Advice on Bed Wetting

I dont have any advise for you but I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone with this issue. I have a six year old boy who knows how to use the potty but has been wetting the bed offf and on. some he does when hes awake. I put him through all the tests and they found nothing rong with him. I also keep praying that he will out grow it.

Diane B's response is phenomenal! I don't have much more to add, but I want to support her answer. I myself had this issue as a child, and back then it was not believed by everyone to be developmental - it was thought of as a psych issue or laziness - but I truly had physical problems that caused this - and my body TRULY DIDN'T wake up until I was already wet - and sometimes worse... in MID STREAM (when I got older). We didn't have these wonderful options of pull ups, or meds to help for sleepovers, etc. I missed all the ski trips - camp over nights, and sleepovers were tough - but I occasionally risked it... and occasionally had embarrassment. Ugh. We didn't even have the piddle pads - and I very often slept with TRASH BAGS under the sheet. Talk about disruptive sleeping! The worst thing for me, I think - was that emotionally I didn't WANT to wake up wet, nor did I want to wake up my mother to disappoint her time and time again. It got to the point where I would strip the bed and sleep in another corner that wasn't still wet so I wouldn't have to wake her. It was disruptive for my whole family and I felt guilty about that. If anything, I think the pull ups (or the big boy/girl ones they have now) are a great option as long as it's explained that it's to help keep dry, and that he can't control it at night because his body doesn't wake him up to tell him it's time to go on the potty, etc. - I think he'll be better with that, than consistently disrupting you to help him with cleaning up and stripping the bed, etc.

Good luck with this - I know it can be frustrating - but just remember it is for him too! It's wonderful of you to consider if the pull ups would be emotionally damaging or not - but I think you now have a good idea about which would be more emotional! : )

My son went thru this - it's so frustrating. No one's getting any quality sleep. We had a great experience with our pediatrician, and with the pediatric urologist to whom she referred us.

The condition is call nocturnal enuresis, which means peeing at night. It's a purely developmental issue - the signal from the bladder to the brain that says "I'm full" simply doesn't get there in a strong-enough message to wake the child up. It's much more common in boys, but girls get it too.

You probably have heard the horror stories of kids being humiliated over this 20 years ago - parents punishing them, hanging the sheets out the window for all to see, etc. There is simply nothing you can do to "TRAIN" the child - it's much more like learning to walk, getting teeth, learning to speak -- it occurs on a different developmental schedule in each child. Every child who isn't doing something yet in Area "A" is doing other phenomenal things in Area "B" - it is so important to realize that.

Once my son realized that it wasn't his fault, he was fine. There are new products now that are a little more grown-up looking than a pull up and which will hold greater quantities of urine - that's important as the child gets older and produces more. They even advertise them on tv - something about fitting under pajamas without the bulk of a regular pull up and I think without the juvenile designs.

In the short run, you can consider making the bed with 2 sets of bottom sheets - I put down one sheet, then put on a waterproof pad the size of a crib mattress but not fitted - it's big enough to cover the area where his abdomen was, and it didn't matter if his head or feet weren't on it - and then I added another sheet. If things go wet, I wiped him down with bathroom wipes (the ones we all use, not the baby ones), pulled off the sheet and the pad, and left him with a dry sheet.

I'm not a big believer in medication if it can be avoided, BUT there is a drug made for this exact purpose, and it had no side effects whatsoever. The pedi urologist told us he has some kids on it well into their teens. My son took it until age 9, went off it and the problem returned, and he went back on until around 11 or 12, when he took himself off. He never had a side effect, and when his body had fully developed, everything worked right.

The result was, he (and we) got a full night's sleep every night, he went to sleepovers, and he even went to overnight camp at age 10. He took one pill at night - for sleepovers, I sent a single pill to friends' houses in a plain unmarked bottle and told the other mom to make sure he took it. They thought it was an allergy pill and no one asked a single question or looked at him funny! At camp, obviously I sent a supply in a marked bottle, and the camp nurse gave it to him every night. Kids are on so many meds these days, no other kids even comment on it.

Prior to this, we tried waking him up at 11 to pee, cutting back on liquids, and even using those alarm systems that hook to their underwear and wake them up at the first sign of wetness. Looking back, it was a waste of time, and the alarms were barbaric - we still had wet sheets and a midnight awakening, but there was this huge buzzer going off too! None of it worked.

Good luck with this!

Hi C.,

I have both a boy (6) and girl (4)... my son has wet his bed probably every 5 out of 7 days, up until he was about 5 or so... my daughter has wet her bed once since she was potty trained at 18 months- boys are just different than girls. There is no denying it!

With my son, we have a strict "no drinks" policy after 6pm (he usually goes to bed about 8pm). If he absolutely begs he can have a "whistle wetter" which is about 2 small sips of milk- no water and definitely no juice. Juice goes right through them and is not allowed after dinner (for either of them).

Also, he MUST try to go to the bathroom before going to bed-although it sounds like you have been trying that.

Remember it is normal for boys to wet a little longer than girls(however I know that doing laundry twice a night is not anyone's idea of normal sleeping!)... you can always consult your pediatrician with any concerns.

best of luck and happy holidays!

Talk to your son about wearing the pullups and how you and him both need a full nights rest for several reasons and this will help to insure that you both get that. If he still doesn't want to they do make cloth soakers similar to the paper type ones they use in hospitals that you can purchase and put over the sheet. layer the sheets and soaker pads so that you don't have to do a full bed change just stip and you will already have a clean set underneath. At this age there isn't much you can do they don't recomend bed alarms until the age of 8 and if you start waking him at night it will not teach his body to hold it or wake when he needs to go. For now I would try to get him into the pullups again and start limiting drinks. My 7yr old doesn't get a drink after 6pm. They have a children's book at barnes and noble about bedwetting I don't have the name of it but you can look it up online. Make sure you rule out any medical reasons for this by talking to your ped. Good luck