My daughter is almost 4 1/2 and is still soaking a pull-up most nights. We have not tried limiting her evening fluid intake yet, but will be starting this week. I know that pediatricians say that night time wetting is normal even well passed this age, but I don't buy into that 100%. Think about when we were kids, before pull-ups, do you honestly think there were that many moms washing sheets every morning for years after their kids had outgrown diapers? I'm sure there are certain cases where a child's bladder hasn't "matured" to be able to stay dry at night, but I think it should be more of a minority than the majority. I'm tired of washing sheets a couple times per week because she leaks out of her pull-up. She's been potty trained during the day for almost 2 years. This is getting old. I am going to buy some over-the-sheet mattress pads from One Step Ahead to help with the laundry issue, but I'm just curious to see if anyone has had success in night time training. I was considering just going to underwear cold-turkey once we get these pads.
Has anyone used any successful techniques to help their child stay dry at night?
I feel like I should clarify a little bit. I NEVER get upset with my daughter if she pees at night, nor do I plan to force her into something that her body isn't ready for. My point, partly, is that it seems like what's deemed as "normal" has probably changed over the last 30+ years. I highly doubt that when my mom sat in my peds office when I was 2 or 3 that they were telling her it was NORMAL that I would wet the bed until I was 5. I completely understand that I can't make her body do something it's not capable of, I just feel like I need to try something to determine if she truly isn't capable or if she's just too comfortable in her pull-ups. I think it's possible that she may wake in the night but is too lazy, sleepy, scared, etc to get up and pee. I'm looking for suggestions on how to test the waters on this subject, not on how to make her life miserable or force her into something she isn't ready for.
My son consistently wet the bed till he was 5 and a half. Then suddenly he stopped and has never done it again. I think they stop when their body/mind is ready and every kid is different.
My daughter is almost 8 and still wets at night and she has a few friends her age that also are still wet. We even tried medication which I'm not a fan of but asked her what she wanted to do and she wanted to try it but it didn't work so just waiting until her body is ready I guess. The doctor says it's very common. I have heard that going to the chiropractor sometimes helps but haven't tried that yet.
You can't train for night time dryness. Staying dry at night is totally dependent on the body's maturity level. You said the majority stay dry. Have you considered that your daughter is a part of the minority. Someone has to be in that group.
If you think that her wetting at night is psychological, your negative focus on it will make staying dry even more difficult for her. Try adopting a positive attitude. Tell her you know that she'll stay dry when her body is ready to stay dry. Give her lots of love and positive attention.
Work on accepting the extra work as being just the way it is. Yes, do find ways to make clean up easier. Use waterproof pads on top of the sheet. I frequently find adult ones at thrift stores for not much money. Then all you have to wash is the pad. You can also find sheets priced very inexpensively at thrift stores. With more sheets you can still just do laundry once/week.
If you limit liquid intake there will be less pee to come out. :) Try that. How about using "doublers" inside the pull ups to absorb more of the moisture. Are you using night time pull ups? They do absorb more.
If you haven't talked with the pediatrician about this concern, do so now. She may have a correctable physical cause for being unable to stay dry at night.
Above all be sure she feels loved and accepted as she is. Do not judge her for being wet. That will not help and has the potential for making it worse. I understand being tired of doing laundry.
I looked back at your profile. You have a 2yo and are either expecting or have a baby. No wonder you want to get her night time trained. I suggest, that having or anticipating a new baby sibling is stressful for both of your other kids. Is it possible that what you're dealing with isn't so much night time potty training as anxiety over a major change in the home?
You would be surprised at how many kids don't stay dry at night. I was one of them. Had a terrible time, slept like the dead. And trust me, I did NOT enjoy waking up wet, it was not a choice! It is definitely more common in boys but girls too have nighttime issues. Sometimes it just takes time, be patient.
If you force this before her body is physically ready all you will have is a wet and ashamed and frustrated child. Most kids are night dry between 2 and 5, but for some kids this happens later and that is ok. My nephew was 7, my cousin was 12. I would not go to underwear until she has woken up dry every morning for at least a month, otherwise you are just setting her up for failure.
Yes, that many moms WERE washing sheets every day. They just didn't admit it or have a website to share their experiences. It is frustrating and extra work, and none of us enjoys the extra laundry.
I didn't have nighttime wetting myself, so was unaware of how common this was until my daughter continued wetting often until she was five, then gradually was wet less often through six and still occasionally wet when she was seven. Now she's 8 and has slept dry for several months. Her father admitted to me that he wet the bed often as a child this age, also. It tends to be hereditary, but not always. And it is just a body's maturing process, and is something we moms have to deal with whether we think it "should" be happening or not.
