Oh no! You’ve just woken your child up and realized they’ve wet the bed again. You try to be encouraging and to avoid nagging, but you’re really getting tired of the extra laundry and the smells associated with bedwetting. There are ways to help your child stay dry at night and these tips may provide the help you need.
You may feel frustrated about your child’s bedwetting because you know they can remain dry all day without accidents. You’re eager to move past this season of your child’s life. Remember, however, that it is not uncommon for children under the age of five to still wet the bed while they sleep. In fact, some young primary school children do so, as well.
Just because they have mastered going to the restroom during the day, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’ll be able to wake up at night to use the restroom. Even though it’s frustrating, it might be helpful to think of night-time potty training as an entirely different training period.
Here are some ways to help your child stay dry at night:
If everyone is getting stressed out about bedwetting, you may want to relax and tell them you’ll begin again in couple of months. While it would be great if your child were staying dry through the night by the time they go to school, it really isn’t a big issue.
Children can sometimes take years before they’re completely bedwetting accident free. Realize they’re not wetting the bed at night on purpose, their bodies simply haven’t matured to that level yet. Remember to relax; your child will stop wetting the bed when their body is ready.
I have a child who wet the bed nightly (often several times) until he was 8 years old. We solved his bed wetting by using an alarm.The bed wetting alarm took about 2 months of patient use but has given us years of dry nights.
The book that really helped me was, Seven Steps to Nighttime Dryness, by Renee Mercer. I urge all parents dealing with a child’s bed wetting to read it. My child absolutely loved the children’s book, Prince Bravery and Grace – Attack of the Wet Knights. It is the story of a young prince who struggles with “the Wet Knights” and eventually defeats them by using an alarm. It’s funny yet empathetic and gave him the understanding and motivation to end the bed wetting. http://www.braveryandgrace.com has lots of positive information about solving bed wetting. Invest in the books-they make the process so much easier, then an alarm -its the best decision I ever made.
I read your article and felt inclined to respond. I work with the Enuresis Treatment Center, which deals only with bedwetting cases, and I know they can help. They have treated thousands of children, teenagers, and adult bedwetters. Bedwetting, or Enuresis, is actually a problem caused by abnormally deep sleep, which doesn’t allow for the bedwetter’s brain and bladder to connect so they can effectively respond to each other.
In 99% of all bedwetting cases, the root cause is sleeping so deeply. It is an inherited deep-sleep disorder that results in bedwetting as well as a non-restorative, unhealthy sleep. This compromised sleep can also result in daytime symptoms; difficulty awakening, fatigue, memory difficulty, irritability, difficulty concentrating.
There is No guaranteed that someone will outgrow bedwetting, in fact after the age of seven, it is less likely. 1 in 50 teenagers, as well as 3.2 million reported cases of adults still wet the bed. More importantly, if a child were to outgrow this problem, they are then left with a sleep disorder, along with possible challenging symptoms that can no longer be treated. Meanwhile, the psychological impact of bedwetting can be devastating.
Studies indicate that deep sleepers rarely hear smoke detectors and can sleep through fire/burglar alarms. Alarms alone are ineffective as the key component for ending bedwetting. Children/Teenagers report great confusion and frustration when using an alarm, because they cannot hear it in time, or at all, to make any impact on the bedwetting. A majority of the time they simply experience another failed attempt to end their bedwetting. The core of the problem is an inadequate arousal of the brain, a sleep disorder that needs to be changed to permanently end the bedwetting.
For 34 years, the Enuresis Treatment Center has been ending bedwetting for children, teenagers, and adults who thought there was no hope. Our research and experience has validated that bedwetting is the result of a genetically-linked sleep disorder that can be treated without drugs or invasive surgery. I would encourage your readers to visit their website and take advantage of their extensive knowledge.
Sincerely,
Lyle D. Danuloff, PhD
http://www.nobedwetting.com