Symptoms can be many things including abdominal pain, leakage of watery stool (which is mistaken for diarrhea) and of course hard, painful, or irregular bowel movements.

Constipation usually starts gradually. A young child has a painful bowel movement.  This makes them want to hold their stool in.

The: Absorbs water which makes the stool harder, drier, and eventually larger.

Now: When it does come out it is more painful.  This begins a vicious cycle of worsening harder stool and more pain.

We find a good treatment for this is to give a supplement that makes the stool soft and painless to pass once again.

We recommend DAILY use of Miralax (generic is ok).  We start the dose low doubling the dose about every 3 days until the stools are soft enough that they are no longer uncomfortable or difficult to pass.

It is better for the stool to be a little too soft [rather than too hard].

Once a soft painless stooling pattern is achieved, it is important to keep it that way long enough that the stool holding habit is completely forgotten.

This can be many months or years.

Miralax is not something that causes problems-there is no dependence that develops to it with long use.

We also recommend the YouTube video called the ‘poo in you’