Panties to Bed

I say buy her a protective (rubber) sheet for the bed and give the kiddo the benefit of the doubt. My two older girls were potty trained by 2 -1/2 and that included over-night. We never once used Pull-ups as we felt that those things would totally ruin all the hard work we put in getting them trained. My oldest daughter has NEVER had an accident while my younger daughter had the OCCASIONAL one until she was about 5. I think hers was more that she would come to my room and ask permission to go potty. What that was all about I still don't know... Good luck!

First of all, you can buy a flat waterproof sheet for her bed, so if she does have an accident, it is just the sheet, and can be thrown in the washer.
Secondly, I think it is very important to give the kids independence when they want to try something "older".
and lastly, you can explain to her that is she still wants the milk ritual, she must wear pull-ups, but if she can skip the milk at bedtime and have it with dinner instead, she can wear her big girl pants to bed!

Liquids or no before bedtime, her body just has to be able to hold the urine and she has to be able to wake up. My son would/will wake after he's gone to bed to go to the bathroom because his body is able. This is regardless of when the last time he had something to drink. Their body has to be producing a hormone that assists with this. Some kids don't produce this hormone until age 6 and it's perfectly normal.

First you have to understand this...DAYTIME DRY IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN NIGHT TIME DRY. Ask your ped this. There is actually a very high percentage of kids that aren't dry at night until around age 6. All it is, is when her bladder is full at night it's not able to send a "strong" enough signal to the brain to wake her up, this will come in time. Leave the pull-ups on her don't make her feel ashamed by putting her in panties and waking up to a wet bed. DO NOT limit fluids before bed, their little bodies need the fluids and it isn't going to make a difference, that isn't the problem. Her body will do it when it's ready, I promise.

Ditto Carrie W.

night time dryness... is not BIOLOGICALLY attained until even 7 years old. It is not a thing based on 'emotion'.

limiting fluids, waking her at night to go, will not help. The body/bladder/brain/nerve connections are not matured/developed yet.

Just get a waterproof bed pad. I have 4 of them. My daughter is 7, my son is 3.5, it is REAL useful.

Its not her fault. It is all about biological body development.
She is REAL young, to be expected to by dry all night.

all the best,
Susan

I think day time potty training and night time potty training are TOTALLY different!
If she is asking to wear panties then she really wants to try thisand I would let her. Yes, it is going to be more work for you, but it is worth it. She is trying and will be looking for approval for this.
One thing I did was I would make the bed over a water proof matress protector. Then, i would lay down a water proof pad (you can use a vinly table cloth too) and put another fitted sheet over it. If she has an accident in the middle of the night, all you have to do is peel off the top sheet and waterproof pad and the bed is ready to lay back down it. This helped us get her back in bed easier.

I'm not sure I would cut the "milk ritual" out. Maybe let her have 1 sip instead.

Let her know you are excited for her trying this. Have patience and remember to tell her it's okay if she does have an accident. I would also continue to wake her up at night if you can. Pretty soon you will have a better idea of about when she is going at night and you will be able to catch her before she goes.

And don't worry about her still wetting at 3 1/2. It is more common thatn you think. If you are concerned, talk to her pediatrician.

she has to have accidents in order to learn how that feels. if you're persistent you'll be done in less than a week. get a mattress protector, and get her out of pullups. those are fancy diapers. feel like diapers, act like diapers. soaks up the urine and she does not get too uncomfortable.
also, yes milk is the routine, but you need to change the routine. if dinner is at 5:30, do it a little earlier, or get her to bed a little later.
what worked for me and my twins was warm milk if they got thirst before bedtime. they didn't want to drink much of it. i took them potty before theyw ent to bed, and then again at 10 when i went to bed. i would get them up and take them potty. they would be asleep most of the time but would go. one of my twins never had a nighttime accident, the other one a few times. very very few times.
you're daughter is 3 and a half, she needs to be potty trained
i never recommend daytime training without incorporating nighttime too. it's the same thing, but confusing to their little bodies if you're putting pullup at night.

When our 3 1/2 told us she wanted to do the same, we did it... I wanted her to still feel encouraged, we did have some nights we had to change the sheets in the mid of the night, but she has been dry for some time. We promised her we would paint her room when she completely done with diapers, and now she has a pink room! Good Luck!

