider taking her to a gastroenterologist and having her tested for Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn’s Disease.