Yup, lots of moms have washed lots of sheets, ever since the invention of beds and linens. It was seen as an embarrassment and a black mark on your parenting skills to have a bedwetter back then, so parents generally kept it secret. And the kids sure weren't telling.
When I was a kid (not long after the invention of the wheel) – kids were punished and shamed for a situation they had no control over. That corrected nothing, and quite possibly complicated the problem, since bedwetting is more common when kids are stressed.
I think you'll find the waterproof pads a great help. You can even layer them for kids who tend to have more than one accident per night.
Kids have no way to wake themselves from a deep sleep, and until the neurological and physical systems are matured enough, they won't get a loud enough signal from the bladder to know they have to pee. A cold, wet bed often wakes a child when they're in one of the lighter sleep cycles that occur every 1.5 hours or so, but some kids even sleep right through that.
Most kids outgrow bedwetting by the middle of the grade school years, but some are stuck with it until puberty. They'd sure be happy to stop night peeing if they could. Withholding liquids has generally not been found helpful. Getting a child up to pee in the middle of the night may sometimes work, but sleep is so necessary to health and mental functioning that it may be detrimental to the child's daytime performance and mood to interrupt a deep sleep cycle.
I'm not sure what bedtimes are but if you or your husband go to bed later, have you tried waking her up and having her go to the bathroom before you go to bed? Keep lights low or off (use night light) and keep talking to a minimum. This may at least keep her from leaking.
We had great success with our son. It took about 3 weeks. We limited his fluid intake after 6:00 p.m. (we still allowed some fluid, but not much), we took him potty right before going to bed at 7:30, then again when we went to bed about 10:30 or 11:00 and then one more time in the middle of the night when I got up to go pee I also woke him up for him to go. Like I said after about 3 weeks he was dry all night outside of an accident here and there every so often, but they were few and far between. My son never remembered being woke up to go potty. He would walk into the bathroom sit down and pee then go straight back to bed with no problems. Many parents say not to wake a sleeping child but I have read several posts on here before and this also worked for other parents. I know it was tiresome for me and my hubby but in the end it was better for everyone in our house. When my son would wake up he would be screaming and would wake everyone up even the dog. LOL So we were thrilled to have our problems solved.
I night time trained my two. My first, i didn't know what to do & so I spent needless hours cleaning & doing laundry!! had I only known. With my second, he hasn't ever had a bed time accident & never wore pull ups at night. This is what I did....I had them go at 8-8:30pm (their bed time). then at 10-11 (my bed time), i would close up the house & turn out lights, & then I would go & get them & take them to the potty. They never fully woke up, but both would go. I had my son sit so he didn't have to wake up & aim. then I set my watch alarm for 1:00am & I would get them both up again. Then they would make it till 6:00am when I'd wake them for the day. This schedule makes for me only waking one time a night. I figured if I got thru bottle feedings, this would be a piece of cake! Plus, it saved me hours of work the next day!! I did this for about 2 months before kids asked me not to wake them anymore that they would take care of it themselves. I told them we would try it but one accident & i'm bacvk to waking them. That was over 2 years ago. My son is 4 & daughter is 5. You can do it & so can your daughter!! My friends 6 yr old son had accidents at night & I told her what we did & she tried it & it seemed to train his body too & now he is accident free & actually got to go on a sleep over camping trip with his dad!! So very big deal. best of luck to you. Oh & if your needing to keep your carseat dry during day time potty training, I found that puppy pads worked perfect!
Just FYI, my daughter has been daytime trained since she was 2 and a half, but didn't "get" night training till 3. Now she does great, we have had about 2 accidents in 10 months at night, and both were my fault, I let her drink juice all the way home at bedtime on a car trip, and another time, had not reminded her to go right before bed.
We normally do not give any drinks after supper at 6:30. She may get a little sip to trinse her mouth after brushing her teeth at bedtime. We have always made it REALLY CLEAR that she will NEVER get in trouble for going potty at night, and that it is a really good big girl thing to do, and occassionally she does wake and go on her own, but mostly she sleeps through the whole night. We rarely used pull-ups, we mostly put her in diapers at night. Throught trial and error, we found that pull ups are not as absorbant, and not as well made, the absorbant liner shifts around when they roll over, walk, run, and then they pee through where it should meet the elastic near the legs. We stopped giving drinks after dinner, at 2 and a half when she day-trained, and she still peed alot at night till she was close to three - she even peed during naps for quite a while. I waited till she was waking dry from naps, and switched her to undies for those, and then waited till she was waking dry from night time to switch her to undies for the night.
So , definitly limit her fluids. Maybe get her into diapers or the bigger kids night time pullups that have better absorbancy in the meantime, to save yourself some laundry. And then move her to undies, once she starts to stay dry, is what I would do. However, I have also had people say they have had success by putting the child down, letting them sleep till mom and dad got ot bed,and waking them to potty at that time, then putting them back to bed.
