What is the best way to do night time potty training?

Question

My 5 yr old son is still wearing "pull ups" - he goes to the bathroom during the day and does not wear those.. I have tried incentives to go places if he can stay dry for a week... any suggestions?

Answer 1

My son was potty trained at 3, but still had the same problem at night. He did not fully break this until about 6. The only thing that somewhat helped is eliminating all drinks by like 4 p.m. I tried to get him up throughout the night to try to go, but it was a lost cause. He was so tired, he had no idea what was even going on and he NEVER went. I also made my son wear a pull up at night too. If your son is wetting every night, i would definitely talk to your pediatrician. But if it's every so often, it is normal, and eventually he will grow out of it.

Answer 2

Night time potty training is always difficult. I agree with all the tried and true methods of no drinks after dinner, be sure they go to the bathroom before bed, etc. We are potty training an almost 3 year old and if he wakes up in the night we do make sure to take him potty regardless of how tired he is. We have 2 foster kids ages 4 and 9 who wet the bed yet every night and the 4 year old during nap time. So I know how frustrating this can be. It is wise to check with your doc to make sure there is no physical reason for this. We've had foster kids before we've had to put on DDVAP for bedwetting and it's a simple pill they take before bed and the problem is solved. HOWEVER, you need to understand that if there are psychological issues/reasons the child is wetting the bed - no medicine in the world is going to help that (unfortunately the situation with our 4 and 9 year olds). Also, I've had good luck if I know it's not medical or psychological issues to NOT use the pullups - they learn quicker it seems when they get cold etc. from the wet and realize they don't like it. Even though that makes more laundry for me! Good luck.

Answer 3

I'm probably not helping much but my son had the same problem. He was potty trained but would only do it during the day. He is also 3-going on 4. Occasionally he has accidents but not as much. It helped that he has a bathroom in his bedroom. Just every night before bed we remind him that big boys use the potty and it's dirty to use the bathroom in his bed. I can say though, that pull-ups give kids too much of a comfort zone. I stopped letting him wear pull-ups at night because if they know that pull-up is there, they know that they can pee in it. You just have to be washing lots of blankets, but i think it helped in the long run. I was one to also wonder how to fix this problem, because how are you supposed to potty train a kid who is sleeping??!!?? But i think taking off the pull-up at night should help. Plus laying in wet clothes can be very uncomfortable! Good Luck!
Oh ya, also limit the amount of drinks he gets before bedtime!

Answer 4

My son is 5 and a half. He was wetting the bed every night. The doctor that I took him to said that physically everything was fine. My sons bed time is 10:00 pm. So, after 7:30 the only thing he could have to drink is a SIP of water. He had to use the bathroom before he layed down, and I would wake him up at 3:00 am. It would take about 10 minutes to get him awake enough to realize what was going on, but when he was done he would go right back to sleep. After two months of this, he would start to wake me up to tell me he had to go. He still wakes me up, and if he doesnt, I wake him up. Seems to work for him. I hope it helps you.

Answer 5

Yes,,,Time.....Staying dry at night time is a found out reaction among mind and frame. As the frame grows the reaction can get behind schedule as a result of whats referred to as an immature bladder. Many children from three to teenage years who've been dry start to rainy the mattress and feature the have to return to dressed in diapers at night time. Our general practitioner defined to us that because the baby grows, the bladder does now not continuously develop as quick to preserve up with the frame progress that's referred to as an immature bladder. It's a level in which many children cross via to in which the sensory to wake the baby isn't there as a result of the immature bladder. The baby keep dozing thus the baby wets the mattress due to the fact that the bladder will empty. This level customarily occurs after a baby has been potty expert. Plus as kids develop the heavier sleepers they come to be which does not support so it is not whatever you'll instruct a baby for at night time. Every baby is exceptional, my son is 6 and I nonetheless diaper him each night time due to the fact that of mattress wetting but a few children can get the reaction down at age three and on no account have a crisis so the age while children develop out of the mattress wetting level can differ. I could restrict the beverages at night time and hold to make use of diapers at night time till he will get out of the mattress wetting level. It is flawlessly traditional exceptionally at his age to put on diapers to mattress and it makes it so much simpler on everybody while diapers are used. With my son, as soon as I began utilising diapers on him once more (recommended by way of our general practitioner) all of us get a restful nights sleep and I do not must wash sheets, pajamas and bedding daily. Good good fortune

Answer 6

I think you are doing all you can. My son has the same issue. I don't think they can control it, so rewards, like some people say, are a good thing, but it's not something they themselves can control. The thing I am trying now are these new pull-ups that make them feel wet when they are, but they also make the wet cold. Instead of just feeling warm wet then, it actually makes the liquid cold. Just another suggestion, but the thing I've heard is that some kids (mostly boys) just don't fully develop their bladders until later, and I've heard six to eight is normal.

Answer 7

Stop giving him drinks after 7 or 8 at night and make sure he goes to the bathroom before that time or when you put him down for bed.

Answer 8

i dont have a very long explanation i can only tell u what i did...............i stopped giving her (my daughter) liquids after 7pm. and i made her potty around the same time and just before bed at 9pm.....................then around 12mid night before i went to bed i would wake her and take her to the potty. i did that for about a month and the what do you know......................she started getting up on her own going to the potty around 11:30pm every night and she still does that to this day and she is 3. Good luck trying some of the thins listed above and below........they are all very good answers.

