Nap Time and Nighttime Potty-training

I think you've gotten some great advice. This something that just happens when it happens, when they've developed enough to sense their body's cues to use the bathroom even while they are sleeping. Gamma G broke it down nicely.

One trick I can offer is doubling up on the bedding. I did this when we started having my son sleep in just underwear (he asked to, by the way..that was how I knew he was ready). I bought two of the vinyl fitted sheets for his bed and made the bed as follows:
Bottom: fitted vinyl sheet
Next: Fitted sheet
Then: Fitted vinyl sheet
Top: Fitted sheet

You'll still want to use washable blankets/sheets for the top until he's staying dry, but at least you won't be making the entire bed up every single night/morning. Just strip off the wet layer and you have another set of bedding. Good luck!

It took my boys until around age 5-6 before they could stay dry at night and naptime. Naptime came before night time. My 3 1/3 yr old daughter is no where near being ready to stay dry.
Gamma G. said what I was going to say quite well :)

J.
Hi!! Congrats on success at potty training. You are done with potty training. Yes I mean it. The during sleep potty training is non existent. It is a milestone. It is a developmental thing. U can't train a child for that. It will happen when ur little ones body is ready.
Good luck!!!

We see this issue so often on Mamapedia. Here's the scoop. Nighttime dryness is NOT a behavioral issue. It's developmental. There is nothing you can do to advance a child such that the 'full bladder" signal gets to the brain. You'll get all kinds of advice about limiting fluids after a certain hour, getting the kids up to pee at midnight, attaching alarms to their underwear so they wake up ath the slightest sign of wetness, and so on. We did all of that. But our son suffered from a very common condition known as nocturnal enuresis - meaning nighttime bedwetting. Short and simple, the brain doesn't get the "gotta pee" signal, and the kid never wakes up. 3 is VERY YOUNG to have this milestone. It's not a skill. It's a developmental step. You can't train it, teach it, punish it or anything else. Some kids need to wait until 4 or 5, some need medication until 12 or beyond.

Long story short, they need sleep more than they need to be awakened to go pee. Just let it develop, and, if necessary, consult a pediatric urologist. I'm not a big proponent of medication if other things will do, but in our case, meds were the answer. No side effects, and he developed normally in his own time frame.

There is no such thing as training a child while they are sleeping. If you use the search option on this page you can find page after page after page of people asking this same question.

Trying to make it short:

The child's brain either has turned on the chemical to stop the kidney from producing urine while the person is asleep or it hasn't. There is nothing you can do to make this chemical turn on. So their kidney is producing urine 24 hours per day and does not stop. The child has the ability to recognize and hold urine during the time they are awake, or at least sometimes while they are learning how.

Once they go to sleep they are asleep, not awake, so they have no higher functioning ability, their body is asleep so it relaxes and the urine just runs out without even staying in the bladder.

As they get older they gain the ability to stay dry when this chemical turns on and tells the kidney to turn off while the person is asleep.

The child can THEN start learning how to hold their urine while they are sleeping. People are NOT supposed to wake up and go urinate during the night. They are supposed to hold it and when they wake up they feel the urge to go to the bathroom. That's the way our bodies are made.

If you wake a child up the first thing they do is start holding their urine, they don't have any in there so they can't sit and produce urine. So it's usually useless to even wake them up.

You have choices of course:

You can make their life and yours miserable and work yourself to a frazzle by waking them up all night long and taking pull ups off. That makes a lot of work for you with tons of extra laundry. No pulls ups means wet sheets and blankets and pillows and more work for you. You will be exhausted and so will they. Plus it won't accomplish anything.

On the other hand you can use night time pull ups and let your child sleep and you can get your sleep too. You may still have the wet sheets in the morning but if you find a good pull up for your child this should stop. Doing all that extra laundry makes your bills go up and it's not cheaper to stop using pull ups. Using pull ups only costs about a dollar per day but adding even 2 extra loads of wet sheets and blankets and pillows per day will add about $2 per day to your utility bills and laundry supplies.

So let everyone get their sleep, use pull ups at night time, make life easier for everyone in your home.

Yep, there's absolutely nothing you can do (sorry that it sucks to hear that). He will stay dry when his body is ready to stay dry.

Personally, I would not at all limit his fluids. It won't help. If he's thirsty, let him drink. He will stay dry when he is physiologically ready to do so. The amount of water he has before bed won't influence that one bit. If his body is telling him that he needs a drink, give it to him. You want him to continue listening to his body, especially when it comes to eating and drinking.

I agree with much of what Gamma G said, but I hesitate to agree with her that everyone is supposed to be able to hold their urine until morning. I know plenty of people, myself included, who use the restroom in the middle of the night. One big difference, of course, is that I wake, use the restroom and go back to sleep. Your son is not waking and simply urinating. He'll grow out of it.

7 years and still uses Pull-up type pants at night, and soaks them!

But I had one at age 3 who was dry night and day, so all are different.
My kids didn't nap past 24 months, though.

