Reply from Adam, Child's Age na - 3/13/02 - IP#: 12.249.145.184Joan and Tom, You're both right. There is no "magic formula" to learn how to wake up from a deep sleep to go to the toilet at night. My secret? Simply a lot of hard work and perseverance, which is exactly why I suspect so many people use the diaper option instead. I have always been and still am a very deep sleeper. At times I've even gotten up, used the toilet, and gone back to bed in the middle of the night without any conscious recollection in the morning of having done so. (This is not the same as "sleepwalking" because it only happens in response to a specific stimulus -- I've even answered the phone and carried on intelligible conversations without remembering any of it in the morning!) The problem is that most deep sleepers don't instantly go from fully asleep to fully awake, and so once the child does learn to self-awaken at night, the "decision" whether to get up and go to the toilet or stay put and risk wetting the bed is not an entirely conscious one. Alarm systems work first by forcing the bedwetter to fully awaken when wetting occurs (which sometimes requires the parents' help at first!) and then gradually redirecting the response of going to the toilet from the wet sheets to the feeling of a full bladder before wetting occurs. This is a difficult process and may take weeks, months, or years depending on the readiness of the child. In most clinical studies where the alarms are consistently used for 6-12 weeks or so the cure rate is very good (50-90%, depending on which one you read -- check out the "medical articles" section on this page for yourself) and even when there's not a "cure" the frequency of wet nights is usually significantly reduced. This does not mean there won't be relapses, and this is where a concerted effort on the part of both parents and child is required. My parents were very supportive and never punished or "babied" me for wetting the bed, but they did continue working with me for many years to help me learn to get up at night, and I'm glad they did. (We never used a wetness alarm for financial reasons but my parents would wake me up in the middle of the night.) It's been ten years now since I started having dry nights and I'm STILL trying to train myself to wake up sooner and reduce how often I wet (currently maybe once or twice a month) -- I'd probably be further along now than I am if I hadn't set myself back by using diapers and re-learning to wet in my sleep. Again, I don't think kids wet in diapers on purpose out of laziness but I do think the presence of the diaper subconsciously makes it more comfortable to wet the bed and takes away a lot of the incentive to wake up and use the toilet at night. Perhaps Tom is right that the "normal" thing is to be able to hold urine for 8-10 hours. I've never been able to do that on a consistent basis, and I think there are a lot of other people for whom that's true as well. Maybe my bladder is just a lot smaller than the "normal" adult bladder, but if so then I'm living proof that a small bladder doesn't mean you have to wet the bed every night. Training myself to get up from deep sleep was and is hard work, but for me it's much preferable to wearing diapers at night. I have nothing against adults who choose otherwise, but again, I think parents owe it to their kids to help them to get dry (if they want to get dry), however much effort it takes. |