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ENURESIS (BED-WETTING)

Bed-wetting is an extremely common problem for children. The reasons for this occurring are usually that the child has a small bladder and or is a very deep sleeper and doesn’t wake up when his/her bladder is full.

It is important when considering how to deal with the problem to know that the child is not wetting due to emotional problems and not to cause emotional problems by dealing with it in the wrong way.

Most children stop wetting the bed between the ages of 6-10. Some things you can do to help them stop are:

	Help them get up during the night to urinate.
	Make it easy to get to the toilet (use nightlights)
	Have your child drink a lot during the morning and early afternoon, so that they can enlarge their bladder capacity.
	Restrict fluids for the 2 hours prior to bedtime. (This may or may not help much).
	Make sure your child urinates just prior to bed.
	Stop using diapers or pull-ups at night. (when they are older than 6); then they are more likely to feel the need to get up.
	Praise your child in the morning for dry nights.
	Do not punish or tease your child when they do wet.

If your child is older than 6, you can also:

	Wake your child up at night (when you go to bed).
	Have your child change his/her wet clothes at night and help change the wet bedding in the morning.
	Help your child learn to wake himself/herself up at night. Tell him/her to lie on the bed with eyes closed and pretend it’s the middle of the night. Pretend his bladder is full and trying to wake you up. Then have him run to the bathroom and urinate.

If your child is 8 years old or older, you may want to consider speaking to us about using an enuresis alarm or medication.

You should also call us if your child has any of the following:

	pain or burning on urination
	the stream of urine is dribbly or weak
	daytime wetting
	new wetting if he/she had been dry
	is over 12
	has tried the above and is not better.

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