Some additional tips and ideas for stopping bedwetting
- Stop Bedwetting in 7 Days – Top 10 Tips
- My advice for ‘Double Voiding’
- How to deal with an ‘off day’
- Gaining the confidence to leave pull-ups off
- Involving your child in changing the bed
- Coping with a heavy-sleeper
- When to take a break from listening to the CD
- Did you know that eating certain foods could be making your child wet the bed?
Stop Bedwetting in 7 Days – Top 10 Tips
- If your child is continuing to be wet at night after the age of five, it’s a good idea to have a check-up with your GP to rule out the possibility of any medical causes, such as an infection which can be easily cleared up with antibiotics.
- For the majority of children, the cause is simply a case of habit, so don’t automatically assume that there’s an emotional reason behind the wet beds. However, if your child has been dry for several months or even years and suddenly starts having wet beds, first consult your GP and then have a think about whether a change at home or stress at school could be a contributory factor.
- After the age of five, it’s best to remove any nappies or pull-ups worn at night and simply protect the mattress from now on. Your child’s mind is more likely to make that vital mind/body link if he can actually feel the wetness as it happens.
- Make night-time changes easier by putting two layers of sheets on the bed and slipping an absorbent pad in between. If your child does wet in the night, you’ll be able to remove the top layer leaving a dry ready-made bed for your child to climb back into.
- Avoid ‘lifting’ – waking your child at around 11pm and taking them to the loo just before you go to bed yourself is, in fact, ‘training’ them to not only release urine when they’re half asleep, but also to develop a need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night.
- Avoid using ‘reward systems’ to encourage dry nights. Introducing treats such as money, toys or sweets will only distract your child at just the moment they need to be concentrating on their ‘goal’ – dry beds. There’ll be plenty to reward your child once he becomes successful, such as worry-free sleepovers and school trips.
- Ensure the route to the bathroom is well lit at night, perhaps even leaving a light on in there. But do avoid night-lights in the bedroom itself – your child will experience a deeper, better quality sleep if the room is dark and this alone may ensure a dry night.
- Clear away clutter – your child needs to feel confident about getting up out of bed in the middle of the night should he need to use the bathroom. Check that the route is completely clear, without left-over jigsaw puzzles, toys and dirty clothes getting in the way.
- Make the bathroom child-friendly and allow your child to choose some of the accessories, such as colourful handtowels. This will help them feel that this space belongs as much to them as to the adults in the house.
- Stay positive – remain encouraging and enthusiastic throughout this period of re-training. Avoid giving any negative feedback – even a raised eyebrow will let your child know that you’re not happy. This will only make it harder for him to succeed as his ‘self-image’ will consist of feelings of failure. Remind your child of all the other things they were successful at learning, such as writing their name, tying shoelaces or hopping on one leg. This is just one more thing that they’ll learn how to do.
My advice for ‘Double Voiding’
Q. My daughter always seems to wet the bed early on – about 11pm. I don’t want to keep ‘lifting’ her as I can see that I’m doing her no favours, but how am I going to get her to stay dry till morning?
A: I’ve suggested something called ‘double-voiding’ to a number of children and it seems to help. Double voiding involves going to the toilet twice just before bed.
Most children visit the toilet and then take an extra 10-20 minutes either getting ready for bed or reading a story. Others rush in and out of the loo so quickly that they don’t fully empty their bladders. Either way, asking your child to go back into the bathroom a second time before tucking down for the night ensures that their bladder is completely empty and does seem to help with staying dry all night.
How to deal with an ‘off day’
Q: My son has been really successful – 6 dry nights in a row. But now he’s had 3 wet nights in a row and is getting disheartened. How can I explain to him that this is normal?
A: It’s a good idea to go back to Step 2 on Day 1 and have a more detailed chat about something that he had to practise a little before he got good at it. Whenever I see children for a consultation, I usually ask them about learning how to swim as most of them acknowledge that it was a bit of a struggle to begin with.
When children first learn how to swim, the teacher tells them what to do and how to move their arms and legs. To begin with, they have to ‘think’ about what they’re doing and concentrate quite hard. (Conscious mind working) And then, as time goes by they get the hang of it and before they know it they can swim and chat to their friends at the same time. (Behaviour now imprinted on the subconscious mind) And how good does that feel?
Things go well and then all of a sudden, one day they go swimming and for some reason, it’s a struggle. Things just don’t go as well as they usually do – it’s an ‘off’ day. Those are the sort of days when mums and dads will be saying ‘I don’t know what his problem is…… last week he could do backstroke perfectly well, and now he’s all over the place!!’. Sound familiar?
It’s the same for any kind of new behaviour that our bodies are trying to learn – sometimes we have ‘off’ days. But’s that all they are just ‘off’ days. Reassure him that he’s doing well and continue to find ‘evidence’ on his wet days that will support the notion that things are changing for the better.
Remember too, encourage your child to believe in his own ability to make these changes for they will come from within. There is no magic ‘it’ …….. be it a book, technique, CD or system………. what these tools will do is help your child speed up the process of learning how to stay dry.
Gaining the confidence to leave pull-ups off
Q: I’m feeling really nervous about taking off my child’s pull-ups. Is this really necessary and what happens if he starts feeling a failure?
A: Most of the things we worry about never happen, so we exhaust ourselves for nothing. It’s best not to imagine ‘doom and gloom’ scenarios if they haven’t actually happened. After the age of 5 it is best to take pull-ups off and allow your child to experience that feeling of wetness. Otherwise it’s a bit like asking your child to learn how to play the piano with a pair of sheepskin gloves on – you’ll be making it harder for them to succeed.
