Becoming potty-trained

Getting a child potty-trained is always an exciting moment; as parents, you often don’t feel like dealing with the hassle and you don’t want to make your child insecure. A child who is potty-trained during the day will typically be potty-trained at night soon after. In the beginning, as a parent, you will still make your child pee around 11 pm to empty the bladder. However, there are also children for whom potty training is not so self-evident. More than 15% of all six-year olds still wet their beds.

Bedwetting is only considered a problem when children who are dry during the day regularly wet their beds at night. Bedwetting is a very unpleasant phenomenon; a child must either change its behaviour overnight and get out of bed on its own or the child must suddenly be able to hold their urine through the entire night.

The older a child is, the more frustrating bed wetting becomes. Children become ashamed and are afraid to go to sleepovers or school camps, for example. When children enter puberty, it often becomes a very difficult problem, which can even be perceived as traumatic. It is estimated that 1.5 per cent of people still wet the bed later in life. The majority of them boys.

Bedwetting

A child suffers from bedwetting if he or she pees in bed several times during sleep without intending to do so, this is also called Enuresis Noctura. It is considered a problem if they wet the bed at least twice a month. The child then releases a full bladder into bed. Bedwetting is diagnosed when there is no other medical cause, such as a urinary tract infection, diabetes or a bladder that is too small.

The literature also distinguishes between children who have never been dry at night (primary bedwetting) or children who have been dry and started bedwetting later (secondary bedwetting). In more than half of the children, one of their parents also wet the bed until they were older. Bedwetting is a hereditary condition. Bedwetting is a hereditary condition, potty training naturally also has a smaller chance of success in this situation due to heredity. Still, there are plenty of tools that can help you.

Misconception

Many of the parents I speak to on the phone think that their child is too lazy to get up or that they wet the bed out of some form of protest. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bedwetting is an unconscious process and children have no control over it. The primary reason why children wet the bed is because the brain does not properly recognise the stimulus of a full bladder at night. Children who want to draw attention are more likely to do so by not eating or complaining about a stomachache.

Avoidance behaviour

It is not always clear to what extent a child has a problem with bedwetting. Older children in particular tend to act with indifference. The child does not know what to do with the problem and avoids it. This also applies to parents. Parents also do not know what to do with it and think ” they will grow out of it”. It is very important to discuss the problem of bed wetting and to openly talk about it. This will contribute to the child becoming potty trained.

You can use a reward system at the start, rewarding the child if there has been a dry night, but children have so little control over it that this often does not work either.

There are several factors that have a major impact on bedwetting

• heredity;
• bladder capacity;
• depth of sleep;
• maturing urine production;
• organic causes;
• emotions;
• social factors;
• screen time

Doctor

If the problem of bedwetting persists, it is always recommended to see a doctor. Although the doctor will not treat a child under 7 years of age. But the doctor can check if the problem is an isolated one (mono-symptomatic bedwetting) or if there are other complications (not potty-trained during the day, urinary tract problems, stress in the home).

Bedwetting alarm as a tool for potty-training

If bedwetting turns out to be an isolated problem, the bedwetting alarm is a good and effective remedy, we recommend the bedwetting alarm for children from 5 years of age and up. The child must also be motivated to want to solve the problem. The parents must also be highly motivated to actively support the child. A bedwetting alarm works with special sensor pants. A transmitter is snapped onto these pants. As soon as moisture is detected, the transmitter sends a signal to the alarm, which starts going off. A signal is also sent to the Dryly parent app so that the parents will also wake up.

The latter is particularly important as most children still manage to sleep through the bedwetting alarm at first. In addition, it is also nice for parents to know what happens at night. From the dashboard in the app, you can also easily share information with a doctor. Dryly has done everything to make the bedwetting alarm method fun and effective.

For example, the alarm clock is not plugged into a socket but into a cute panda bear called Wizzu. Wizzu helps your child on their way to dry nights. This is also reflected in the mobile app where the child can earn points by following a set night-time ritual. With these points, Wizzu can be dressed up with fun gadgets.