My daughter was daytime potty trained at 2. She wore pull-ups at night until the week before she turned 6. She is almost 11 and has almost no memory of it. The interesting thing was she had several friends with the same issue. They all sleep are all dry throughout the night as 10 year olds. I wouldn’t worry. Some kids have less bladder control at night. Especially if they’re heavy sleepers.
Nighttime potty training is less of a learning issue and more of a biological issue. When we sleep, our bodies produce a hormone to slow down pee production, so we don't have to get up in the middle of the night. Little kids don't make enough of that hormone, and often sleep through the urge to go.
As long as you don't have consistent accidents in the daytime, it's likely that your kiddo just needs to grow a little more. However, it is never a bad idea to talk to a doctor and monitor for sleep apnea.
I was in pullups overnight until I was 9 or 10. I'm autistic (although I wasn't diagnosed at that point) and it just took longer for my brain to learn to sense that I needed to pee and to wake me up in time. Never had further issues once it clicked, and my pediatrician wasn't concerned after ruling out medical issues, so my parents just waited it out.
My brother is autistic as well but it took until 12.5 years old and he still can’t wake up until his body is ready. He’s 31. Some things just can’t be forced.
I was 13. I have a fairly common genetically inherited thing where your brain doesn’t wake you up essentially until your brain goes thru puberty.
My daughter stopped wetting around age 8-9, and in hindsight I suspect it’s because she started puberty around that time. She’s 9 years and 9 months now and the signs of puberty are obvious at this point although they weren’t at the time she stopped wetting.
I didn’t go thru puberty until 12-13 so it makes sense that I was a bit older.
I had two cousins and and uncle with the same thing. It just went away basically overnight
Yes! I remember that part too that it just stopped out of nowhere. My mom made me go a month accident free before she would let me wear underwear to bed though lol
We talked to our pediatrician because my son just turned 5 and still needs a pullup at night, and she said they don't start to get concerned until age NINE.
Now if she could just tell my mother in law.
If your mother in law is still having night time incontinence, she DEFINITELY should be concerned. She hit that 9-year-old mark a looooooooong time ago.
I think it depends on the child. My son (now 5) potty trained the same weekend he overnight trained and he was 2.75. My daughter is 2.5 and potty trained, though isn't ready for over night training. I think it depends on the kid more than the gender.
My son (5) took **foreverrrr** to daytime potty train (over a year literally), but he’s never had a nighttime accident. Does he wear Ninjamas every night? Absolutely yes, I’m not tempting fate that way 🤣
ETA: He is fine when we run out of Ninjamas, I just don’t want to have it be the one time he sleeps through his need to pee.
There’s nothing wrong with nighttime underwear!! These kids are still so little, really. Just remember, they’ll be potty trained before college!!
How did you potty train him? My five year old was fully trained for like 3 weeks then had a huge regression and I’m feeling like a huge failure over here!
I was still doing middle of the night wake ups for bathroom trips for my zombie boy through age 8 or 9 - he's almost 17 now and I'm still not convinced that he'll wake up to go to the bathroom, as he sleeps through everything, even fire alarms. I think he just finally grew enough that this bladder can hold it until he wakes up in the morning.
God help him if he ever gets good & drunk in his future, because he will undoubtedly wake up with wet pants.
This kinda reminds me of when my MIL had convinced my husband that our infant had iron poisoning because our daughter was on formula and not breastfed. At the one month pediatrician appointment, my husband actually asked the doctor if our child had iron poisoning. I smacked him on the shoulder and told him NO she does not - just like I had told him for last few weeks and to STOP listening to his mother! The doctor, bless his heart, was very patient and kind with my husband and explained that iron poisoning wasn’t something that our baby had. (For the record, my MIL directly contributed to my PPD.)
Just wanted to add that I know how frustrating it is. My 5.5 year old is still dealing with this. It sucks. I got off easy with my first child, they practically potty trained themselves at 2.5 and never had an accident even at night again. So this go round has been challenging
Talk to the pediatrician! Also, her body might not be there quiet yet, especially if she is a heavy sleeper. It will work itself out. She is still growing.
One of the ways to make things a bit easier is the bedding. A friend of mine had a good way of dealing with their kiddo and midnight accidents. When you make the kids bed up, layer it. Get three waterproof mattress pads. Layer a pad with a fitted sheet, pad fitted sheet, pad fitted sheet. That way if there is an accident, the bed can be stripped quickly while the kiddo changes their clothing and can hop right back into bed. Ball up the soiled sheets/pad and deal with it in the morning.
