Bedwetting defined
January 23, 2009
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Lisa Bendall
PARENTCENTRAL.CA
Most kids at potty-training age are still wetting diapers at night, even after they’ve learned to stay dry by day. Kimberly Norman’s oldest son Eric was no exception. At age three, he was using underwear during the day. But he still used Pull-Ups at bedtime.
When, periodically, his parents tried him at night without the diaper, he’d invariably soak the sheets. “After a week of changing his bed it was, ‘Okay, back to Pull-Ups,'” says Norman, who lives in Toronto. (Names of the family have been changed to protect privacy.)
About 70 per cent of three-year-olds still wet the bed regularly, so Eric was among good company. Even so, a couple of years later he was a little put out when his younger brother managed to give up Pull-Ups first.
By age four, only about 40 per cent of kids still wet the bed regularly. By five, it’s around 12 to 15 per cent. And by age seven or eight, 7 per cent of children are wetting the bed.
That’s one or two kids in every grade-two classroom. So it’s not at all uncommon.
True bedwetting, also called enuresis or nocturnal enuresis, is defined as wetting the bed at least twice a week on a regular basis after the age of five (for girls) or six (for boys). If your child is younger than that and wetting, it’s not actually considered to be enuresis. Nor is it a cause for concern if your child is older and has the occasional accident, which may happen if she’s particularly exhausted, or ill.
Bedwetting is more common in boys than in girls. And it seems to run in families. In up to 40 per cent of families with a child who wets the bed, it turns out mom or dad was a bedwetter, too.
Most children who wet the bed have never been able to stay dry at night for a prolonged period of time. This is known as primary enuresis. But about a quarter of bedwetters have secondary enuresis, which means they were dry for at least six months before the accidents started.
“That’s a red flag,” says Dr. Morton Goldbach, pediatrician at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. “Someone who’s been dry for a long time and suddenly starts to wet needs to be seen by a family doctor, because then you’re looking for issues like urinary tract infection.” On the other hand, it’s also likely that the causes are very similar to those of primary enuresis – their little bladders aren’t holding enough, perhaps because they’re constipated, or they’re not waking up to pee.
One thing to check is whether your child is really as much of a bedwetter as you think. If she’s still in Pull-Ups every night, she may be finding it simply more convenient to skip the trip to the bathroom. “I tell most of my parents, if I wore one, I’d pee at night!” Dr. Goldbach laughs. “When you remove it, a significant amount of kids just stop wetting.”
It’s important to remember that bedwetting is nobody’s fault. Because so many parents in these families once wet the bed themselves, they often can’t shake a feeling of guilt. Or they feel they must have done something wrong in the potty-training process. Or they blame themselves for what they assume are emotional problems in their kid (not usually the case).
Go easy on yourself, and be patient and understanding with your child. Praise your child for helping to clean up messes or remembering to use the toilet before bed. Discuss the bedwetting without laying blame. “Most parents forget that kids don’t want to wet their beds,” says Dr. Goldbach. “They don’t get any positive reinforcement from it.”
And when you’re up to your eyeballs in laundry or diaper bills, take comfort in the fact that most kids will stop bedwetting by puberty. Just 2 per cent of 15-year-olds, and less than 1 per cent of 18-year-olds, are still having accidents.
These days Kimberly Norman’s son, now seven and a half, has a wet bed only infrequently. “All in all, I try not to worry about it, as it’s rarer now,” she says. “I feel like it’s something he has to grow out of.”
Want more bedwetting help?
Peruse the rest of our bedwetting section
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