Bedwetting, or nocturnal enuresis, happens when someone accidentally pees while sleeping. It’s common in kids, even if they’ve been toilet trained. Your child will likely stop wetting the bed around 4 to 6 years old.
While bedwetting can be a symptom of an underlying disease, most children who wet the bed have no underlying disease that explains their bedwetting. An underlying condition is found in only about 1% of children who routinely wet the bed.
That does not mean that a child who wets the bed can control it or is doing it on purpose. They are not lazy, willful, or behaving badly. Bedwetting is most often a developmental issue. Most kids simply outgrow it and never need treatment.
It’s not a serious condition, but it can cause your child to feel embarrassed or upset. In some cases, they may even avoid activities, like sleepovers, out of fear that they’ll wet the bed.
Types of Bedwetting
There are two types of bedwetting:
Primary bedwetting. Primary means bedwetting that has been going on since early childhood without a break. A child with primary bedwetting has never been dry at night for any significant length of time.
Secondary bedwetting. Secondary bedwetting is bedwetting that starts after the child has been dry at night for a significant period of time, at least six months.
Causes of Bedwetting
The cause is likely due to one or a combination of the following:
- The child cannot yet hold urine for the entire night.
- The child does not wake up when their bladder is full.
- The child makes a large amount of urine during the evening and night hours.
- The child has poor daytime toilet habits. Many children habitually ignore the urge to pee and put off peeing as long as they possibly can. Parents usually are familiar with the leg crossing, face straining, squirming, squatting, and groin holding that children use to hold back pee.
Autism and Bedwetting
If your child has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), they might also be more likely to wet the bed. But experts still need to do more research to discover why ASD is linked to bedwetting.
One case study looked at how a 12-year-old girl with autism would react to bedwetting treatment. She wore a urine alarm at night and was rewarded for morning dryness.
Experts found that this form of treatment lowered the number of bedwetting events within 2 weeks. By 3 weeks of treatment, bedwetting stopped.
Is Bedwetting Inherited?
Bedwetting does tend to run in families. Many children who wet the bed have a parent who did too. Most of these children stop bedwetting on their own at about the same age their parent did.
Bedwetting Treatments
Managing bedwetting at home
There are steps you can take at home to help your child stop wetting the bed. Some ways include to:
Avoid blaming them. If you feel angry or frustrated because you have a wet bed to clean up yet again, don’t direct your feelings toward your child. They likely feel bad about it, and they didn’t do it on purpose. So don’t blame.
Make sure your child knows that bedwetting isn’t their fault and they aren’t alone. Let them know that millions of children, and teenagers too, regularly wet their beds. Tell your child if you did it too when you were growing up. You can help them see that it’s a problem that they will outgrow.
Keep your other children from teasing them. If you have other children, let them know not to tease about bedwetting. You can make this a rule in your house.
Help them try to use the bathroom before bedtime and during the night. Have your child use the bathroom when they start to get ready for bed, then once again the minute before they get into bed. This helps to empty their bladder.
Use an alarm. Some kids wet the bed because their bodies don’t yet tell them to wake up when their bladders are full. Bedwetting alarms wake children at the first sign that they’re letting go of pee and train the body to notice what it feels like when the bladder is full.
Drink less water before bedtime. Some kids who worry that they’ll wet the bed don’t drink enough during the day. By evening, they’re so thirsty, they drink a lot.
Help your child to drink more during the day, and let them have only one drink with dinner.
Credit: webmd