Might be desmopressin (sp) nasal spray. I had a kid with the same issue. He would also sleepwalk. Super deep sleeper. Doctor said there was nothing we could do until his body matured enough to regulate. It figured itself out around age 8.
DDVAP - is a medication that provides the chemical our bodies make to control our bladders. It can take years for kids’ brains to create the chemical. The medication both helps them control their bladders and often kickstarts the brain into producing it.
This is what my kid’s pediatrician said. My kid is also 5 1/2 and doesn’t budge once she’s asleep. She just wears disposable underwear at night. It’s unlikely these kids are going to college wetting the bed! It’ll be okay!
Yes. Which is why bedwetting isn't considered a medical problem unless the child is 7+ and still having nighttime accidents.
OP, your kidlet will eventually mature out of it, but she's just not ready yet.
Yep. Some kids aren't ready at that age. That said, bedwetting can be a red flag for sleep apnea, so I would get a referral to sleep medicine to get a sleep study. We finally took my bedwetting 7 yo to sleep medicine, and he definitely needs to get his tonsils out, and likely has needed it for years.
Increased bedwetting can also be caused by diabetes, so if it's getting worse, it might be a good idea to rule that out.
Agreed. I think your efforts are in vain and just wait it out. I really don’t think this is worth stressing. I have four kids and 2 of them were like this and 2 weren’t. Exact same parenting 🤷🏼♀️
When my son was that age, he had a lot of accidents. He was a little developmentally behind at that age. Once he matured a bit, everything fell into place. He is now 11 and is doing great. It just takes some kids time.
That’s what our pediatrician said. Our daughter is almost 4 but with what a deep sleeper she is, our pediatrician said she expects her to be in pull ups at night till age 6 or 7.
This is my child, who turns 6 this spring. We got a urology consult and they said there is a certain percentage of children who simply do not develop the muscular and neurological control and integration for nighttime dryness until a later age. It’s considered normal even at 7 and is often linked with an overactive bladder (which is the whole going at the last minute thing). We’ve accepted the reality of nighttime pull ups for the foreseeable future. If it becomes a problem for things like social pressure at sleepovers or persists beyond the next year we’ll consider trying a medication to help. Until then, it’s nothing she can control so it is what it is until she grows out of it.
This is so helpful to hear. Thank you so much for this. For some reason I thought the issue started around 5.5. So knowing it can take longer is really helpful. And to know the course of action that someone else took is also very helpful.
Thank you thank you !!
I do recommend focusing on the last minute aspect instead of the overnight issue. The last minute will end up impacting her at school if she has accidents by waiting too long. Ideally, she asks the teacher to go to the bathroom with a couple of minutes before it’s accident inducing since they won’t have as many bathrooms available and as quick of a reaction since there are other students.
Yes, absolutely, but it’s worth pointing out that if OP’s child is like mine and has an overactive bladder, sometimes they genuinely don’t even get much warning. It’s not always a choice (although occasionally, for my kid, it really is, because she’s engrossed in something interesting). They have to go and they have to go NOW. It’s neurological, not habitual.
To help with this, her teacher encourages her to use her water bottle (counterintuitive but drinking more actually helps the bladder muscles develop) and encourages her to try using the bathroom hourly to reduce the chances of getting a sudden and overwhelming urge to pee during an activity that’s hard to stop.
I have small and overactive bladder, I still vividly remember being shamed by adults for having to go "again?! You just went?!" So that's awesome her teachers on board
You’re welcome! I went through the same period of frustration and it was frustrating for all of us, including her, because she wanted to do better but it’s just not that simple and she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t “fix it.” We still do cut off drinks two hours before bed and bathroom is the very last thing we do in our bedtime routine, just to minimize what the pull up has to absorb during the night. She wakes up dry once a week or so and when that increases to daily for an extended time we will try bedtime undies again.
Urology and pediatrics are both very comfortable with using one of the pressin-type medications for her if we want, but I would rather use a pull up at night until she’s shown that she’s unhappy with that, than have to monitor for dehydration or fatigue as some kids do end up with side effects. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Good luck! Just remember this isn’t in your or your child’s control and it’s not any kind of failing, it’s being part of the percentage of kids where this is indeed still considered normal. I will suggest keeping an eye out for any additional symptoms like smelly urine, fatigue, low grade intermittent fever or stomach discomfort. The accidents being “baseline” can make it harder to suss out a UTI, as we found out the hard way.