Hello H.,
We have a 5yr old and this is what we have done: 1) No more milk at night explaining that she is peeing and this is why it is being taken away...
2) No pullups, she feels ok to pee when the pullups are on...
3) We made a sticker chart she has to fill, when all the blocks have been filled she gets a prize (something she really wants, my daughter wanted the "Twinkle Toes" shoes). Every time she pees, we would start a new chart doesn't matter how many stickers she had accumulated. You need to buy the prize and let her see needs to see it so she can grasp what she is working for. Every time she gets a sticker, reiterate what a great job she is doing and that she is being a big girl, give her a high five :)
This has been working for us. I can e-mail you the chart if you wish. Hope it helps, good luck :)

If she wants to try, I would let her. If you are very busy on weekdays then maybe it can be a think where she tries this on weekends. Get yourself a plastic mattress cover. Also, though hard you should probably cut off the milk before bed.

I agree with many others- day and nightime potty training are two different worlds. My daughter, now 6, was exactly like yours and also decided herself that she didn't need diapers, but after peeing every night for a week, I convinced her she needed to continue to wear the pull-ups and not to worry about it. I didn't make a fuss, didn't focus on when she ate/drank. 3.5 is MUCH TOO EARLY to train for nighttime. I recently put a question myself asking about a SIX year old in pull-ups and after hearing what everyone had to say and asking friends and family about a bright, eloquent, precocious girl, I've decided even now to NOT make a fuss about the pull-ups since it's not within her control- mine is a very heavy sleeper and when she's ready, she'll wake up to go to the bathroom... or not. But I'm not going to worry about it. Why worry? Why the stress? So what. She pees in her pull-up. No big deal to me, even at the age of 6! Like my friend said to me, I'm sure she'll grow out of it by the time she walks down the aisle. Relax, don't stress your little girl. Let her eat/drink what she wants. Don't make it an issue. She'll be ready at a certain point, but there's NO rush!

My daughter daytime potty trained at 2 (she led it) but was a nighttime pee-er. . .had to change and double up diapers at night because she would go so much.. .so after daytime training was done, started taking her potty before I went to bed, as you are doing. . .not much, diapers still worn at night but she didn't pee as much now overnight.

All of a sudden one day she said she wanted to wear panties, probably around 3 or 3 1/2 yrs old. We went ahead and let her do it. Since she was the one who wanted to do it. She was dry the first two nights, but third night had an accident. Fourth night accident. So what I did was set up a chart by her bed. . .(scratch piece of paper and some random stickers I had laying around) labelled it as stayed dry all night. I told her that we were going to see if she could keep her pull ups dry for three nights, thus three stickers, then she could wear panties again. If an accident occurred, then back to pull ups for 3 days and when 3 stickers then back to panties. We only had to do a couple of rounds of going back to pull ups.

Might be worth a try. I think if your daughter is wanting it, I would acknowledge her desire and try it out, but you shouldn't have to be the one getting up every night to change the bed. The chart beside the bed was such a nice visual for my daughter. . .

Also, for my daughter it didn't matter how long it was since the last drink, she was still holding it all for the night.

Good luck.
E.

She's still very young. And many kids wet the bed for years. I had two girls that wet the bed maybe ONCE ever. My son wet the bed all the way into jr hi school!

Try to be realistic and not stress over it. Especially at this young age.

Read more here:
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/bedwetting-solutions-8/bed...

The volume of liquid in a day can certainly have an effect on her going to the bathroom at night.

I'd personally wait if it were my child since she's not consistently waking up dry. Though, when potty training our son, we opted not to do pull-ups because of the cost - we did diapers since he really didn't care one way or another. We'll occasionally put one on him now (he's almost 4) if he's going to the bathroom a lot before bedtime just to be safe, and he does occasionally still have accidents, but they're months apart.

We have a friend whose daughter will be 7 in a few weeks and is still having trouble at night with wetting. They believe she's such a sound sleeper, she doesn't have the recognition.

Good luck!

Maybe the pull ups are not comfortable to her. You could try letting her wear the underware or putting a pull up over the undies. I know it would be a mess for you, but she may be more comfortable. I never had any problems with my boys. When they were dry durring the day, they were dry at night, so I don't know anything about wetting at night.
God bless!

Keep the pull ups on unless you have lots of time for extra laundry. Let her wear the panties over the pull ups or under. Tell her she needs the help so her pretty sheets can stay dry. We have pretty princess sheets and Princesses don't like pee on their faces. Restricting fluids make kids dehydrated and then they can't hold their urine because it's to concentrated and they can get UTI's more easily. When she has that brain/body link she'll wake up to go when she feels the urge. She is young and she really may not get that developmental milestone for a couple more years.

