My nephew Nick is 13 years old and still wets the bed every night. He came to stay with us for a month last summer and while I was aware that he still had an occasional "problem" I was surprised to find out that it was every single night. At first I tried to respect his privacy and just let it be his issue to deal with. That turned out to not work out very well. Sometimes he would forget to strip the bed and wash the sheets right away in the morning, so we would be scrambling come night time for him to have clean sheets to sleep on (I only had one set of twin sheets at that time). And another thing, he had no pajamas and would sleep in his regular clothes, but even if he did wash the sheets he wouldn't necessarily put his clothes in--he would just leave them in a soggy pile somewhere (like on the hardwood floor) and then put them back on again the next day!!! His room smelled and frequently he kind of smelled too. The whole thing really stressed me out. I was mad at his mom for not taking better care of him, letting him have these bad habits. He's always been bullied at school, and it's no wonder since he goes around smelling like pee! I was frustrated with him for not seeming to care more about trying to stop. He knew about things like avoiding caffeine and not drinking huge quantities of fluid in the evening, but I would catch him filling up a 16-oz. glass of water or juice at 9 p.m. anyway! And I was frustrated with DH, who would complain to me privately about the smell and say things like, "He'll stop when he really wants to, he just doesn't want to," which I thought was uncharacteristically unenlightened of him.
I did some research on bedwetting and learned that the most current thinking is that it is almost always a sleep problem rather than an emotional or attitude problem. Kids who wet the bed at a late age just sleep very deeply and don't have the same cue to wake up from a full bladder that most people do. I really believe he can't help it. The only times he stayed dry were when I woke him up in the middle of the night, and he was really like a zombie. I had to pull him up out of the bed and walk him into the bathroom and tell him to pee. He would stumble back to bed and never remember it in the morning. Doing that was really hard on me, though, I was around 6 months pregnant and it disrupted my own sleep pattern like crazy--I would take an hour or longer to fall asleep afterwards. I kept reading about this one particular alarm that was supposed to be really effective, with a sensor that was attached to the underpants and an alarm that attached to the child's collar. It was $100 but I went ahead and bought it, thinking it would empower him to solve the problem. It didn't help. I think he mostly didn't use it, and I'm not sure why. I would go in his room after he was asleep and see it on the floor next to the bed. He went home for a visit to his mom one weekend and left it there, so we didn't even get much opportunity to see if it could help.
I asked my sister what she had done to try to help him and she said they had gone to doctors a few time sbut nothing helped. He was on a medication that worked in the beginning but then stopped working and gave him nightmares, so they quit that. He went to another doctor who recommended circumcision!!! And so she let it be Nick's choice, and he decided to do it (he was around 10). So now he is circumcised
but of course that didn't help.
Okay, sorry this is a book but I am finally getting to my question. He is going to be coming to stay with us again for at least a week and quite likely longer this summer. Since we never know how long he will be with us, it is hard to come up with a plan and stick to it. If he were going to live with us for a while, I would try some other things--like chiropractic, hypnotherapy, anything. But I am hesitant to try different solutions and then have him go back to his mom's house a week later and not stick with the new thing, and end up feeling like it was another thing that just didn't work. Also we are seriously broke and I just can't pay for that stuff. I feel like at this point the only thing I can do is treat the symptoms because I just don't know how to treat the problem. The one thing I am certain of is that I don't want him peeing all over the sheets every night. It's very inconvenient with the laundry, plus he does things like fall asleep with a book and then the book gets ruined. Several other things have been ruined as well. And the smell. I try to have compassion but it really stresses me out. I am wondering if it would be a horrible thing to buy some Depends or something similar and suggest that he use them at night. Would that even work? I don't know how much volume those are designed to hold. He is taller and heavier than I am, pretty much adult-size, so we are talking about a lot of pee.
I did some research on bedwetting and learned that the most current thinking is that it is almost always a sleep problem rather than an emotional or attitude problem. Kids who wet the bed at a late age just sleep very deeply and don't have the same cue to wake up from a full bladder that most people do. I really believe he can't help it. The only times he stayed dry were when I woke him up in the middle of the night, and he was really like a zombie. I had to pull him up out of the bed and walk him into the bathroom and tell him to pee. He would stumble back to bed and never remember it in the morning. Doing that was really hard on me, though, I was around 6 months pregnant and it disrupted my own sleep pattern like crazy--I would take an hour or longer to fall asleep afterwards. I kept reading about this one particular alarm that was supposed to be really effective, with a sensor that was attached to the underpants and an alarm that attached to the child's collar. It was $100 but I went ahead and bought it, thinking it would empower him to solve the problem. It didn't help. I think he mostly didn't use it, and I'm not sure why. I would go in his room after he was asleep and see it on the floor next to the bed. He went home for a visit to his mom one weekend and left it there, so we didn't even get much opportunity to see if it could help.
I asked my sister what she had done to try to help him and she said they had gone to doctors a few time sbut nothing helped. He was on a medication that worked in the beginning but then stopped working and gave him nightmares, so they quit that. He went to another doctor who recommended circumcision!!! And so she let it be Nick's choice, and he decided to do it (he was around 10). So now he is circumcised
but of course that didn't help.Okay, sorry this is a book but I am finally getting to my question. He is going to be coming to stay with us again for at least a week and quite likely longer this summer. Since we never know how long he will be with us, it is hard to come up with a plan and stick to it. If he were going to live with us for a while, I would try some other things--like chiropractic, hypnotherapy, anything. But I am hesitant to try different solutions and then have him go back to his mom's house a week later and not stick with the new thing, and end up feeling like it was another thing that just didn't work. Also we are seriously broke and I just can't pay for that stuff. I feel like at this point the only thing I can do is treat the symptoms because I just don't know how to treat the problem. The one thing I am certain of is that I don't want him peeing all over the sheets every night. It's very inconvenient with the laundry, plus he does things like fall asleep with a book and then the book gets ruined. Several other things have been ruined as well. And the smell. I try to have compassion but it really stresses me out. I am wondering if it would be a horrible thing to buy some Depends or something similar and suggest that he use them at night. Would that even work? I don't know how much volume those are designed to hold. He is taller and heavier than I am, pretty much adult-size, so we are talking about a lot of pee.
:
: He said he was afraid to go downstairs to the bathroom.
That guy should have his license revoked.