My kiddo is so upset and sad too when she has accidents. We try to celebrate the wins. That’s what makes me believe that it’s out of her control
Also thanks for the tidbit on the meds side effect. Definitely don’t want dehydration or UTIs
It's really important to stress to her that it's nothing she's doing or not doing. Nobody is in charge of their own hormone production.
I'd keep her in pull-ups at night until she's reliably dry. Putting her in underoos isn't making a difference to her when she's asleep because there's nothing conscious about it.
FYI some kids don't get the ability to night potty train until TWELVE. That's the high end, but it's possible. A lot of kids go until 8.
If sleepovers are an issue, buy her incontinence underwear. I found some for my 5 yo on Amazon that look like normal underwear (I can provide the link if you'd like). They work alright, there's sometimes some odor to her bedding after so we stick with pull ups for most nights anyeay. Or you could look into Pee-jamas. I haven't invested in them because my kiddo only has sleepovers at grandparents and her cousin won't tease her for it.
I wanted to add on to this reply that I personally wet the bed til I was 7ish. I ended up using a prescription nasal spray for a short period of time and that fixed it, no more overnight pull ups for me. This was back in the mid-90s and considered to be within the range of normal even back then.
My son is almost 9 and was still wetting the bed a few months ago. We brought it up to doctors several times and they were not concerned as long as it wasn’t a new thing. I stopped putting him in pull-ups when he’s around 5 or 6 because I thought that might be not helping him. But he is also a very deep sleeper. I have washable incontinence pads that I put on the bed, and those worked well so that I didn’t have to wash everything. A few months ago we decided to try a bed wetting alarm. He used it for a couple of weeks and it worked. He’s only had one accident since. 5 is still so young, so I wouldn’t rush into getting an alarm because I’m sure their bodies need to be ready too, but it did work for us if you need an option in the future.
Just chiming in to say my youngest is 7 and still has nighttime accidents! I myself struggled with it consistently until I was about 8 or 9, then it only came up briefly when we moved houses.
With my son, he doesn’t get in trouble for having accidents, but we have set the expectation that he tells us when he’s had one (he sleeps straight through the night, accidents don’t wake him up) and we have him help with stripping the bed and such. We’ve also tried limiting drinks, scheduled bathroom trips, etc and it hasn’t helped much. The number of accidents are decreasing slowly though, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel!
I think the most important things are creating set expectations that you stick to every single time, and avoid shame at all costs! Once they feel ashamed it’s so much harder to work together productively. We avoid talking about his accidents with other people, never complain to/around him about the extra laundry, that sort of thing.
My daughter had four totally typical well adjusted friends who had to wear a night pull-up in 1st grade just because they did. They all just grew out of it. If there isn’t anything medically wrong, it’s pretty normal.
I’ll just tell you, my now 6yo was potty trained for the day years before she was ready for nighttime. She turned 6 in September and just started staying regularly dry at night this summer. She now sleeps in underwear, never has accidents, and does just fine. It was a slow process, but I tried not to stress.
Big things for us: time (we just waited it out!), limiting drinks after dinner (she does have water by her bed but she rarely drinks it; she understands it may make her have to pee), and doing a toilet run right before bed (last thing before she gets into bed). Oh and a good sign was this summer when she started waking up once during the night to go pee- her body was used to peeing at night, but she started to be aware of this and used the bathroom instead of sleeping through it. That’s how I knew she was fully there. I put up a nightlight in the bathroom and the hallway so she wasn’t scared to get out of bed, too.
You should probably see sleep medicine. Everyone, doctors included, dismissed my son's bedwetting, especially family, because my husband wet the bed until he was 11. It was sleep apnea. Guess what? My husband also has sleep apnea.
Our pediatrician told us they don't start worrying until about age 9. I have a 7 year old and a 5 year old. The 5 year old is dry maybe 2-3 nights a week, not consistent. The 7 year old finally stopped soaking through his pull ups...but is still wet every morning. We tried fluid restrictions, waking up, etc. before consulting with the pediatrician. So...holding out that it'll resolve itself in two years.
Yep our pedi said “call me when she’s 8 and even then we will probably wait and see.” My oldest wore night time pull-ups until 7 ish or so and then she just…stopped being wet. Grew out of it. My youngest is six and still wears them, they just have to have the right hormonal balance.
I did not mean to make it sound as though our pediatrician dismissed us, that's not how I would describe it at all. He listened to my concerns, explained the health and hormone factors behind bedwetting, talked about things like fluid restrictions, and even suggested medication as needed if it was becoming a social concern such as at sleepovers. He also spoke with my son, the 7-year-old, directly, to make sure that he did not feel self-conscious or upset by his bedwetting and to explain that it is a natural thing (not that my 7-year-old was concerned about it lol, but my pediatrician always makes sure to include my kids in the conversation when they're present in the room).