Get some rest and don't worry about it, when he brain devolps that link she'll be able to stay dry. It's not something she has any control over, it's not learned, it's developmental.

We bought a dry-night cover that goes OVER the sheets. It lays across so if your child pees it absorbs it and you don't have to change the sheets. My daughter would pee if she had a pull-up and hold it if she were in panties so you have to at some point let her try. If she is eager, let her, but make sure she pees right before bed and doesn't drink too much right a bed time. This worked for us.

Your child is just not ready for pulling an all-nighter in the panties just yet. It should and needs to come soon, though. I have 2 girls and they were enthralled with wearing panties like yours is. My solution was to put on the Pull-Ups at night and then put the panties OVER them. Best of both worlds. When you notice dry Pull-Ups for about 2 weeks in a row, you know that the night training has been a success and that your child is ready to ditch the Pull-Ups. I would always potty my girls before bedtime and remind them that if they wake during the night and feel like they need to use the bathroom.....just go! We always had a cool night-light in the hallway and the bathroom to make the walk to the toilet kid friendly. By age four, your daughter should be making it through the night and certainly all day as well. Accidents do happen and can happen even as kids go into elementary school. You just clean it up and reassure the child that it's okay and move on to drier days. The only time you need to worry is if a child was dry through the night for a while starts wetting the bed consistently or if the child is approaching kindergarten and still has no dry nights at all. then you may want to talk to the pediatrician and mention the issue. You still have plenty of time. Have fun with the panties over the Pull-Ups and before you know it, she'll be staying dry through the night all the time. It's coming......sooner than you think! Good Luck!

While I subscribe to the idea that day and night training are different and that kids' bodies need to be developmentally ready, let me offer our experience as a different perspective. We began potty training our son at 27 months, during the day, straight to underwear, no pullups. Up to this time, every day of his life, he woke up with a wet diaper. He was doing very well during the initial daytime potty training (1 accident per day) and on the third day, he asked if he could keep his underwear on at night. We gave him the gentle suggestion to keep them dry and let him wear them. He has never had a wet night since (he is now over 3). I was actually shocked, since he always had a wet diaper in the morning. And I totally expected that we wouldn't even begin nighttime training until he was over 3, in part because of everything I had read about when boys might be ready. I also expected that I would need to see a period of time when he was dry in the morning before we made the move to underwear at night. I now know that this is not necessary. We had plenty of accidents during the day over the course of a few months (I suspect due to testing our reaction or curiosity and whatnot, rather than to a developmental inability), but at 3 he is now even wiping himself and hasn't had an accident in a very long time. Also, he never gets up in the night to pee. He totally has the ability to hold it all night. I offer this only so that you will know what is possible. I say that if it is our daughter's idea, she just may be ready. Try it. I would give it a week and then if YOU can't take the extra work or it is too upsetting to your daughter, then go back to pullups if you must. My vote is to go for it. Make your daughter think that you totally believe she can do it and that you will be there to encourage her and to help her if she has an accident just like you are doing during the day.
Good luck!!

My rule was if they wake up dry for 1 week then they could wear panties to bed. You have to stop giving her a drink about 2 hours before her bedtime at least until she can wake up and go to the bathroom.

Hey H., so glad you asked cause we just potty trained my 2 1/2 year oldl last weekend!! We used the 3daypottytraining.com ebook by Lori Jenson. The biggest thing she stressed, AND IT WORKED : ) was to get rid of the pullups and diapers. Throw em right in the trash. And have your daughter do it so she knows they're gone. What was so great about that is, its not a crutch for you or her to think you have the pullups to go back to. The idea is that it confuses them because sometimes they're allowed to go in their undies (at night) and sometimes they aren't (the day). So in the end its sort of unfair to the child cause its confusing. I would totally swear by this method. I also stressed about the nap and nighttime cause my son is a really sound, long sleeper but he hasn't wet the bed one time. We do follow the rule of no drinks 2 hours before bed and i put him on the pot right before. I encourage him to call out if he has to go but he doesn't. Sleeps right through and not a drop. I was skeptical about the whole idea when my friend suggested it to me but I swear it worked and I would encourage all parents to try it. Best of luck to you.

Stop giving her milk before she goes to bed. Make up a new routine. Her little body is speaking to her and telling her she wants to wear panties, so help her by not giving her anything to drink before bed.