Basic Bed Wetting Info

Most children begin the gradual process of potty training when they are somewhere between the ages of two and three.

Before those ages bladder control is largely involuntary. Daytime bladder control is simpler to achieve and therefore tends to occur earlier in a child’s life than does nighttime bladder control. Some children master both day and nighttime bladder control quicker and easier than other children. This has nothing to do with intelligence at all. Bladder control function only becomes to be within a child’s voluntary control when they reach five or six years old.

Helping to address your child’s bedwetting problem

Bed wetting, or nocturnal enuresis as it is known in the medical community, can be a traumatic problem for both children and adults alike. It is a sensitive topic that is often considered taboo, and one needs to exercise extreme caution when talking to their child about a bed wetting problem. As a parent, it can be tough to determine what you should and shouldn’t say to your child about bed wetting. In this article, we’ll address some of the commonly used techniques of talking to children about bed wetting.

Bed wetting affects approximately forty percent of all children that are three years old, and roughly five million children that are over age five. While the problem usually disappears on its own, there are some things to consider when helping your child to get through the problem. Children can be very embarrassed about their bed wetting problem, but it’s important to discuss the issue so that you can have a clear line of communication when it comes to solving the problem. One important thing to note is to tell your child that it is not their fault that they wet the bed. When parents attack their children with harsh words, they may be doing more harm than good when trying to help bed wetting. Telling your child that they are not causing the problem can go a long way when it comes to discussing their bed wetting more openly with you. If you wet the bed while you were a child, you should let your son or daughter know. This can ease much of the shame and the anxiety that is sometimes a factor in bed wetting. Also, telling your child that bed wetting is a natural process that everyone goes through to some degree may help them to ease their feelings of guilt.

One approach that parents often use with some success is to tell their child to mentally visualize a night without wetting the bed. While this approach is only of some efficiency, it can help. Another thing to consider is whether or not any anxiety-inducing events may have occurred recently. If you feel that some change in your life may be affecting your child’s level of anxiety, you may want to speak to a pediatrician to discuss ways of solving the anxiety-inducing problem.

The best way to approach a problem with your child regarding bed wetting is to let them know as much as you can about the problem while providing a capacity of warmth and love. This approach is generally agreed upon by physicians and psychologists alike when it comes to aiding the problem. If your child’s bed wetting becomes a big problem, consulting a doctor may be a good idea. Hormonal changes in the body can cause bed wetting, and there are medical solutions to the problem. Bed wetting alarms are also often used when treating the problem, which respond to any moisture on the bed with an alarm, waking the child up and creating some degree of behavioral conditioning.

Bed wetting before age six is not viewed as a problem but if it happens after age six and is frequent it might signal a problem. Of course it also might not. Children who wet their beds are not lazy, stupid, abnormal or unhealthy. There are many misnomers surrounding bed wetting and these are some of them that are simply untrue. There are many components that go into the process of learning bladder control and these include the synchronicity of the kidneys, bladder, nerves, spinal cord and brain. All children’s minds and bodies do not have everything working in happy harmony all at once. Some children have a bladder that takes longer to mature; other children may produce more urine from the kidneys than those in the general population and still other children may simply have a small bladder that can only hold a small percentage of urine at once. As a rule of thumb most doctor suggest that it is time for intervention if your child is six years of age or older and wets his or her bed an average of two to three times (or more) during a weekly basis.

It is not often the case but sometimes bed wetting is the result of a medical problem. The most common include kidney infections, bladder infections, constipation and the onset of juvenile diabetes. If your child suffers pain or discomfort upon urination, has very dark or foul smelling urine or experiences pain in his abdominal area or lower back it could be the result of a physical problem. If the doctor suspects that this is the case, he or she will send the child for a urinalysis (a urine test) and perhaps even x-rays to help isolate the cause of the pain, which could in turn be causing the bed wetting to occur.

Bed wetting is extremely common in children, although it is more widespread in boys than it is in girls. It is estimated that on average five to seven million children experience bed wetting on a regular basis in the course of a year. The likelihood that a child will wet his bed decreases with age. For example studies show that while ten percent of six year olds wet their beds, only three percent of thirteen and fourteen year olds do so. In the meantime if the problem is bothersome enough there are a variety of treatment options and these include everything from bladder retraining exercises, moisture alarms, medications such as Desmopressin Acetate (DDAVP) and Imipramine (Tofranil) and behavioral treatments such as behavior modification and psychotherapy. As well there are alternative therapies such as massage, acupuncture and hypnosis that can be used in conjunction with more traditional treatments.

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