His brain has not developed to the point where it slows down urine production at night.
Sometimes this goes on till a child is 11 or 12 years old.
So you might have YEARS left of dealing with night time wetting.
My son was day trained at 3 1/2 but he was 7 yrs old before he could stay dry through the night.
A lot of his friends took a few more years.
It's very common and every doctor you ask will tell you it's completely normal.
Try not to shame him.
He has no control over this - he's not doing this to you deliberately.
I just didn't want to deal with a pee soaked bed all the time, so we stayed with pullups at night till he woke up dry a solid 2 weeks in a row.
He's growing up fast as he can.
Waking him up in the night to use the bathroom, alarms, controlling fluid intake will not change how/when his brain matures in the least.

I think it is an important skill to learn to wake up to pee if necessary. So what we did to teach this was to wake up our kids in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (once per night, just before we went to bed) until they got the hang of doing it on their own if needed. Each child took a different amount of time, but we found it cut down a lot on the night time wetting. We talked about cues that they might have while sleeping, like having a dream about water or about going to the bathroom. At first they would also wake us to take them to the bathroom, but it didn't last very long. Night lights in the hall and bathroom help. However we also kept pullups on them until they stayed completely dry for many consecutive days and still have waterproof mattress covers for all of them. At ages 9, 7, and 4, it is rare now that any of them get up to pee in the night, but if they do, they handle it without my help.

i honestly believe that those who think it is learned, just tried so many different things that eventually their kids' development caught up with them.

we had a few dry nights when my son was nearly 4 - but i think it was luck. he was 4, more near 5, before he was dry all the time at night. yaaaay we were so excited to get rid of the pull ups!

for naps, same thing. it will probably happen long before all night happens, but same principle. you really do have to wait until they "get it". you can try all kinds of tactics in the meantime, but all that does is make you feel you are "doing" something, and pass the time more quickly. it really is hard to wait and accept that it is on his timetable. everyone does it differently. but i truly do believe that it's on their physiology. nothing else.

We carry our sleeping/groggy 3 year old to the bathroom at 10:30/11pm (whenever we are going to bed) and he pees and goes right back to sleep. It stopped the night time wake-ups and we haven't had any accidents in months. Good luck!

PS- kids bladder control muscles grow and develop at different rates. Some are simply "ready" earlier. We still got our 5 year old up for the same thing until halfway through last year. Accident free/stress free, and such an easy way to help him through this development stage. He sleeps through the night just fine, now.

Your son sounds like my daughter. Other posters maybe right. It could be developmental and he may not be ready. However, with my daughter, I was convinced it was more mental than developmental and just pulled the trigger and got rid of pull-ups and put her to bed in undies. First with naps, than overnight. With my daughter if she had a pull up on she used it and stopped going to the bathroom, even if she was awake. At nap time we've never had an accident, and in the 4 months that she has been going to bed without pull ups, she's had 5 accidents. We just put a crib waterproof pad under her sheets to protect the mattress. Changing sheets sucks, but it's a lot cheaper than pull ups.

I dont' believe it's possible to "train" during sleep. Aside from limiting liquids, which you are already doing, it's just something the body learns on its own. Some children can learn faster by using incentives ("don't pee all over --insert favorite character on bedsheets--!" or "if you stay dry you can have --insert small reward like a small piece of candy or a quarter--") but for the most part it just has to happen on its own. My 2 1/2 y/o has been daytime potty trained fully for a year now and still wets almost every night.

First step is getting rid of all diapers and using underwear and Pull-Ups only. Diapers are for peeing in. If you want him to stop peeing in his pants, stop putting him in diapers.
Are you removing underwear at using just a Pull-Up at nap and night? If so, you're telling your child it's ok to pee during sleep time, since that's what Pull-Ups are for. It can also be seen as taking a step backwards, in the child's mind, since they earned underwear by staying dry and using the toilet and have to go back to baby Pull-ups at nap and bedtime. Try putting the Pull-Up OVER the underwear, stressing that it's a "Just In Case" Pull-Up, because he's such a big boy and keeping himself dry during the day. Having the underwear underneath may be motivation enough, especially if he's wetting when awake, but laying quiet. It may also help him to feel the wetness when he starts to pee, instead of it absorbing and wicking away, like Pull-Ups do.
Also, is he in a bed where he can freely get up to go to the bathroom or simply be done napping when he's awake or is he still in a crib? If he's not in a big boy bed, making that change ASAP is crucial.
Good luck!

You could try telling your child that he will not wear pull ups at nap time so he needs to remember to go before nap time and not go until he gets up. It's worth trying because pull ups are a crutch and they will go in them if they are put on. On the other hand some children are just not able to sleep and stay dry for longer than others, whatever the reason. I would try it and if it doesn't work then you can go back to pull ups. I never used pull ups with my kids because they didn't even have them then but just put underwear on them. Try it and see.

If he's always peeing, then don't waste money on pullups. Diaper him before naps and bedtime. I don't see what the big deal is. You can't train a child not to pee then. Their bladder has to develop to hold urine for that long. Night training isn't about waking up to use the toilet, it's about the physical development of the bladder not needing to empty at night. The parents who wake their kids up at their own bedtime to pee are just training the kids to need to empty their bladder a few hours after bed, impeding the natural process. As for a nap, a nap should only be a couple of hours so if you wait for him to pee out his lunch milk or water before the nap, his diaper shouldn't be too wet. At 3, he'll be outgrowing the naps soon enough anyway, and having to change a wet diaper after a nap isn't a big deal anyway.