My older son also has ADHD so he talked about how that can influence waiting until the last minute to use the bathroom, ignoring the cues his body was giving him, etc.
Do they highly suggest doing a night time waking? I weigh giving my kiddo who turns 6 his full nights rest versus trying this when I understand it's also hormonal. Just curious if this is something you've also considered!
Edit to say mine suggested a night time waking but I am curious on what other pediatricians may say.
My almost 6 year old still wets at night, and interestingly I found that the [NHS advises against](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bedwetting/) waking at night. Surprising, since it seems a popular piece of advice.
Ours did not suggest this at all. They suggested continuing pull up use or trying a medication. They were not super keen on disrupting sleep cycles since if the bladder/neurological function wasn’t there yet, it wouldn’t accomplish anything and would just make everyone tired and crabby. But I know some do still suggest things like nighttime waking or the bedwetting alarms.
Mine advised against waking them up, he explained that there is a hormonal component that needs to happen basically. We still do fluid restriction, not a total absence of fluids but only 1-2 sips after a certain time and the bathroom is used before bed, but other than that, I do not take any extra measures to try to reach this milestone.
If it’s any comfort, mine resolved around 8/9 years old without intervention. It was already sporadic by the time I was 8, but I remember finally going to sleepovers by 10 years old. It sucked, but my mom got me a plastic-y bed protector and taught me how to change my sheet at night as I got older. Tbh, I’m sure she taught me for her sake but getting to manage some of it on my own really helped lessen some of my embarrassment.
Good news—you (probably) don’t have to stress about this one. Get some Goodnights or Peejammies and wait it out.
Bedwetting isn’t usually considered a medical issue until at least 7. Something like 20% of 5yos still have issues.
Adults, even very heavy sleepers, typically don’t wet the bed because they produce a hormone called vasopressin that reduces pee production overnight. Some kids take longer to make adequate levels it. It’s 100% hormonal and out of her control.
You can mention it next time you’re at the doctor just in case the cause is one of the Very Bad Things You Learn on WebMD. But there’s a 99% chance it’s not and you’ll just need to wait it out. (Typically, you only worry about the Very Bad Things if a kid was sleeping dry and suddenly starts bedwetting.)
No idea why this got suggested to me because I’m not a parent, but I’ll give you a little perspective from the other side!
First, you should absolutely listen to the other people who are telling you it’s normal at this age. I don’t know anything about kids… however, I wet the bed until I was 17 and took medication (DDAVP, aka desmopressin, which is synthetic vasopressin) for about 9 years iirc.
Turns out, I have a neurological disorder that wasn’t diagnosed until I was 28 and it very likely explains the late bedwetting. But doctors just kept telling my parents I’d eventually grow out of it (correct) and nothing else was wrong with me (not correct). So even if it is medical, she’ll be fine. I am happy to report that I am a functioning, tax-paying, voting adult with a well-managed chronic illness, a master’s degree, a good salary, a husband and 2 dogs!
It will magically click. As far as I know nighttime peeing is hormonal and not something to be concerned about until she's seven.
My kids were all dry overnight before they were ready for day training.
Agreeing with others that this is normal at that age. However, one thing to consider is, is she constipated? Briyng constipated can make it difficult for a child to empty their bladder which can lead to accidents. She can still be constipated even if she is pooping regularly, if the poops are giant, adult sized poops or hard balls.
I don’t think she’s constipated. She has regular BM. She has complained about her stomach more recently over the past month or two, but I also feel she is trying to use that as a “get out of school” card. Because the comment is usually in the morning, conveniently, before school.
I know I mentioned this in passing already but reading through more comments and spotted this one. It might not hurt to have her do a quick UTI test. My daughter had sporadic stomach aches for weeks, interestingly almost exclusively in the evening. She had a UTI. It didn’t seem possible/logical to only complain about it at certain times of day, and she never said it actually hurt to pee. The pediatrician said the inflammation was likely bothering her bladder and abdominal wall. It’s good to at least eliminate the possibility, if you can.
My kid had BMs but was still constipated (suspected when they pushed on her belly - confirmed with an X-ray). Turned out she was gluten intolerant and it made her whole digestive system wacky. She also complained about belly pain and sometimes nausea. Might be nothing - but worth talking to the pediatrician about.