Try to stay confident and relaxed – think about ways you can make dealing with any wet sheets easier for yourself such as using a Service Wash at the local Launderette for a couple of weeks if necessary. If you do have wet nights, you can remind your child that each time his body ‘makes a mistake’, he’ll actually be getting one step closer to doing it right. As bizzare as that sounds, it’s the truth.
Involving your child in changing the bed
Q: Should I be insisting that my child changes the wet sheets?
A: It’s a good idea to encourage your child to play a part in changing any wet beds. If your child is still quite young, this can be kept to stripping off the wet sheet and putting it in the laundry basket, with an adult finishing things off. This is not designed to be a punishment, in the ‘you made a mess, you clear it up’ vein – but it definitely does help the penny to drop quicker if your child can accept responsibility for the wetness and ‘ownership’ of the problem. They’ll start understanding the consequences of not keeping control of their bladder – as they strip the sheet off the bed, that little voice will be chatting away inside their heads, having a bit of a longer think about how and what and why.
I always tell children that the ‘good thing’ about problems that we ‘own’ is that we can find solutions for them much more easily. For example, if a dog walked past your front garden each morning and weed against the gate, it’s going to be quite hard to get it to change its’ behaviour. It’s not that easy to change someone or something else. The good thing about your child’s bedwetting problem is that they ‘cause or create’ it. And things that you ‘start’, you can also ‘stop’.
If asking your child to change sheets every time they’re wet seems a bit too much to ask from them, how about picking one or two days each week. Negotiate with your child by telling them that you’ll be happy to be on ‘sheet duty’ for 5 days each week if they take the other two days. Then ask your child to pick days that they think will be best for them to be on duty – eg. weekends or a midweek day when they’re not overburdened with homework or after school clubs.
Having a calendar in the room that reminds them when it’s their turn is also a good way of seeing how much they’re able to programme their minds to produce a dry night. If your child is always dry when it’s his turn to change the sheets, but has a wet night when it’s your turn, you’ll know you’re onto something.
Some children admit to being a bit too lazy to get out of bed to go to the loo at night and asking them to take turns in sheet changing is often enough to tip the balance. Let’s face it, it’s easier to nip to the loo than changing beds.
Coping with a heavy-sleeper
Q: My child is such a deep sleeper he just doesn’t seem to wake up when he wets the bed. What can I do?
A: My first thought is – what happened to the volume control? We know that your child gets messages from that little voice inside his head all throughout the day – otherwise he wouldn’t know when to go to the loo in the day time. So, begin with encouraging your child to become extra aware of this voice and what it sounds like. How does your child know he needs the loo during the day? What does he hear? What feelings does he get?
It’s exactly these feelings and sounds that need to be amplified. Tell your child to go back to the drawing board and design a new volume control.
Another solution for sleepyheads who have trouble waking in the night is to design an alarm. A new piece of equipment that will wake him up on those nights when he’s still sleeping and wetting. It’s possible to programme your mind in advance to wake up for a specific event. I bet your child doesn’t have problems waking up on Christmas morning or on their birthday! Well, in the same way it’s possible to programme your mind to wake you up before wetting the bed.
Take some time to really encourage your child to be creative here. Get a large piece of paper and some felt-tips and put him to work. Some children design sensors that can detect when the bladder is 98% full and others design alarms to wake them up 2 or 3 minutes before they need a wee. Ask your child to become his own problem-solver………. what does he feel he needs most to help him? Let’s get imaginative – let’s think James Bond, perhaps. There’s always a timer, clock, buzzer, counting down to 2 minutes before some kind of explosion or eruption occurs. Think along similar lines. Each evening, make sure your son sets this to wake him up just before he needs to empty his bladder.
When to take a break from listening to the CD
Q: My son is getting tired of listening to the hypnotic recording – he’s listened to it every night for the past two weeks and sometimes during the day too.
A: I would definitely give him a bit of a break from it now! Even if he’s not listening to it each evening, you can rest assured that having done the ground work the ideas and words will continue to imprint themselves on his subconscious mind. You can cut down his listening time to just once or twice a week if he prefers.
I’m sure most of you can think of someone who once went to see a hypnotherapst to quit smoking, who later announced that ‘it’ didn’t work. It’s surprising how many of these people go on to quit ‘all by themselves’ just a couple of months later. The ideas and words in the hypnotic trance continue to keep working and the penny eventually drops, without the person actually having to do very much more themselves.
Did you know that eating certain foods could be making your child wet the bed?
Q: My daughter has been doing really well – we can have several dry nights on the trot and then all of a sudden she’ll be wet twice in one night. What do you think causes this?
More and more families that I’m working with are beginning to notice a link between wet nights and the foods that their children are eating. Some foods can cause a slight sensitivity in the bladder making it swell a little and therefore hold less urine. The main culprits are wheat, corn, eggs, milk and dairy products. One doctor I spoke to was convinced that pasta was a problem.
Some foods have a diuretic effect on the body – they make you produce more urine. It’s worth having a search on the internet to see if you can find a list of foods that do this and seeing if your child happens to eat a lot of these. One child I worked with wet the bed many times over Christmas and realised it was because he’d eaten a lot of grapes. Another child found a link between wet nights and melon. As well as a variety of fruits and vegetables, other culprits are caffeine, lecithin (often in chocolate) and artificial sweeteners. Many children’s foods and drinks contain artificial sweeteners as it’s considered to be healthier for their teeth, but they do make you need the loo more.
It’s worth keeping a bit of a diary to see if you can establish some kind of link for your child.
