Posted by Andrew on 1/12/2010, 7:45 am, in reply to "Is paruresis hereditary?"

Hi Michelle I can understand how worried you are, but there could be a simpler reason. A survey of that age group of school children in the North East by some school nurses found that over half of the grls and over a third of the boys avoided the toilets at school either because of the condition and/or because of behavioural problems in the toilets. Also, as you may know, girls can form cliques that exclude others. Her scepticism to your comment about "no-one is interested" could be because of the opposite, that some clique behaviour may be going on. So your daughter's behaviour could well be "normal" because of that. You could judge her shyness elaewhere i.e. at home, out at friends, cinema etc. Does she exhibit shyness there? As for heredity: I doubt it is heriditary: I think it is much more to do with personality which is inherited i.e. level of self-consciousness and rumination i.e. level of chewing things over in the mind. This allied to an event that triggers paruresis, and reinforces it. Take comfort that the simplest reasons are the most likely Andrew

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