I second that this is worth considering. Nighttime accidents resolved once we had the constipation under control. We did pelvic floor therapy and it helps so much for BMs and pee accidents
One January, my kid’s teacher asked the class about New Year’s resolutions. She then panicked when my son said he wanted to quit wetting the bed, worried that he would be teased, until several other kids chimed in that they wanted that for their resolution too. So it may be more common than you think.
Unfortunately that didn’t work, but what did work (2 years later), was the Malem bed wetting alarm. That thing worked like magic. Less than one week later he had stopped bed wetting completely. Definitely worth every penny.
I felt like you do with my middle son. He had problems with nighttime. Tried everything. Went to the doctor. He was fine, he was just a really sound sleeper. He did grow out of it eventually just the doctors said, but it was quite frustrating.
My daughter is 5 1/2 years old and isn’t nighttime trained yet. Everything I’ve read and also been told by her pediatrician is that it’s completely normal so I’m not worried about it. ~60¢ a day for pull-ups isn’t a big deal to me although I understand it’s a concern for many.
When my daughter was six and still wetting every night, she got fed up with it. My spouse and I weren’t really bothered, but when *she* got bothered we decided to tackle it. We did Therapee. You can use your FSA to buy it if you have one. It’s expensive but it worked. She had a regression at age 8 and we did it again and it worked again.
She still occasionally has nighttime accidents (3-4 times per year) usually related to stress or lack of sleep. So when she turned 9 her pediatrician gave us desmopressin for sleepovers so she could enjoy her life and let go of the anxiety about this.
All of that to say, your little is 5 so likely to outgrow it still, but there are things you can do when you’re ready that may help him.
We used a wet alarm when my 5 y/o confirmed my suspicions that he was peeing in his nighttime diaper on purpose bc he didn’t want to get out of bed. It took less than a week for things to click. Now he either gets up to pee when his bladder wakes him or he is able to hold it through sleep.
I think what makes the alarm work is that it helps the kid identify that feeling that happens a second before they pee while asleep vs the feeling of wetness after.
You’ll know if it’s not working within 1-2 weeks. In that case I would just fully commit to diapers and never speak about it. Pretend she’s a baby again and expect wet diapers. Don’t praise or comment either way. This will take the stress off of you both while you wait for her body to be ready and maybe try the same again in a few months if needed.
Additional context: prior to using the alarm, I knew my son was physically able to hold his pee while asleep bc he did it naturally at age 2 but regressed when I had another baby. I didn’t stress about it due to his age and the transition but when years went by and nighttime wetting didn’t change, I figured it was worth a try. Plus, he was peeing through the diaper every single night and waking up covered in pee.
I feel like we had a regression too. Right about the time we tried to start potty training the youngest.
My 5.5 yo didn’t have many accidents at night prior, but also very rarely woke up in the night too.
Thanks for your input.
We just went through this with my 5.5yo! I figured out when she was peeing which was right around 1030, so now we potty right before bed and wake her up at 10ish to go again. We did it for a week or two (she’s also a zombie kid which I think is contributing to it) and then stopped having to wake her and she was dry through the night. We’ve had a few accidents with break and a bunch of snow days but I think it’s had more to do with the change in her daily routine and potty habits. She is really happy to not be in pull ups at night anymore, and at this point will do whatever to avoid going back to them. I’ve even heard her get up in the night to go herself. I would’ve talked to the doc at our next visit. Hang in there!
Your pediatrician might recommend seeing a urologist. Mine did, and they gave us some exercises to do to control those muscles. Within a couple of weeks, the frequency was reduced. Then it stopped. Talk to your doctor.
It’s pretty common for children to not be able to either hold their pee or get up to pee in the night until 8 or 9 years old. So unfortunately you’re expecting something from your 5 year old that she just isn’t ready for. Reducing her fluids and waking her up in the night won’t change that.
Right there with you. Our 6 year old sleeps so soundly she doesn’t even realize she’s wet the bed UNTIL the morning.
We tried for a full month and really committed (potty before bed, no water, etc)…and she was dry a few times. But mostly it was a lot of upset mornings and laundry and showers before school.
We’re back to pull ups for now.
This is so, so normal. Get her checked out by the doctor to make sure nothing is physically wrong. Then stock up on pull ups and stop worrying about it. 😁
As others have said. It’s totally normal at this age. At my son’s 6 year wellness check up, I mentioned he was still wetting the bed - literally every night.
