Reply from Bob, Child's Age 14 & 15 - 3/23/02 - IP#: 14.234.200.134I am dismayed that this website has turned out to be essentially a diaper support site. The whole idea of dealing with nighttime wetting should be to cure it as soon as possible, within the constraints of a child's sleep needs and the parents' time and energy. That is what I believe that this site was about when it was launched 2 years ago. I think that diapers prolong nighttime wetting, because they remove the negative stimuli necessary to stop nighttime wetting (i.e. a cold, wet bed and the social stigma associated with wetting the bed). Furthermore, I believe that prolonging the child's wetting problem prolongs their lowered self-esteem. 15% of sleep wetters per year stop spotaneously. How does this happen? Well, the child's sleep probably becomes less deep and/or bladder capacity increases. But at some point the child also has to be motivated to simply stop the nighttime wetting. Statistically about a third of kids stop wetting spontaneously by learning to wake up and use the toilet, and the other two thirds learn to hold their urine for the entire night. About half of kids that are "cured" with wetness alarms do so by getting up in the night to use the toilet. I disagree that "normal" is to go the whole night without using the toilet. 30% of "normal" people must use the toilet during the night for the rest of their lives (my son and daughter and myself are 3 of them). Not all kids "outgrow" sleep wetting. Three percent of adults still sleep wet. Why do wetness alarms not work for some children? Usually because they do not wake the child up. Therefore for deep sleepers the parents must back up the child and also should use a vibration/beeper alarm combo like the Palco Wet Stop and Wiggler and also rewards for waking. Wetness alarms offer a 70-80% cure rate if used consistently. This month's poll shows that most kids would not use a bladder-volume alarm, as they do not want to be awakened at night to use the toilet. I think a bladder-volume alarm is the answer for nighttime wetting (for both kids and adults), because it awakens the person only when their bladder is full (before they wet), i.e. when Mother Nature fails to do so. It thus trains a child to recognize a full bladder as well as training them to wake up to use the toilet and keeps them dry during the training process. But if most nigttime wetters would prefer to wet in a diaper rather than wake up and use the toilet, then the bladder-volume alarm will never be commercialized. That is tragic, in my opinion. |