Does your school age child still wet the bed at night? The clinical name for bed wetting is Enuresis and it is one of the most common conditions in early childhood, frustrating for parents and embarrassing for children. The problem is not within the child’s control because all children develop control of their bladder at night at a different age, the most common age is three to four years, bed wetting is a development issue.
Although the most common stats show that at age four, 25% of children are still wetting every night. At age five, 15% are still wetting their bed several nights a week and at age eight, 7% are still wetting the bed and it goes on slowly reducing, often until the child is in their teens. Some children just take longer than others to develop this function.
Fine you might say, but knowing this does not assist with the constant
changing and washing of sheets and the sleep overs that are refused.
Wetting the bed at night is more common in boys than girls. As the child grows older the proportion of males and females with the problem usually evens up. There is sometimes a genetic basis to the problem and it quite clearly runs in families, so if the mother, father, siblings or grandparents suffered from a delay in remaining dry at night it is more likely that the child will also. Bed wetting rarely has a medical or psychological basis and 98% of children will outgrow it.
There are many treatments and methods to fix the problem. Most of the treatments only work while the method is used continually and many parents just get the child up from bed to visit the toilet once or twice a night and often this does not work either. As most of the methods involve waking the child during sleep, the treatment can set up lifelong poor sleeping habits.
One of the most effective treatments for bed wetters is Reflexology, a therapy that addresses the night time brain bladder connection. The therapy is gentle, relaxing and well tolerated by young children who are required to lay down on a massage table for around 20 minutes while the therapist uses her thumbs and fingers to connect pressure points on the feet. The great thing about this treatment is it works and it works safely. The number of treatments required may vary from two treatments to six treatments and very occasionally more. View further info.
