How do you potty learn at night?

Ya know, the usual, limit what they drink before bed and go to the bathroom before you go to sleep. My ds was almost 4.5 when he finally potty and bm trained. He is autistic (or at least more so than) and it was really hard to get him trained, especially at night. Plus, it was just getting downright gross. I finally had to get tough but of course keep it logical. Ds hates showers to this day. He only takes baths. He screamed bloody murder about those too until he was 3.5. NOT FUN. Well, what ended up working on the whole training thing was he had to take his sheets off the bed and put them in the wash. He also had to take a shower. I cried with him doing it but there was no time for a bath in the morning. This also worked for bm training. It was a week and half from hell. Once he got it though, he got it. He rarely has accidents at night. When he does, I let him take a bath. I couldn't go through that again and neither could he. Please don't flame me for this. Trust me, we tried every other thing before doing it that way. We didn't even try to train him until he was 4 because he didn't talk until then...

What happens if he falls asleep before he's got his diaper on? For our son, who is nearing 5, if he sleeps for more than an hour or two, he WILL wet himself. He has never, ever woken up dry.

He too views the pull-up as a license to pee, but at the same time I truly believe that he doesn't control the nighttime thing yet. He's been day trained for a year and a half, and is EXCELLENT about being able to hold it during the day. (He's shy about asking to go potty around strange adults, and so has sometimes held it for several hours!) So, I'm as

Know that 'bed wetting' is common for 3 and 4 year olds. Something like 20-40% of kids in this age range still wet the bed, and physicians don't consider it a problem before age 7.

Does anyone in your family have a history of bedwetting? If so, I'd go slowly. You might start by restricting fluids in the evenings (the hour or two before bed), making sure he goes potty before bedtime, and wake him up to pee before you go to bed. If he still wets himself every night, then I'd say he's not ready. I'd wait 6 months and try again.

Lynn

My brother wet the bed til 12, my mom til 13. Some kids just CANNOT make it through the night. Do try the methods suggested above, but don't bother waking him up. Somehow when my parents started waking my brother up, he started wetting earlier and earlier. Don't make any more of an issue out of it than you absolutely MUST, because its bad enough to be the kid that 'still wets the bed'.

Am I a terrible mommy because sometimes I wish DD would still wear diapers to bed?

The thing is, she's been diaper free from 20 months on during the day, and probably in the last 4 months or so stayed dry at night. the thing is, even if she has nothing to drink from 7 on...and pees before bed...she STILL wakes me up at 230 every single morning by saying "mom...I gotta pee." Argh. I just wanna sleep thru the night...... (end plaintive whine)

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This explains a lot. When I was between the ages of 8 and 12 I went to Girl Scout camp. They had outhouses. I was (and still am) deathly afraid of outhouses. I would hold my pee until meal times when we ate in the mess hall that had a flush toilet. This meant on the night we had the cookout, I would go from lunch one day until breakfast the next day without peeing. I could go to sleep with a very full bladder and not wet the bed. I think about that all of the time when I now have to get up in the middle of the night to go. I always wondered why I could do it then but not now. Now I know

BeanBean does not wet the bed most nights; when he does, it's very easily connected to some "different" event that day. Lots of excitement, or going to bed an hour earlier (without having been reminded to use the toilet). When he does wet the bed, however, it is *invariably* just before he's ready to wake up, at the lightest part of his sleep cycle. That's how I know that he doesn't really need to be in diapers at night, he just needs his parents to be more vigilant and to remind him to use the toilet. Sometimes he does wake in the middle of the night, and when that happens he always has to pee; he goes by himself about 45% of the time, and the rest of the time I kick Mike and make him carry BeanBean.

I wet the bed until I was 13 years old. To me, the fact that Tain is wetting during the deepest part of his sleep cycle suggests that he's simply not ready to be out of diapers at night. When I was younger, I also wet the bed during the deepest part of my sleep cycle, the dreamless part. That's what finally changed for me-- I stopped waking up to find myself in a puddle of cold, and started wetting closer to the end of my sleep cycle. Eventually, I would be at the end of my dreams, and I would be aware in the dream state that I was peeing/ready to pee. Once that happened, I was able to wake myself up and use the toilet. Still, I was about 13 years old when that happened; in fact, I remember that the very last time I wet the bed (outside of pregnancy, which is really quite different) was the third day of 8th grade achievement tests. Gosh, I must have been 13.5, because those tests happen in April or something. :

At any rate-- he will eventually outgrow it. As his mother, only you can determine whether or not this is a deliberate action on his part, or a physical issue, a sensory issue or truly something pathological (i.e. recurrent UTIs which prevent adequate nighttime control, as my sister had). In the meantime... have you tried Goodnights? My younger niece wore them until relatively recently, and they hold a ridiculous amount of pee (they're designed for older kids).

well, both of my kids were trained at night shortly after potty training. My dd was night trained at 2 years, one month and ds was night trained at 2 years, 8 months. How? Once they had day training down, we stopped wearing diapers at night, and we lessen the liquid they drink an hour before bedtime. Dinner is done by 630 and bed is by 730 so no drinks between dinner and bed, then a sip of water right before bed. Each of them had a few accidents, but after that no problem. I think having the accidents at night is just a learning process.

One thing you have to consider though is heredity. I didnt have any problems having accidents in bed and as far as I know dh didnt either. I know that for my friend both of her kids are night wetters, and she was as a kid also. Taking that into account, you can decide to go cold turkey or wait it out. If there isnt history of night wetting in your family, just drop the dipes at night and lessen liquids at night. A small drink with dinner and then nothing else. Also, milk takes longer to go through you than juice, so we do milk if we go out to eat......we tend to not have accidents when they drink a full cup of milk rather than juice.

Some kids just dont have that control at night for a long time. I would still be worried also though about creating the problem of dependancy on diapers at night and would consider trying to go without htem and see how it goes (get yourself a waterproof mattress pad).