Winter 2016-2017
KID TALK
2-3 YEAR-OLDS
What Parents need to KNOW about
BE DW E T T I NG
Every night in the United States, millions of
parents go to bed crossing their fingers that
their child will wake up the next morning in
a dry bed. But quite a few find it not to be,
and they are in good company. Statistically,
bedwetting is common – about five million
children do it, especially between the ages
of 18 months and 5 years old when potty
training is occurring. What’s important to
know is that wetting the bed is actually
part of the body’s maturation process, not a
condition that needs to be cured.
“It’s simply the combination of an immature bladder
and brain that leads to overnight wetting,” said Rustin
Buffington, MD, a pediatrician with Mandarin Pediatrics.
“We expect about 80 percent of 5-year-olds to be potty
trained, so the inverse would be that about 20 percent
of kids will still wet the bed at that age.”
He added that boys tend to do it more often than girls,
likely because boys sleep more heavily or are just less
inclined to get up in the middle of the night to use
10
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the bathroom. The number of accidents should begin
to decline as a child gets older, although about one
percent of children over 10 years old still wet the bed
a few times a week. Before you get worried that it’s
becoming a problem, Dr. Buffington recommends a few
things you can do to lower the chance of it happening.
“First, decrease your child’s intake of fluids by cutting
off drinks about two hours before bed; nothing after
dinner is a good rule of thumb,” he said. “Second,
encourage your child to go to the bathroom twice
before crawling under the covers. Let them urinate, then
brush teeth and read a book; then go one more time
before turning out the lights.”
If these two recommendations aren’t effective, waking
your child up about two hours after bed to use the
bathroom again is helpful. But above all, he said,
never punish a child for having an accident during
the night. Positive reinforcement goes much further
than a negative approach. “Also, most parents don’t
realize that pooping and peeing are related, and one
of the most common causes of nighttime wetting is
constipation,” said Dr. Buffington. “This is because full
intestines compress the bladder, which prevents a child