son with questions about feces

[Valeriesunshine9]

Hello-

My son is 9 years old and has been diagnosed with ADHD.. He is very hyper active from a young age and is currently not on medication due to the fact it causes him to be very irritable. Tonight my son told me that he has gross thoughts and I asked him like what and he said he has the urge to lick poop. any poop like cow poop he said. I asked him why and he said he didn't know. I told him that it can make you sick so he shouldn't do that and he agreed and said he doesn't know why he has that urge. Is this common? Is this something that I should make sure he see's a psychologist about? I cannot find anything on the internet about the urge to lick feces so if you can help that would be great. thanks:)

[Ted A Grossbart, Ph.D.]

I'm not a child therapist so you probably should run it by kid experts.  That said,  it sounds very much like the intrusive thoughts of adults that are considered OCD if they get troubling enough.

Perhaps it is human nature to be drawn to whatever we have been told NOT to do.  As Peter Pan put it, "It's good to be bad!"  Put up a Don't Touch sign and people who wouldn't have cared less otherwise are suddenly impelled to cop a feel. My guess is that it is more about the forbidden than any issues with poop itself.

You might try chatting with him about that universal aspect of the human psyche. If he is prone to intrusive thoughts starting early helping him build a set of tools to understand and manage them will be a great asset.

Let me know how it goes.

tg

[Jaquta]

This is something totally different and possibly unrelated.
Some members have described various food compulsions and some have been pointed towards the eating disorder Pica.
Either way, it's always a good idea to run it past an expert.  It's usually always easier to treat something earlier than later.

Good luck.