Answer 9

At this age it's not a matter rewards for staying dry. He may not have night time control yet. It's not going to hurt him to have pull-ups at night. I just let my daughter go in them until she started getting up by herself at night to go-then we switched to panties. Boys seem to have a harder time with this anyways for some reason. If you're really concerned contact your pediatrician.

Answer 10

NORMAL. Nighttime wetting is considered normal up to about the age of 9 years old for some kids. Have you taken him to a doctor to make sure there are no medical problems? Have them do a urinalysis on him to make sure he doesn't have an infection and have them do an u/s to make sure all the plumbing works OK.

We have been dealing with this with our son as well.

Here is my son's story -

Our stuggle with enuresis

Keithen turned 7 years old in February and still wets the bed at night and sometimes has accidents during the day. Here is a little about our journey with enuresis.

When my son turned 5 he was bedwetting every night and having at least one, usually more, accidents each day. Our family doctor did a urinalysis to make sure he didn't have any infections or anything and that came back normal. He referred us to a urologist. The urologist put him on Ditropan. He also ordered an u/s. I filled the perscription and waited a bit, unsure if I wanted to give it to him. We decided to wait on the u/s, feeling pretty sure that this was not physical but instead a discipline one. (Didn't care if he was wet...wouldn't stop what he was doing to go...engrossed in play...we saw a pattern to when accidents happened...etc.)

That wasn't working so we tried the meds - I think we did a total of 3 doses of Ditropan. He HATED it. There was no pretty color or flavoring to it to make it palatable to kids. It smelled very strong and tasted nasty. The side effects were horrible. He would get dizzy and he fell asleep in the middle of the day. With the start of Kindergarten coming up soon, I felt the side effects were unacceptable. I didn't want him getting sleepy like that when he was in school and he was simply not himself on the medication. We stopped them - like I said I think we tried 3 doses. We struggled through the rest of the year on our own.

Around his 6th birthday, someone on the Mothering boards suggested chiropractic to me as a treatment for enuresis. We were open to the idea and decided it was worth a try. Through a network of local mothers, we found a chiropractor with special training in treating kids.

We started treatments 3 times per week. This did seem to help. The first time that he woke up dry, I honestly cried. I was so happy for him to see that he was making progress. And I was so relieved that maybe we had found an answer. At our next appointment I had to choke back tears of joy and relief as I told our chiropractor our good news. I even asked to give him a hug because I was so deeply grateful for the help he had given my son.

Shortly after staring treatment, he was waking up dry about once every two weeks - a huge accomplishment compared to how things had been! And his number of daytime accidents decreased. Around this same time we had a checkup with our family doc and with his urologist. We refused to try the meds again because of the side effects. We reported that the chiropractic treatment was helping and agreed to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound came back normal.

As his chiropractic scans got better and his accidents decreased, his visit frequency decreased. After a couple of months of chiropractic treatment, our chiropractor suggested that we try DHA supplements. These made a HUGE difference for us. This was probably the point that nighttime accidents went down to once a week or so. Daytime accidents at this point were reduced to ones that seemed undeniably behavioral (only wetting while playing on the computer). We were doing so much better!

You may wonder why the DHA supplements were recommended and how they help. Children with enuresis have increased levels of prostaglandin E2 and nitric oxide. Omega-3 fatty acids are known to inhibit the synthesis of prostaglandin E2 and renal nitric oxide. Bed-wetting children have an underdeveloped region of the brain that controles nighttime micturition (as noted by their inappropriate startle response). Omega-3 fatty acids play a critical role in the development of and function of the CNS including micturition control and startle response. Nations with the lowest prevalence of bed-wetting children consume more than double the fish/seafood as compared to the nations with the highest prevalence of bedwetting children.

A week before his 7th birthday, I was frustrated once again. He had backslid. He was no longer cooperating with taking his DHA and he was wetting the bed almost every night. (He still wears pullups to bed.) He had been having a daytime accident several days per week again. I still think those are mostly behavoral - tied in to computer/gameboy/etc. - activities where he is super focused. Chiropractic visits are now only once every 2 weeks as his body looks good, so I don't think the increase in accidents was due to a physical problem.

We have gone through periods of taking his Gameboy away waiting for him to go a week with no daytime accidents. A month after he turned 7, things seemed to be looking up. He was having occasional dry nights and was having more dry days than wet ones.

I think I do need to get him back on the DHA on a regular basis as the drop in the DHA levels in his body may be creating some of our problems (at least the night-time part). I may have to find ways to sneak it into his food if he continues to avoid taking the pills. We had to stop seeing the chiropractor back in April because we couldn't afford it anymore. He has definately regressed since then. :-( I wish we couldn afford to go back to regular adjustments.

Last year in Kindergarten he only had 2 or 3 accidents at school all year long. This past year, in first grade, I think he had 2 or 3 accidents at school which were "giggle pees" when he was laughing too hard with a friend in gym class and at a class party. I'm relieved that it hasn't been a big problem for him at school. I remember that my cousin was "that kid" in grade school who was always being sent to the class for clean clothes. I remember the stigma that it can carry to be the "stinky kid" who wets his pants. I am thankful that he doesn't seem to be dealing with that at school.

I hope our experience helps some other families out there who are struggling with this problem. I know I am eternally grateful that we found chiropractic and the DHA supplements to help our son instead of going the traditional medical route with the prescription drugs.

Good luck! Hope something here helps!