Reply from Bob, Child's Age 14,15 - 4/29/02 - IP#: 67.226.77.100I believe that there is definite evidence that there is a psychological aspect to becoming dry. In otherwords, becoming dry is not merely a passive phenomenon (simply "growing out of it"). The results of this month's poll support this. Kids can "learn" to not wet at night, and, like most learning processes, the younger the child the easier they learn. The wetness alarm success rate (supported by independent medical studies) attests to this learning factor, since wetness alarms produce four times the cure rate of simply waiting for the child to "grow out of it". Those with alarm success probably do not come to this site (thus the few alarm success votes on the poll). The "becoming dry" learning process occurs probably by classical conditioning (avoiding a cold, wet bed or the loud noise of an alarm) and by social conditioning (avoiding embarassment and parental displeasure). There was only 1 vote for rewards (positive reinforcement) , but many votes for embarassment/punishment (negative reinforcement). Negative reinforcement typically has stronger effects than positive reinforcement (whipping a horse vs. giving a horse sugar to get the horse to obey), and it appears from the poll results that learning to not wet the bed is no different. I believe that a little negative reinforcement is good (some cold, some wetness, a loud noise, and some parental displeasure). But not too much, or the child becomes stressed, and this can actually make the wetting worse. Diapers are useful only to keep the child and parents from getting too tired or too stressed, but diapers can impede the learning process if they take away all the cold, wet negative reinforcement. Similarly, no parental displeasure about the child's wetting is also not helpful. I believe that rewards can also help, but as the poll indicates, they are not as effective. I would like to request that this site to do a poll asking why alarms did not work (such as did the child sleep through the alarm, etc.) |