Bed Wetting

The common consensus is that a bed-wetting child refers to any child over the age of five who wets the bed. However the problem does diminish with age. Doctors generally consider bed-wetting to be an inherited condition as there is normally someone else in the family that has suffered previously.

Bed-wetting is thought to be related to two main areas:
1) An immature bladder
2) a deep sleeping pattern

The theory behind this is that the child may sleep so deeply that they do not recognise the signals from the bladder telling the brain that it is full. 

Children that bed-wet are likely to be embarrassed by their actions and may withdraw socially. However in almost all cases, children grow out of bed-wetting, as their bladder matures and their brain reads the signals better.


What to Do

There are four main ways of dealing with this problem:

1) Medication
There is medication available that will either reduce the amount of urine produced or improve the functioning of the bladder.

2) Retention Control Training
Where the child is taught to control their bladder, firstly by a few minutes and then progressing to greater lengths of time.

3) Night-Lifting
Where the child is woken periodically throughout the night and walked to the toilet. In this way the child is encouraged to use the toilet and hopefully stay dry.

4) Moisture Alarm
Moisture Alarms are considered quite successful in combating bed-wetting. The idea is that the moisture alarm is attached to the bed and sounds an alarm when the child starts to wet the bed. The child then wakes up, goes to the toilet to finish and then returns to bed and sleep. In this way the alarm slowly conditions the brain to respond by waking up when the bladder is full.