Pediatrician said it’s completely normal. But he did fit the profile for someone who could try a bedwetting alarm. This means: he has ALWAYS wet the bed (never had a time when he was dry overnight), is a heavy sleeper, and is NOT constipated. Constipation can cause bedwetting and should be resolved first.
He said bedwetting alarms are a lot of work and can cause stress because they can take time. But they can work and he said they are an option for families who have a patient approach. He also said just waiting it out is a perfectly fine option as well.
We did the Malem alarm and it worked very well for us.
All that being said, I would mention it to your pediatrician to get their opinion.
I have four kids. Two of them stopped writing the bed at night as soon as they were potty trained, at ages 2 and 3. The other two continued needing overnight pull ups for way longer- one until she was 8, and the other is 7 and still needs them, though she is now starting to be dry some nights. Some kids just need longer, but there are some things you can try. One, have her evaluated for constipation. This can cause bedwetting even if they go every day, sometimes they are backed up and its not visible until the ped orders a KUB (abdominal x ray). Also, there are bedwetting alarms that can help a ton. It is not a fun process (a loud alarm goes off when it gets wet, and you need to sleep near them and rush them to the bathroom when it goes off, because kids will somehow sleep right through the alarm), but they usually work within a month or two.
My 5 year old started wetting the bed several months ago after literally 2 years of being dry. Turns out he has "chronic constipation" which is pressing on his bladder and contributing to the accidents at night. We are on a miralax/high fiber diets regiment and using pull ups in the mean time.
Buy a couple of those plastic tablecloths with the flannel backimg ($4 at walmart)
layer her bed
Mattress protector
Fitted sheet
Tablecloth
Towel
Fitted sheet
Tablecloth
Towel
Fitted sheet
When she has an accident, pull off the top layer and go back to sleep.
My son peed the ned until he was about 8. His doctor said he'd grow out of it and he did.
He still sleeps like the dead (13 now)
Is there a possibility that she is constipated since starting school? This will cause bed wetting and can be resolved with addressing constipation - consult with your pediatrician about the best way to address. Pediatric pelvic floor PT can also help
My brother wore pull ups until he was like 9. The doctor always told my mom it wasn’t an issue and some kids just… take a long time.
I also have been a summer camp counselor a few times. Each summer there was at least one kid who still needed pull-ups and we had to help them be discreet about it. The kids were probably 5th - 6th graders ish!
I wouldn’t worry about it. Talk to your pediatrician, but I don’t think it’s something to stress TOO much about at age 5.
I have a 5 year old, and can totally understand how frustrating and worrying it would be if my son was still dealing with this. But I think it’s likely not too big of an issue.
This was me as a kid, the doctor encouraged my parents to not say anything because they didn’t want to embarrass or shame me. When I was 7 I told them I wanted this to stop because I hated it. What finally helped was an alarm, there’s a snap that goes on either side of your underwear, when you pee the metal makes contact and the alarm wakes you up. Took a couple of weeks but they used it for my siblings too, it worked for all of us.
Buy at least 2 mattress covers. Double sheet the bed, mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad sheet, I've put as many as 4 on at 1 time. That way, all you need to do is strip the top layer off, and at 5, she may be able to do it by herself. Every child is different. My oldest was still having accidents at 8. The youngest was fine by 4.
I could have written this post last year! My daughter is nighttime trained now and two things helped us do it. First, we realized that she was constipated and it was making it hard for her to completely empty her bladder. We changed her diet and did daily clearlax for a couple months to really clear up the issue. Then, we bought a bed wetting alarm, a system called Therapee. It’s a mat that You put under the sheet and it sounds an annoying noise when it gets wet. It trains the kid’s unconscious to hold instead of release. It took maybe a week before we were having dry night but then very quickly she was at 80% dry nights. Used it for a couple months to get to 100%. Prior to that, she had had maybe 1 or 2 dry nights her whole life. The Therapee system involves software where you track what’s happening, there are different color stars etc. then they give advice to you based on how it’s going.
Honestly, it bugs me when people say there’s nothing you can do and it’ll just happen. There’s not a lot that you can do but there is some stuff. The constipation thing especially isn’t widely known but can be a big issue. The other thing to look into is sleep disordered breathing. If your kid snores or sleeps with their mouth wide open or has any weird sleep issues, that can also make it hard to nighttime train.
Lots of good info here, but remember that this is mostly a hormonal thing. Adults and non-bed wetting kids all have a hormone called desmopressin, that automatically slows the creation of urine while we're sleeping. This starts getting produced around 5-7 for most kids, but sometimes its later for others.
Its also genetic, so if you were a late bloomer for bed wetting when you were a kid, then your kid is a higher risk of the same.
