Solutions that Work for Child Bedwetting: How to help

Solutions that Work for Child Bedwetting A child’s self esteem can be severely damaged by bedwetting. Parental help is invaluable, just a little co-operation and patience will quickly end the problem. Parents need to try to ensure that the child has no anxiety or stress in their lives and that they feel secure and loved. Praising the child when they try not to wet the bed is much more effective than punishment when they do. Get the child to try to control their urination during the day. They can postpone going to the toilet my just few minutes and building up the amount of time to help strengthen the bladder muscles and increase its capacity so that they can last all night. There are a number of techniques parents can try to get the child to learn to wake up during the night. Firstly, the parent can wake the child periodically and carry them to the toilet before taking them back to bed. Another way is for the parent to wake the child up, usually when they are going to bed and get them to go to the toilet. The child must find their own way to go to the bathroom. This should be done for seven nights in a row. If the bed wetting doesn’t stop then a self-awakening technique can be tried. A self-awakening technique involves getting the child to practice the chain of events that happen when they need to urinate in the night just before they go to bed. This can also be done by daytime rehearsal. When the child feels the need to urinate they should go to bed and pretend to be sleeping. After waiting for a few minutes, they can get up and go to the toilet before returning to bed and getting lots of praise. Moisture alarms are a good way of helping a child wake up in the night. These are battery powered sensors that clip on to the child’s nightwear and wake the child when they begin to urinate. The child can then go to the toilet to finish emptying the bladder. This should teach the child to wake up when they get the message from bladder that it is full so that they learn to wake up before the alarm goes off. Moisture alarms can take a while to work but have good success in the long run. Hypnosis is also a very good treatment for bedwetting. Listening to a hypnosis tape every night as they go to sleep helps to re-program the child’s brain so that it can wake them up when the bladder is full. There are medications available that can help to stop bed wetting. Some of the medicines help to decrease the production of urine during the night, whilst others change the child’s waking and sleeping patterns and there are some that can help to increase the bladder size. However, medicines can have adverse side effects so their use should be restricted and only used as a last resort. In the meantime, while helping your family get through the bedwetting years try using Brolly Sheets. Different from your normal plastic backed mattress protectors, Brolly Sheets are soft and quiet. While working through bedwetting issues protect your mattress without the noise and unattractiveness of most bed protection sheets.