Reply from Tom, Child's Age none - 7/8/02 - IP#: 159.39.16.14

You have a five year old son who wets once or twice every night and you state that heredity can play a role in bedwetting if one or more family members were bedwetters, but you don’t say whether that is true in your son’s case. Many parents don’t consider a five year old who still bedwets to be a problem. From what I’ve read, most doctors won’t make a diagnosis of enuresis until after age five, and consider bedwetting before that age to be normal. The fact that your son wets every night and often more than once would indicate that his body may simply not yet be ready to stay dry at night. You really should discuss this with his pediatrician before taking any action. Regarding your questions, there are many and differing opinions on how to deal with bedwetting, which you will discover if you read the messages on this and other boards. Is it better to wean him off pull-ups or quit cold-turkey? Your next question may answer that one for you. If he is a very deep sleeper and doesn’t even wake up when you change his wet clothes, then he probably wouldn’t wake up if he wet the bed with no pull-up or diaper on. If that is the case, it wouldn’t matter to him whether he wears the pull-up or not. I would recommend leaving him in the pull-up unless you are in the process of trying an alarm system or some other remedy that recommends that diapers not be used. Then cold turkey would be the way to go since you would need to quit the diapers altogether for the other remedy to work. Should you get him up at night? Again, you have answered that one. If he doesn’t wake up when taken to the potty or when he is changed, then there is no point in getting him up. If you do, you might just reinforce the idea that it’s OK to pee while still asleep. Finally, alarm systems do work for many people, but I am skeptical of claims of 100% success rates. If you carefully read the information on Pacific International’s web site, you’ll find an escape routes that lets them make such a claim. Their success rate refers to compliant patients (those who carry out the program to its conclusion). Suppose an eight year old started the program and by twelve is still not dry. In my opinion the program has clearly not worked. If he stays with the program and is cured by thirteen, they claim that as a success even though he probably just outgrew the problem; but if he gives up and quits the program, they say he is not a compliant patient and do not include him in their statistics. When you measure success like that, you can’t help but have a 100% success rate. They also include a chart that indicates a maximum success rate of 97.5%, but only by the time the patient is 19-24 years old. Note that the success rate for 6 years old is only 70%. Some of those companies can be very expensive. If you want to try an alarm system, I would try something cheaper to see if there is any response at all, then try something better if you think it’s worth the money.