For children age six and up, sleepwetting is one of the most common and embarrassing disabilities, affecting about seven million school age children and teens in the US and Canada. Most try to keep it a secret from other children, even relatives, and many families let it go on for years with little support or appropriate treatment. Some children receive harmful responses, ranging from blaming and shaming to punishment and emotional and physical abuse. Learning, behavior, and health problems are possible side effects of untreated or badly treated sleepwetting. In families who understand that most sleepwetting results from development and learning delays, school-age children and teens can help manage and compensate for these delays while they work on learning the missing skills and developing the delayed abilities.
This forum is part of a family-to-family support project helping people understand, manage, and resolve sleepwetting by school-age children and teens. For more information, contact farley@spont.com Support on-line includes
EnuresisKids a moderated e-mail list for children with enuresis.
EnuresisParents an e-mail list for parents of children with enuresis.
Why say sleepwetting?
Sleepwetting is our preferred term because it puts loss of bladder control when asleep in one word that is less negative or judgmental than the common term bedwetting, more quickly understood by most children than the medical term nocturnal enuresis, and clearer than both that it can happen when asleep anywhere, anytime, not just in bed at night. The word incontinence is commonly used for partial to complete loss of voluntary bladder control both awake and asleep. Most incontinence resources focus on the needs of adults with medical conditions or disabilities, but some include management for youth or address sleepwetting issues separately.
Why do some children sleepwet?
Children who sleepwet commonly have smaller than average bladder capacity for their age along with delayed development of the bladder muscles, nerve connections, and/or hormones necessary for sleeping dry through the night and also have not learned to awaken before sleepwetting. For other factors may make sleepwetting more likely or less likely to happen, see Developmental Causes and Contributing Factors. These include some medical, environmental, and behavioral issues that are not as common but still worth checking for just in case.
So how do kids and their families work on this together?
Responsible care and support starts with accepting that most causes of sleepwetting are physical and developmental conditions, not things a person has much conscious control over. Next a family can work out how to manage the existing sleepwetting, often with external bladder controls such as incontinence pants, diapers, bedpads, medications, etc. [see Management Plans] Once such a plan is in place, it can be easier to focus on using bladder exercises, mental exercises, biofeedback, or other appropriate techniques to develop true inner control.
Our-Kids - a support network of families of children with disabilities
Family Village - outstanding disability and family-related resources
SB-TEENS - web page, e-mail list, and chats for teens with spina bifida and their siblings This page is run by teens with spina bifida who like to talk about a lot more than their disability.
I am not a medical professional and do not offer advice that should be taken as medical or therapeutic in intent. Always consult a doctor for medical diagnoses and treatments. I have researched the area of teaching bladder control and managing bladder disabilities as part of volunteer work with incontinence support organizations and families of children with disabilities. I am a writer, actor, storyteller, children's bookseller, and parent of two young adults. I serve as one of the moderators for the parenting newsgroup misc.kids.moderated and list-owner for the e-mail lists EnuresisKids and EnuresisParents.
Tom
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