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How exactly do you train your kid to stay dry at nighttime?
I'm at a total loss on this one because Gabe is completely, absolutely, utterly drenched every morning when I get him up from bed. We can't even use regular pull-ups, we have to buy the ultra-super-strength night diapers to keep him from leaking through. He has been day trained very consistently for about 8 months, though, so I feel like we should be ready to follow through at night.
I have been reading the books or online articles about how to night train, but the prevalent theme is that you just have to deal with them wetting the bed on average of TWICE PER WEEK until they are trained, and people, I can't. I simply cannot deal with changing his sheets twice per week, so we're going to have to come up with an alternative solution.
I haven't yet cut out all liquids after dinner because he begs and pleads and tells us he is dying of thirst and I feel so guilty I let him have more water, but I guess I should start here. But then what? Help!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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8 comments:
so funny, I just had Mister's 3 yr checkup yesterday and I was talking to the ped about this very thing! Well, the ped was talking to me about it because having only been day trained for about a week, I'm not expecting Mister to be overnight dry any time soon.
He says, and we found to be true with Lady, that it's a matter of physiology rather than training. During the day, it's conscious effort to go on the potty, but at night it's about how equipped his bladder is to hold it. He told me generally there is about a 6 month lag between being reliably day trained and being dry overnight.
Hi likened it to deciding you want to train your child to walk at 9 months. If physically he's not capable, it's not going to happen.
He also told me that it's completely reasonable for a kid to be wet overnight up through age 4, and nobody starts to worry about the implications of being a bed wetter until you hit age 6 (he also told me that they don't consider kids to be bed wetters when they're this young). ALSO, not sure if this applies, but he did tell me there is a connection between when the parents were dry overnight and when the kids will be dry overnight. IE- if you or Josh weren't dry overnight until you were 5 yrs old, let's say, there's a good chance Gabe will take a little longer.
SO. My advice would be to let him sleep overnight in a pull-up if he's waking up wet on a regular basis. In a month, or maybe two months, try taking the pull-up off at night and see how he does. With Lady, I realized after a certain point that she was actually being dry overnight but waking up and peeing first thing in the morning because she knew she was in a pull-up and was too lazy to get out of bed. So I took her pull-up away and that fixed that. She was also 3 1/2 at the time though.
ps- we DID cut liquids beginning an hour before bedtime, and had her go potty one last time before hopping into bed. no negotiating.
Ha! If you find the answer, let me know. My almost 5 year old still wears night time pull ups at night. There's a reason the size on those suckers goes so large :-) With my 6 (almost 7) year old, if we don't wake him up at 10ish and drag him, totally asleep, to the toilet, he will still wake up wet.
I agree with alot of what has been said.
I will add my 2¢ now....
I am sure you already have some type of rubber mattress cover, if not you will want one.
Next I agree with limiting liquids after dinner, limiting, not removing completely.
Its not so much that he wets it seems but the amount, so I would also say that he is probably not taking his time to fully empty his bladder when he does go.
Not sure if he is a sitter or a stander at this point but if he sits, read him a short story while he sits one last time right at bed time. It may help him relax and empty completley.
Also you can run water, the sound does help sometimes.
Next in order for night time wetting to stop, most kids need to be able to get up and go during the night.
If he cannot feel that he is wet, he may never wake up. so you might want to just leave him in big boy pants for night time so that he can feel the sensation. It will most likely wake him.
an alternative to that, to help prevent that daily load of laundry and morning bath is to go get him up after he has been asleep for a few hours and have him go.
downside to that is clearly that he may not go back to sleep easily.
I think he is old enough to be night trained. but all kids take varying amounts of time.
is he a super sound sleeper? does it take a bomb to wake him up? if he is then it could be his sleep is so deep that he cannot tell at all, the signals his body sends won't matter....
Good Luck!
it will get better!
The limiting of liquids and getting him up once right before you go to bed should help. He's young. He'll get there. But boy, even 19 years later, I remember the wet-at-night toddler!
Combo of deep sleep and not enough physical ability to hold it can make this a doozy.
I vote doing a lasagne bed (waterproof mattress cover, sheet, waterproof mattress cover, sheet) so you only have to pull off a layer and not have to remake the whole bed.
Wake Gabe just enough to take him to the potty right before YOU go to bed. Leave a night light on in the bathroom, don't turn on the overhead light.
And have patience, this too shall pass.
dry during the day vs dry @ night = you guessed it, night and day.
i knew that my kids were physically ready to be toilet trained when they stayed dry all night (prior to 3 yrs of age), but i think they are the exception rather than the rule. my kids also wake themselves up on the rare occasions when they do have to pee at night--between them they've had probably 5 wet beds in the middle of the night. but i really put this down to their physiology--both have strong bladders (my son's should be studied by science, i swear) and i really think there was nothing i could have done had it been some other way. from what other friends tell me (and what i saw from my nephew--who finally did not have to been awakened at 11pm around the time he turned 6), 3 is really young to be night trained.
PS in my experience, being stingy with water in the evening just means they wake up 2 hrs after falling asleep asking for it; then if you don't give it they have a fit and don't go back to sleep. could just be me, though. anyway, i never limited water--and now that i live in the middle east never would.
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