bed wetting

[danlew76]

How do you help a child stop bed wetting and help them become dry at night?

What things can you use or buy to help them wake up dry either product or a drug

dan

[Guest]

how old a child? 4 or 14 makes a difference in the approach.

[danlew76]

she is 6 years old

[did to 16]

for the child, the fact that they bedwet is humiliating. if it continues a few more years, it gets moreso and consequently they become more secretive about it especially with siblings and friends. in my experience there is a psychological component to bedwetting such as stress. there is also a sense that by "doing baby things" a child will get more attention and be cared for. counterintuitively to dismayed parents, there is something comforting and warm to bedwetting. at least until it becomes cold and soggy, then we enter into guilt, shame and other unhelpful thinking.

certainly, parental obsession about this won't defuse the cause. "STOP IT" or threats are highly unlikey to work and have a great chance of unintended consequences such as social withdrawl. direct bribery won't have the effect you want either, and further, will create other problems.
i know there are some products on the market but i know nothing about how they work or effectiveness, if any.

you might consider talking to a MD to rule out medical reasons or child psychologist for further insight. i don't think this is so uncommon that you can shock a professional with your concern. in the meanwhile, get some kind of plastic cover so you don't have to constantly stand the mattress up to dry it out. this adds a visual reminder and insult to an already frustrated child. and make sure there are more sheets somewhere accessible so your child can get something clean and dry to sleep on in the night.

in the long run patience will be your best approach. eventually they will outgrow it. your love and not making a huge deal of it will make the transition easier.

[Verve]

One thing i know my friends have done is set a cut off time when their kids drink liquids. Add that to any other advice given.

[dre14chick]

make sure she uses the bathroom before she goes to sleep

[Jessica9373]

Visit your GP/doctor, s/he can check your daughter doesn't have a bladder or kidney infection, and may suggest you try a bedwetting alarm (an alarm which buzzes and will wake your daughter up when it gets wet, teaching her to wake up naturally when/if she needs the toilet) or medications.

Make sure your daughter drinks plenty of water during the day (reducing the amount of water drunk can make bedwetting worse) but don't allow her to drink anything for at least two hours before bed, and make sure she goes to the toilet before bed. You could also wake her up before you go to bed and take her to the toilet, which may reduce the wetting.

But don't worry, lots of children still wet the bed aged 6, and most of these children grow out of it naturally. In the meantime if she wants to stay dry you could try using drynites/goodnites, absorbant pants designed for bedwetting, which would mean that your daughters sheets and pyjamas stay dry. If you do decide to use these make sure she is comfortable using them, and never suggest she is having to wear them because she is a baby, don't compare them to diapers/nappies etc, tell her they are special pants for big girls.

Most importantly never criticise or punish your daughter for bedwetting, if she has a dry night praise her, but if she then has a wet one don't dwell on it. Reassure her that bedwetting is quite common, I'm sure she's not the only bedwetter in her class. Bedwetting can be very humiliating and traumatising for a child if dealt with incorrectly, but if you treat it as a natural occurance rather than something she should feel ashamed of it will be helpful for her.

[roger]

my son kubby wets the bed, and when i say he wets the bed, when i open his door in the morning i have to lean agaist the wall or i get carried down the stairs on a sea of piss. we have tried nappys but he bursts through them like a pin through a ballon. he says it dosnt bother him however many times i have caught him sleeping on the toilet and even half way out his bedroom window in order to stimulate a non pissed in bed. please reply to this email with any advice, i may take a while to reply though as we are moving house due to flood damage from my sons inability to control his own bladder. many thanks, roger.

[roger]

my son kubby wets the bed, and when i say he wets the bed, when i open his door in the morning i have to lean agaist the wall or i get carried down the stairs on a sea of piss. we have tried nappys but he bursts through them like a pin through a ballon. he says it dosnt bother him however many times i have caught him sleeping on the toilet and even half way out his bedroom window in order to stimulate a non pissed in bed. please reply to this email with any advice, i may take a while to reply though as we are moving house due to flood damage from my sons inability to control his own bladder. many thanks, roger.

[seriousment]

she is 6 years old

sry to chime in. when i was young i wet the bed. 2 small things i did to make it stop. pee b4 u sleep. always ask her. "do you have to pee?" right before she sleeps to make sure its all out. also dont let her drink so much nearing bedtime. a glass of water is ok but not to much:)

[lalalalala]

Don't worry about it, well, other than the fact that you have to deal with cleaning it up.

The VAST majority of children that wet the bed between being fully toilet trained and up to age 16 do so because of differential development between different parts of their physiology.

It is most common in children that are taller than average for their age (nothing to do with height, its just a proxy of accelerated growth in many children, its a correlation, not a causal thing). It is also very common when a parent had the same problem as a child, so the differential growth (bladder, nervous control of bladder, unconscious brain functions that lead to most people waking up when the urge hits) is possibly genetic.

Also, many of these children sleepwalk, are heavy sleepers, and talk in their sleep often.

No reason not to have them checked out by a doctor for the few conditions that can cause this that are treatable, but the most likely thing is you will have to deal with it until the child grows out of it, which is usually between the ages of 10 and 14. Obviously, limiting liquid intake 2 hours before bed, and having them use the bathroom before going to bed will reduce the problem from every night to 3-5 times a week if you are lucky, and will reduce the total volume when they do wet the bed.

Just make sure you don't make them feel any worse about it than they already do or will. As one could imagine, it can create quite an emotional problem for a child, especially if their parents make them feel guilty, dirty, or inadequate because of it.

[Chelsea 2]

My daughter is 8 and wets the bed just about every night, I have her wear Motherease bedwetter pants a reusable pullon pants. They keep her bed dry. The doctor told me that some children do wet the beds for awhile and that with the tests he could find nothing wrong.
In our house we call the bedwetter pants her night time panties and she puts them on with her pj's about a half hour before getting into bed. She is happier wearing the pants then she was wetting the bed.

[Birdi]

my brother used to wet the bed in to his teens. We ended up getting an alarm sort of thing that soon as a liquid touched it it sounded an alarm. to wake the person. It is like a mat that you put under the sheet that as an alarm attached to it. Dont know if this is any use to you.
good luck

[Guest]

my own personal expirence was i wet the bed as a child and was taken out of nappies at 6 but continued wetting in my early teens a family decision me included that i should wear protection and did being 13 and wearing a a nappy was about as humiliating as it can get but i soon learnt that waken up to a dry bed was nicer than a cold smelly urine soak bed an after a while the nappies did not bother me as wetting the bed is as humiliatin a dry one is easier to hide and a nappy is easy to disguise hope my story is of some help

[Guest]

My cousin used to wet the bed until she was quite old - like 11/12. It turned out she had been sexually abused as a child and it was nightmares that scared her into wetting the bed.

I am not suggesting your child is being abused or anything, but perhaps some other kind of trauma? - Like bullying at school? Or somethin like that!