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Always. minimum 3 times a week and maximum 5 times a week. they had made him stop drinking in the evenings, but i think he secretly helps himself to something to drink. i shall pass your words of wisdom to his parents, thanks alot guys you have been most helpful.
If your brother wasn't a bedwetter (and from your posts I'm guessing he wasn't), I bet the child's mother was...
My son is 15 and wets nearly every night. The doctors say he could have an emotional problem after me and his dad split up and I have put my son in Drynites since the age of 10. He was at first resistant to wear them as he thought they were nappies, but I explained it would help me, if I didn't have to keep changing sheets as often. His dad has since had two other sons, one from a previous marriage who is 17, and the other who is 13 and both I understand, suffered from bedwetting but neither continued into their teens. Drynites may be criticized for prolonging bedwetting as people say that children can not feel when they are wet but I have found them helpful and my son has come to accept the problem. We are awaiting test results about my son's bladder, and most children stop bedwetting eventually.
My son is 15 and wets nearly every night. The doctors say he could have an emotional problem after me and his dad split up and I have put my son in Drynites since the age of 10. He was at first resistant to wear them as he thought they were nappies, but I explained it would help me, if I didn't have to keep changing sheets as often. His dad has since had two other sons, one from a previous marriage who is 17, and the other who is 13 and both I understand, suffered from bedwetting but neither continued into their teens. Drynites may be criticized for prolonging bedwetting as people say that children can not feel when they are wet but I have found them helpful and my son has come to accept the problem. We are awaiting test results about my son's bladder, and most children stop bedwetting eventually.
Has he gone through puberty yet? My pediatrician told me that for some kids they don't regulate ADH (antidiuretic hormone) properly until adolescence. By contrast, most kids get into a "dry night" regulation cycle by age 4. If he has not completed puberty (and at 15 he very well may not have), that could be it. There is a medication called desmopressin that they sometimes use til the child's hormonal regulation adjusts to allow for dry nights. Anyway, that's my two cents on the physiological cause of it for some children.
To me the best thing to do is improve his self esteme.
I would fist of all solve the immediate problem - that is the wet bed. I would put a plastic cover on the mattress and put the kid in pull ups.
At this stage don't worry why he is doing it. Maybe he is lazy, maybe there is a medical problem, maybe like so many other kids it just happens and he does not not know why.
Lets assume for a moment, that he is lazy, then by protecting the mattress, then you are protecting the mattress. After that my position is "So what Be lazy clean up the mess yourself"
The chances are though that he is not lazy in which case he is probably feeling pretty low. The protection will at least give him a good nights sleep. I would imagine that if you can build up his self esteme, then he will be in a better position to deal with the problem.
If he is doing it because he is lazy, then improved self esteme, may mean that he can be more mature and move on and grow up.
I wet the bed until I was 14 years old. My mom took me to the urologist and we were told that the average person goes in and out of a R.E.M. cycle (really deep sleep) 3-4 times a night. Children who wet the bed generally only have 1. A child's bladder isn't fully grown until after puberty and then should be large enough to get through the night. I still don't wake up in the middle of the night, but I sleep all the way through without wetting the bed because my bladder is now large enough to hold until morning. I can drink fluids right up until I go to bed and it doesn't affect me now.
When I was a child, my parents did everything; plastic covers for the mattress, Good Nights and even a nasal spray prescribed by the urologist to help send a signal to my brain to make me wake up. It worked some of the time.
Unfortunately, this is something that may have to run its course. Be a supportive parent/family member. Never embarass the child. He may grow out of it. Definitely check with the doctor, but I"ll bet it's a development thing.
One of my brothers wet the bed until he was quite big, I'm not sure quite what age. He had no emotional problems at all, is now very successful and happily married, one of the better adjusted people you could know.
With him it seemed to be that he was a very deep sleeper, and probably should have had an earlier bedtime, maybe he was over-tired. They finally helped him get over it by getting him up around 3 am and helping him walk to the bathroom, often he was still asleep through the whole process and could not remember the next day they did this. He needed to be helped up, guided to the bathroom, told when to go -- he would do all that and they'd guide him back to bed.
one of my sons wet the bed until early teens, I took it upon myself to get him up during the night to go to the bathroom. I did this for a few months, at first, he didn't even really wake up, but the habit took hold, and soon he was getting up on his own.
I was never a bedwetter, but my mom was, my brother wet into his teens, and my daughter wet until the age of 10. All you can really do it wait it out, and help them keep the problem under wraps. Trust me, even if "no one knows," they know, and it's killing them.
I don't like my brother, never got along, still don't in our 30s. I'd never have sold him out on his bedwetting, though. You have to take care of your own.
Good luck!
~D
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You have to take care of your own.
