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Symptoms of constipation in children
Last reviewed: 04.07.2025
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Stomach pain is common in all children with constipation. Constipation is one of the most common causes of this pain, and one of the first steps parents should take is to recognize the symptoms of constipation and contact their pediatrician. Since there are many other medical conditions that can cause stomach pain, it is important to know the symptoms of constipation in a child.
What is constipation?
Constipation is usually defined as fewer than two or three bowel movements per week, or painful bowel movements, even if the child may have a bowel movement every day.
In most cases, constipation in children is caused by a diet high in fat and low in fiber. In addition, children suffering from constipation often drink too little fluid. Constipation can be caused by physical inactivity (low physical activity), constipation can be a side effect of some medications.
Symptoms of constipation in children
Constipation symptoms are usually fairly straightforward. They can be a bit confusing in an older child, when parents don’t know exactly how many bowel movements their child has had per week. And a toddler who is no longer potty trained may not tell parents what kind of bowel movements they’ve had, or even if they’ve had any at all. Depending on the child’s age, symptoms and signs of constipation may include:
- less than two or three bowel movements per week
- straining during bowel movements
- long (more than 15 minutes) defecation time
- reluctance to go to the potty or toilet due to fear of pain, this can lead to retention of stool in the intestines, which makes constipation even longer and more painful
- abdominal pain, bloating, colic, which often only goes away after a bowel movement
- a very large amount of stool that passes painfully
- a feeling that the bowel movement was incomplete and the bowel was not completely emptied, even after the bowel movement had taken place
- rectal pain
- excessive gas with or without pain
- bright red blood in the stool or on the paper when your child wipes with paper after a bowel movement
Keep in mind that some children, especially infants and young children, strain when passing stool. If they have soft stools when they have abdominal pain, they are probably not constipated.
Severe constipation and its symptoms
Parents are usually well aware of the common symptoms of constipation.
Severe or chronic constipation may have even more vague symptoms than occasional constipation. Children with such symptoms may often have encopresis, with forced leakage of small amounts of soft or liquid stool onto the underwear.
Encopresis is usually caused by the presence of large, hard stools that remain in the rectum and change shape there.
If parents are unaware of their child's constipation, they may think that loose stools or spontaneous release of feces are a sign of diarrhea and consult a doctor complaining of diarrhea, while in fact the child has the opposite problem.
Other complications of severe constipation may include
- haemorrhoids
- rectal prolapse
- fecal impaction
Therefore, at the slightest suspicion of problems in the functioning of the child's rectum, you should immediately consult a doctor and not consider these to be temporary and minor deviations.