Good Luck!
Jessie
My daughter was six before we got her night trained. Her Dr. said that it was normal. What we did to get her night trained was limit fluids, have her use the potty before bed. When my husband and I went to bed we would wake her up to go again and them my husband would get her up before he went to work. Eventually she got the hang of it and we did not have to wake her up anymore. I hope this helps. I have a 4 year old too and we are going through the same thing again.
C.
My daughter is 4 1/2 and has been totally potty trained since age 3. I dont necessarily have a tip in how to night time potty train... For her, it just happened. She did refuse to wear pull-ups at night; she called them diapers and told me 'big girls don't wear diapers'. (I would have prefered that she keep using the pull-ups instead of setting me up for a mountain a laundry.) So, armed with multiple water proof mattress pads and multiple sets of bed sheets, pillows and blankets, she started going to bed wearing just panties. There were many nights when I would wake her up at midnight/1am to make her go to the bathroom; and there were many midnight bed sheet changes and morning sheet changes... And morning baths... She is now entirely potty trained, however now and then she might have an accident (once every 2-3 months). However, funny thing, she has to have lots of light left on in her room (via closet light) and bathroom, otherwise on nights when the lights are off/dim, she tends to have an accident.
If you decide to go cold turkey and end the pull-ups, my advice is that you stay committed to the bedsheet changes and midnight potty wake-ups. I think it takes a lot of wet, cold accidents to train the brain--And it takes a lot of effort on your part. Good luck!
You know I have only gone through this with one of mine my daughter now 5 and a half, at 4 and a half she just trained herself, we always encouraged her but never forced her (I am not saying you are forcing I am just giving you an idea) She would get rewarded if she went all night without an accident and she would get encouragement if she wet her pullup to do better the next time. All of a sudden she started sneaking her pullup off at night and putting on her underwear, never once did we have to clean the sheets because of an accident. A few times around the toilet when she couldn't get her zip up sleeper pj's of in time (which I must say was so cute, poor thing) so as far as that goes I think they really do just get it some day and life goes on. Now their are the few that have more deeper issues but she is still young to know for sure about those. Give it time.
I have 5 children (4 are potty trained). Out of them all we had one child who took a long time to get the night time trainin down.
YES, I do believe there were a lot of mom's doing laundry every morning for years. It's embarrassing and our mom's didn't talk about those things. Our generation talks about everything! :) When I started to open up about this to others I learned that it's not that uncommon.
My son was a very deep sleeper and we think he just couldn't wake himself up at night. One time when he was 4 yr old, he got up at 10:30 pm and we watched him stand in the hallway and pee on the floor. At first I thought he was awake and I kept saying "What are you doing? Stop" but he never did. In the morning he didn't remember it at all and now we all still laugh about it. He's 12 now.
His cousin who is 9 stll struggles with this too.
My son was 5 when he finally was able to wake himself up at night. Good luck with this. It is very frustrating, I know. Please don't make your daughter feel bad about herself. It's not her fault. It's just a developmental thing.
My daughter is also 4 1/2 and she still wears a pull-up at night. In my opinion, if she wants to drink a glass of water before bed then her body probably needs the hydration. We are very busy during the day and many times I don't think my kids are drinking enough because it is the last thing on their minds. I just don't think it is worth the fight. If you really want to get your daughter out of pull-ups you may have to get her up to go to the bathroom during the night.
Good luck!
We are in the exact same boat. We have a potty-trained-since-age-2 boy who is now 5 and still wets at night. I can tell you that trying underwear cold turkey, cutting off liquids after 7:00 pm and waking the boy to pee right before we hit the sack has not worked for us. I am tired of changing sheets too!
Our pediatrician told us not to worry about it as well. I was going to try the "Kids Bedwetting Night Trainer" on One Step Ahead, but I was going to post on here first to see if other moms have used it. I will let you know if it works for us! I look forward to reading the responses! Good luck!
My son is three years old and is completely potty trained (day and night). It was frustrating at first because I had the same issue with the pull ups but once I realized that pull ups were just the excuse he needed to be lazy and not get up to go to the bathroom I started the underwear at night journey. He soiled the sheets for a little while but when I started pointing it out to him and letting him know that it wasn't ok to lay there and wet the bed, it started to change. cut your child off of fluids 30 minutes to an hour before they go to bed and make her potty before she lays down. The wet underwear will bother her and she will change. Lots of praise for dry pants in the morning also helps. As soon as she gets up in the morning make her go right away. Until then, target has rubber sheets for 8 dollars!!! Hope this helps.