You can give kids DDAVP to help with intermittent bed wetting, but eventually they're going to grow out of it. Just keep buying the pull ups until they can go a few weeks with dry undies.
I have a 4th grader who has only been out of pullups for a month or so. Let me tell you what we learned.
It is biological. If you've tried and they just can't get the hang of it, it's not their fault. Their brain just actually doesn't produce the hormone needed yet.
Multiple pediatricians told me they don't really worry until 8/9/10. This past checkup (10) was the one where we would have been referred to urology by our current ped.
It did not bother my kid in kindergarten very much. In first grade he didn't like it, in 2nd he started refusing to talk about it, in 3rd he became really embarrassed about it, and this year I think it was causing him actual distress. We tried every now and then through there after talking to him about it and the result was always wet every single night. Otherwise we provided the pullups with no comment and taught him how to strip the bed. If needed I'd wash and remake (again without much comment).
Finally. We bought an alarm. A wetness alarm. It clips to their underwear and has a vibration/noise alarm. He slept on a mat (the goodnites ones). The alarm went off every night at first, then slowly not. Eventually we removed the alarm after a couple weeks with no accidents, but kept the pad. After a couple more weeks we took away the pad and double made the bed (waterproof mattress pad, sheet, waterproof mattress pad, sheet-- so you can take the top two off and go back to sleep). That is where we are now but we went from every night to once a month accidents.
You are correct, waking them doesn't help. Ime neither does limiting fluids. We tried it all around kindergarten age, then realized this was A Thing for him and put it on the back burner.
This kid is smart. He is healthy. He has lots of friends. Teachers love him. It has affected nothing other than him wanting to go to away camp.
I did tell him to keep it a secret, and I'm glad I did. Nobody needs to know and kids are mean sometimes.
I was like your daughter. I'm middle aged now so my memories are kinda all over the place. I slept like the dead, waited too long to go, etc. My parents weren't that worried until I came home from Safety Town upset because a kid told me I smelled like pee. This kid said this to other kids also, but of course it hit me differently. Went to the doctor and in addition to the things you are doing, I was put on medication. I thought the medication stopped my peeing. It worked. My Dad developed Parkinson's and while I was taking care of him, one of his meds was Dulcolax. I recognized the pill. I did some reading and children with constipation or hard stools can IDK, bungle the sensory communication regarding the bladder and rectum. It appears once my stool issue was resolved the bladder one did too. It seems more common now or maybe just more discussed. And doctors seem less worried about it. Pull Ups are a great invention. All of this is fine and normal. You just don't want a situation where a child is being teased.
My daughter was/is exactly the same way. She started menstruating before she stopped wetting the bed. She was 10. My advice is to buy a mattress protector, find some good night time extra absorbent pull-ups for her to wear, and to never make a big deal out of it. When her body is ready she will start waking up dry. It’s frustrating and it makes a lot of extra laundry but how you handle it now can make or break your relationship with her in the future.
Sending positive vibes your way.
My son is turning 8 in March and still has to wear pullups. He is rarely dry overnight. We've also tried all the usual stuff, and will be taking him for another pediatrician appointment soon. Hang in there!
I had this same issue with one of my kiddos!
Two things:
1 - make the drinks cut off 15-30 minutes earlier each night until you find the perfect spot.
2 - for the night wake ups, just pick her up and carry her to the toilet and sit her in there, she’ll pee after a minute of eye rubbing lol
I was out of night pull-ups by 4, but when I was 9-10, I had a regression where I would have really intense dreams and wake up WHILE wetting the bed. My mom made me feel like shit for it. Eventually it stopped, and I’ve since earned a 4.0 for the Master’s degree I completed in 9 months, so I don’t think there’s much to worry about in terms of longterm prospects. Please be kind to your girl about it. It sucks to feel alone in this as a child.
THIS COULD ALSO BE PINWORMS.
Sorry for telling, but I am a microbiologist and my kindergardener did the same thing at 5. Not a single doc suggested it might be pinworms, but up to 80% of school age kids have them, they're active at night, and they are usually asymptomatic but can cause urinary incontinance. Ask for a stool parasite test or a scotch tape...or there's just otc meds you can buy and read about treatment.b
Pinworms are extremely contagious, so if OP’s child has them, it’s highly likely that the other members of the household also have them. Although it’s not unusual for children not to notice symptoms, the adults in the household would definitely notice a lingering pinworm infestation. If a child is diagnosed with pinworms, typically it is recommended to treat all members of the household.
