Tanisha Martinez Facebook ad: “My son still poops himself. He's 10”

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For a whole year, I sent my son to school with a clean pair of underwear in a sandwich bag. Seven weeks ago, a boy in his class went into his backpack for a ball, pulled out the sandwich bag, and held it over his head. “Why do you have UNDERWEAR in your bag?” My son is ten. He was still pooping his pants. And he couldn’t feel it happening. I didn’t believe it the first time he told me. It was a Saturday, almost a year ago. 4:15 in the afternoon. He pulled off his VR headset and asked me what that smell was. It was him. He looked down, confused, and said, “I didn’t feel it, Mom.” And I want to tell you what I did next, because I’m not proud of it. I’m not a yeller. I read the gentle parenting books. I do the deep breath, the calm voice, the “we’re on the same team.” I yelled at a nine-year-old for something he said he couldn’t feel. I yelled so loud his little sister started crying in the kitchen. Then I cleaned him up in silence, and he wouldn’t look at me for the rest of the night. This is a kid who knows I’ve had a bad day before I’ve said a word. He’ll leave a granola bar in my purse with a sticky note that says “eat this Mom.” He can feel everything going on with me. But he couldn’t feel that he’d pooped his pants. That’s when the sandwich bag started. Every school morning since: lunch, water bottle, clean underwear, a wet wipe. He never said a word about it. But every morning, after I zipped it in, he’d unzip his backpack and push it all the way to the bottom. Under his books. Under his lunch. So nobody would see it. You probably know the rest if you’re reading this. My stomach dropping every time the school’s number comes up on my phone incase he'd had an accident in class. Scrubbing ten pairs of underwear most weeks, then hiding the ones that were too soiled to clean at the bottom of the trash. Him swearing he didn't need to go right up until we’re looking in his underwear. Walking past him every 30 minutes to see if you could smell that he'd had an accident or not. Every mom in my ADHD Facebook group said the same thing. “It’s hyperfocus. They get so locked in to what they’re doing, they don’t notice they have to go. He’ll grow out of it.” I believed that for months. My husband didn’t buy it. One night he was standing at the washing machine at 10 p.m. with another pair in his hand. “He’s ten. He knows when he has to go. He just doesn’t want to stop playing his game. You need to discipline him more when he has an accident.” “He’s not doing it on purpose,” I said. But I didn’t have a better answer. And some nights, lying awake, I wasn’t sure I believed myself. And it’s not like I didn’t try to help him. I set a timer. Every 30 minutes, I’d check in on him. “Do you need to go?” A quick sniff when I walked past. We tried a reward chart for every day without an accident. The chart stayed empty. Then his doctor did an X-ray. He was backed up. She said the accidents were leaking around the blockage, which sounded crazy to me too. So we used Miralax to clear him out. For about two weeks, it worked. Then the accidents came back. He was going every single day now, and he still couldn’t feel it. I asked her what else we could do. She said it was probably “behavioral.” “Keep up the routine. Be consistent. He’ll get there.” So we were consistent. Eleven months of timers. Eleven months of sniff checks. Eleven months of an empty chart on the fridge. His doctor did everything right. She found the blockage in his gut and cleared it. That’s her job, and she did it. But nobody could tell me why my son still couldn’t feel it when he needed to go. So I finally tried it my husband’s way. The VR went in the top of my closet. Two weeks, no game. On day nine, the school called at 1:40. He’d had an accident. In math. There was no game to focus on this time. He was sitting at a desk doing fractions. Three days later, he got in the car after school and didn’t say a word the whole way home. At bedtime, he finally told me about recess. The sandwich bag. The whole class watching it go over that boy’s head. He said everyone called him names the rest of the day. Then he asked me, “Can you stop packing the underwear momma? The class calls me names.” I said no. Because what if it happened and he had nothing to change into? The next morning, he stood at the front door with his backpack on and asked me, very quietly, “Mom, can you smell me?” “Jayden says I always smell. But I can’t tell if I do.” That afternoon the school called again. This time he’d had an accident in science class. I drove over with clean underwear and a clean pair of pants in a grocery bag. There was another mom in the office, signing her son out for the dentist. She looked at the bag in my hand. Then she looked at me. She didn’t look away like most people do. “Accidents?” she asked quietly. I nodded. I couldn’t get a word out without choking up. “My son did the same thing until he was twelve,” she said. “I used to pack him a spare pair every morning. For three years.” “He’s 14 now. He hasn’t had an accident in two years.” Her name was Dana. She handed me a pack of tissues. I hadn’t noticed I was crying. Then she asked me one question. “Does he tell you he didn’t feel it?” I nodded. And then it all came out. The VR. The Facebook group saying it was hyperfocus. Taking the game away for two weeks, my husband saying he just needs more discipline, and the school calling to say the accident happened anyway. “He’s not lying,” she said. “Mine wasn’t either.” “Your group’s half right. He really doesn’t notice he needs to go. But it’s not because of the game.” “It happens any time his brain is busy. The game is just when it’s busiest.” “You know when he’s got that headset on, and you’re standing right next to him saying dinner’s ready, and he doesn’t hear a thing? That’s what’s happening inside him.” “When he’s busy, worried or wound up, his brain gets so loud it can’t hear anything else.” “His body is still saying ‘I need to go.’ His brain is just too busy to hear it.” “That’s why it happens in math too. Math stresses him out.” “And I bet he’s a sweet kid,” she said. “Mine was. They’re so tuned in to everyone else’s feelings, they can’t hear their own.” I sat there in that plastic chair, and everything I’d tried finally made sense. Every 30 minutes, I’d asked him if he needed to go. He kept saying no, because his brain never heard the signal. The chart on the fridge was rewarding him for something he couldn’t hear. The Miralax fixed his gut. But his gut was never the part that wasn’t listening. Taking the VR away didn’t quiet his brain. It just moved the busyness to math class. And every time I yelled, I gave his brain one more thing to worry about. My husband said he knows when he has to go. He didn’t. He never did. I’d been right. He wasn’t doing it on purpose. It wasn’t his fault. And for the first time in a year, I let myself think it wasn’t my fault either. Dana didn’t try to sell me anything. She just said, “Calm his brain down, and it can hear his body again. That’s what worked for us.” When I asked what she’d used, she said saffron. I almost laughed. The spice in my pantry? But she said, “Don’t just get any random saffron gummy off amazon. They’re just ‘blends’ with no real dosage. Make sure the milligrams of saffron are printed on the label before you buy anything.” That night I read about saffron until 1 a.m. There’s a name for what Dana described. Interoception. It’s how the brain picks up signals from inside the body: hunger, thirst, needing the bathroom. Kids with ADHD often struggle with it. You can look it up yourself. Then I found a 2024 study on saffron in kids with ADHD. It showed saffron is used for calming the brain down enough that it can hear signals from the body. I’d actually tried a “calm” gummy from Target months before. Three weeks, nothing. When I got it out of the pantry and turned it over, it said “proprietary blend.” No real dosage of saffron. And it had St. John’s Wort in it, which can interact with ADHD medication. It went in the trash. So I made a list of what Dana told me and what I’d read. Saffron, with the milligrams on the label. No blend. No St. John’s Wort. No sugar. And a guarantee, because I was done spending money on things that didn’t work. One brand checked every box. It’s called Saphire. It’s a gummy with 44.25 mg of saffron in each one, printed right on the label, plus Vitamin D. I’d tried a calming gummy before and it did nothing. But the other choice was waiting, like the Facebook group said. He’ll grow out of it. Dana’s son didn’t grow out of it until he was twelve. Middle school is next year for us. I wasn’t going to send him there with a sandwich bag at the bottom of his backpack. So I ordered it that night. I didn’t tell him what it was for. I just said it was a vitamin. He said it tasted like berries. Week one, nothing. Same stomach drop every time my phone rang. Same accidents in class. Same clean underwear in the sandwich bags. Around day ten, I realized I’d walked past him three times that afternoon without sniffing. Week three, the sandwich bag came home unopened. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. All week. Still pushed down at the bottom of his backpack, right where he’d hidden it. Week four, the VR was back out of my closet. He was mid-game on a Saturday afternoon, and I watched him stop, pull the headset off, say “be right back,” and run to the bathroom. He came back and put the headset on like nothing had happened. My husband was on the couch. He saw the whole thing. That night I found him standing at the washing machine again. No dirty underwear in his hands. “He felt it,” he said. “He actually knew he had to go.” Then, quieter: “You were right.” I went into the laundry room and cried into a towel. The chart on the fridge started filling up. I didn’t even mention it. He’d add the stickers himself before breakfast. Then last Monday, I was packing his lunch. He came into the kitchen, unzipped his backpack, reached all the way to the bottom, and took out the sandwich bag. He put it on the counter. “I don’t need it, Mom. I can feel it now.” Then he walked out the front door without asking me to smell him. I’m not going to tell you it was the gummy. I can only tell you what I saw once his brain was quiet enough to hear himself. That afternoon I found a granola bar in my purse. The sticky note said “eat this Mom.” He can still feel everything going on with me. Now he can feel what’s going on with himself too. If your son looks down and tells you “I didn’t feel it”… If your husband thinks he’s doing it on purpose, and some nights you’re not sure he’s wrong… If the Facebook group told you he’ll grow out of it… If you’re zipping a spare pair of underwear into his backpack every morning, and he’s pushing it to the bottom so nobody sees… His body has been telling him the whole time. His brain is just too busy to hear it. It was never his fault. And it was never yours. Picture that sandwich bag on the counter instead of at the bottom of his backpack. Picture him pulling the headset off on his own. Picture him walking out the door without asking you to smell him. This is where I got ours 👉 https://trysaphire.com/products/saphire-saffron-gummies They give you 60 days. If there’s a sleepover, a camp or a new school year coming up, that’s enough time to see it before then. If you don’t see a difference, send it back. P.S. To the dads: he’s not doing it on purpose. My husband thought so too. He really can’t feel it. P.P.S. If your son is on medication, talk to your pediatrician first, like I did. P.P.P.S. Before anything else, have your doctor check for constipation. A backed-up gut can cause accidents too, and that’s something they need to rule out first.

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trysaphire.com

My son still poops himself. He's 10 💔

Saphire Saffron