Reply from Joan, Child's Age 13 - 3/14/02 - IP#: 62.64.152.9

Steven – Excellent post. Perhaps you would (as a sleep wetter) like to comment on some of the more controversial remedies and theories, which have been suggested on this board. For instance, it has been stated that leaving off nappies/diapers and sleeping in a cold wet bed gives more incentive to stop wetting. Another recent post stated that training oneself to wake up and go to the toilet was the solution, (although the poster didn’t state how one is supposed to train oneself). Speaking as a trained scientist (as well as a former sleep wetter and a mother of a sleep wetting child), I find these techniques to have no scientifically proven validity. The proposers claim that their methods worked for them, although they usually admit that it took months or (in most cases) years to achieve success. Statistics show that, for children and teenagers, each year that passes brings relief to 15% of sleep wetters without any intervention, so it is more than likely that time was the healing factor and not the self imposed discomfort. An analogous situation would be to claim that if you whip yourself twice a day whenever you catch flu, the symptoms would disappear within 5 days. During your discussions with other children/teenagers, have you found any evidence that the use of nappies/diapers at high risk times (such as at night or during long car journeys), and not leaving them on at other times, increases the risk of diaper fetish developing? The argument seems to be that a number of kids who were diapered for their wetting ended up with a diaper fetish. I would argue that it could equally well be the case that those with an inherent diaper fetish wet themselves deliberately so that their parents would end up diapering them, so they are not the same group of kids who have a genuine wetting problem. So is it a case of “I wear diapers for my wetting, therefore I have become a diaper fetishist”, or “I am a diaper fetishist, therefore I wet so that my parents will put me in diapers”? Again, many people jump to the conclusion, which satisfies their own pet theory, without any evidence. Any comments anyone?