Q: My 8-year old still wets her bed at night. She’s really embarrassed about it and doesn’t want to have sleepovers, either at our home or —especially — anywhere else. She’s really stressed about it, which I imagine is just making the problem worse. How common is it for an 8-year old to be wetting her bed at night? How can we figure out what’s causing the problem? And is there anything we can do to help her stay dry?
A: The simple answer to your first question is that it’s not uncommon. Most children don’t make it through the night completely dry until age 4 or 5, and about 7 percent of 8-year olds are bedwetters. Boys are twice as likely as girls to wet the bed, and it’s a lot more common among the children of parents who had the same troubles as kids. The good news is that about 95 percent of kids are dry by age 10.
In most cases, there’s no identifiable cause of the bedwetting (according to many experts, only about 1 percent of bedwetting is caused by an underlying medical condition). However, some children may wet the bed (or start again after being dry for six months or more) because of stress or anxiety caused by a major life event, such as the birth of a new sibling, moving to a new home, or mom and dad getting a divorce. In addition, as you suspect, the internally generated shame she’s feeling could definitely be aggravating the problem, as could any external shame coming from teasing or punishments.
Here are a few things you can do to help make your daughter’s nights dryer.
Limit fluids after dinner and make a pit-stop before bed. Makes sense, right?
Get her up at night. This makes sense, too, but not everyone agrees. Some say that getting a child up in the middle of the night, before her bladder is full, might keep her body from recognizing what a full bladder feels like and waking her up on her own.
Talk to your pediatrician. As mentioned, medical causes are rare, but “secondary bedwetting” bedwetting (starting up again after six dry months) can be a symptom of diabetes or infection, or another medical condition. “Primary bedwetting” (she’s never been dry) could be a sleep-related issue. Your doc should be able to get to the bottom of this pretty quickly. If necessary, there are some prescription medications that may help.
Make sure she’s not constipated. Yes, constipated. Bedwetting expert Steve Hodges, M.D. believes that most nighttime accidents are caused by an overstuffed colon putting pressure on the bladder. He’s found that resolving the constipation quite often resolves the bedwetting as well.
Try an alarm. This is simply a moisture sensor that attaches to your child’s underwear. Even the slightest amount of moisture will set off the alarm and (hopefully) wake her up. There are two types of alarms: audio and vibrating. Use the one that will have the best chance of rousing your sleeping child.
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