Bedwetting

Bedwetting is a very tricky problem. Sometimes kids as young as 1 year old stop wetting their beds. But sometimes they continue to do so even at the age of 5 -6. It’s very difficult to decide when to seek a professional help or guidance.

 Many kids wet their beds involuntarily and is not a cause for concern when done occasionally. But if bedwetting happens frequently beyond 5 -6 years, then it could be a sign of some problem. Some of the main causative factors behind bedwetting are:

1. Under developed bladder control: in some kids, the bladder control is not age appropriately developed. Sometimes they even fail to feel the sensation of bladder being full. They only feel the urge when the pressure is too hig h to control for another second. In this situation, even daytime toileting accidents are very common.

2. High liquid intake just before bed time: many children drink warm milk just before they sleep. While warm milk induces sound sleep, it may also cause the bladder to get full in the middle of the night. While adults can get up from sleep when the urge to use the toilet is there, most kids cannot get up from sleep to indicate the same.

3. Cold weather: bedwetting problem increases during monsoons and winters. Many children kick away their blankets and then wet their beds due to the cold.

4. Stress: loss of someone dear, being bullied at school, some underlying phobia, threat of some impending doom or experience of a bad accident are some of the situations that can a dd a lot of stress to a child’s life. Since children are not very receptive about their inner emotions and even less expressive about them, it gets difficult to know and find out what’s haunting them. These anxieties lead to nightmares, du tot which the mi nd’s control over bladder shifts to mind’s need to control the anxiety.

5. Too early training: when children are trained too early, they learn that they need to depend more on their own ability to manage toileting and less on their parents. Such children do not like to use the toilet when asked by parents, because they feel they can manage. However, ability can develop with time only and this causes a lot of misjudgement about the urge. Too early training often leads to too late mastery in the case of bladder control.

6. Too sound sleep: some kids sleep like a log. They just cannot get up from their sleep no matter what. So if the blanket is not there and they are feeling cold, they fail to get up from sleep and get into blanket again. Such kids face bedwetting more.

7. Chronic constipation: the unpassed hard stools in the rectum do not let the bladder to expand in response to increase of urine level in it. As a result the bladder squeezes when urine volume goes up and the urine come out.

Check out for the probable reasons to cure the problem yourself. if everything fails, consult a doctor.

(disclaimer: this article was first published for Little Elly- the concept preschool. you may read the article at http://www.littleelly.com/ask-an-expert/common-problem/)