Wet Pants - Fight!

Summer is passing, and you again did not go to the sea and refused to spend your vacation with friends at the dacha. For a very delicate reason. The child still wets the bed. And what to do with wet sheets on the train and hotel? When even staying with relatives is awkward...

And here, for the first time, parents question the advice of others - not to worry and wait patiently for the baby to outgrow this problem. Or maybe enuresis still needs to be treated?

Wait or treat?

IF a child is over five years old, but still wakes up in a wet bed, you should not wait, but start treatment.

Primary enuresis - that is, one that accompanies the baby from birth, is caused by partial immaturity of the central nervous system. Immaturity does not allow the guard reflex to form in time, until the age of 5, which causes the baby to wake up if he feels the need to empty his bladder in the middle of the night.

Of course, enuresis can go away without treatment, but it will take years and years to mature without medical help.

Over the years, the child will develop a lot of psychological problems. As soon as you send him to kindergarten, he will see that most of his peers have been waking up dry from their naps for a long time. A kindergartener in wet pants immediately becomes an object of ridicule and teasing. He begins to acutely feel his inferiority, withdraws, isolates himself from other children, or, conversely, becomes aggressive... And if the problem is not solved before school and his classmates find out about the wet bed...

In addition, enuresis almost never occurs alone. It always goes hand in hand with some other neurological pathology, which fits into the diagnosis of minimal cerebral dysfunction (MCD - that’s what doctors write in the medical record). So if your child has primary enuresis, he most likely also suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And that means it rushes through life, destroying everything in its path, not giving you a moment’s rest and causing discontent among everyone around you. If you don’t correct this situation in time, the school will torment you and your child with complaints.

Are night vigils necessary?

SOME parents believe that if they drag a sleepy child to the potty a couple of times during the night, the problem seems to be solved. In fact, this is not even a half-measure; parents are just protecting the bed. Because the child goes to the potty at night while half asleep, he will not develop a guard reflex. Then you need to wake him up completely so that the baby does everything consciously.

There is even such a technique: first, the child is woken up every three hours - this is the time during which the child’s bladder fills. Having woken up, in full consciousness, the child must go to the toilet himself. After 10 days, when you no longer need to fire cannons to wake up a soundly sleeping child, wake him up every two hours. After another 10 days - every hour. It is believed that this can also develop a guard reflex.

But children do not like this method. They are not happy when they are woken up. And since among the peepers there are many children who are hyperactive and excitable, after chronic lack of sleep they become completely uncontrollable. And it’s hard to imagine a parent who can endure a month of sleepless nights. So it’s better to act under the guidance of a doctor, traditionally.

A neuropsychiatrist will select medications for the child that stimulate the development of the nervous system: from a number of tranquilizers, antidepressants, nootropics... Both acupuncture and hypnosis work well for children... But there is no universal, best-practice medicine: if the doctor hits the top ten and after the first weeks of treatment, the child wakes up dry morning after morning - you are lucky. More often than not, you have to go through several options before success comes. And success is when there hasn’t been a single wet night in a year. Then you can be sure: the guard reflex has formed, there is no more enuresis.