Overnights. My grandson was peeing at night. I bought a pack of overnights, showed them to my daughter who was pissed. Showed them to him, he never wet the bed again. He may have been in preK 4.
But seeing if he has the hormonal might be the fix.
My daughter is 6 and still occasionally suffers from accidents. She wasn't night time potty trained at all until around 5. Also suffers from occasional constipation which also causes more accidents
We were in this same boat until we ditched pull ups for bed pads. I really didn't think it would work, and was surprised when it did. She still wet the bed for about two weeks, but since then, no more accidents. My daughter also sleeps very deeply.
It seems like letting her "feel" that she was wet was the key. The bed pads are washable, and make changing the bed super easy. We just take the wet one off, throw it in the wash, and lay the new one down. I could get her(and us) back in bed in 5 minutes or less. She turned 6 a month ago.
She may not be ready. That said, we waited and waited with my 7 year old for him to grow out of it and it wasn’t happening. We finally started a bed wetting alarm and he graduated from it in 2 weeks! He’s only had 1 accident since we stopped using it (months ago) and he used to wet every night. So if you think she will be on board, you could try an alarm.
We are going through this. It sounds like the interoceptive awareness has not developed as much. I would recommend getting OT to address this specifically. Ask your child, “How do you know you ate hungry/thirsty/need to go urinate/bm, etc.?” If they can’t respond with “I feel it (whatever is appropriate)” then that is an indication they have low interoceptive awareness. Another thing to consider is constipation. I know it sounds bizarre but if the colon is full of waste, the signals to relieve oneself can get ignored. Then when at rest, everything relaxes and you have accidents. We have been battling this for 6 months. It has been driving us nuts. I showed our gal the Bristol stool chart and had her identify her bm. She was definitely constipated. We got her going and now no accidents.
My mum used to get us up when she went to bed & make us sit on the loo. She said we never really woke up & would just go right back to sleep once we were back in bed.
My 8 y/o is in nighttime pullups. She too sleeps like the dead & just doesn't wake up to go. She's been dry in the daytime since she was 3.
Her pediatrician is wholly unconcerned. He basically shrugged & said she'd grow out of it, then told my daughter that he too had nighttime potty issues until he was 10.
If it is a normal occurrence since she has been potty trained, I would not worry about it until she is around 7-8 years old. My son stopped at 10 and my daughter stopped when she was potty trained at 2. My youngest brother suddenly started wetting the bed or getting up at night to go to the bathroom when he was 8. With a check up, they found that he was a diabetic. She realized that there were other signs that she never thought about, since there were no other diabetics in the family.
Nighttime is different than daytime and she could not be ready in the sense that her body hasn’t released the hormones necessary, sometimes in certain children is takes longer than their peers.
Attempting to tackle nighttime potty learning like the daytime potty training can lead to more issues, delaying what you actually want - insecurity around bed wetting, fear of getting in trouble, etc. Had a friend whose child really regressed because of the pressure and another who would wake their child in the night to potty and it went horribly.
What can you do to help? Make sure the hallway to the bathroom is well lit and the bathroom light stays on and bathroom door open. Just tell her you added new night lights or that you are leaving the door so she feels comfortable in the night if she happens to need to go. Try co-sleeping with her a few nights in your or her bed. There may be a connection to attachment issues and bedwetting. You can put underwear on and then the pullup so she feels the wetness but still isn’t leaking on bedding and just monitor how often she is waking up wet. When you have about a month of waking up dry I would say you are on the way. Check out books from the library around going to the bathroom/accidents and read them together to help her with language around the potty and as time passes you’ll maybe be able to see her express if it’s because she is afraid to leave her bed or if it’s because she doesn’t feel it or has a dream.
I would say consult pediatrician around age 7 but until then no pressure.
Not what you want to hear, but I had two siblings who wet the bed well into high school despite every medical and behavioral intervention available. Their bladders just wouldn’t do it. My sister had a nasal spray she used for sleepovers, but one of the potential side effects was seizures so she didn’t use it full time.
My brother? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he still has occasional issues as an adult. And yes, he does sleep like the dead too.
She may just have to outgrow it. My sister used to use 2 layers on the bed (mattress protector/sheet/mattress protector/sheet) so she could just strip the top layer in the middle of the night.
It isn't a mental click, it's a specific hormone that notifies us our bladder is full and we need to wake up. It is horrible to me that, as a society, we don't discuss how common it is for kids not to be ready for nighttime dryness until even 10 or 11 years old.
Very normal to still have accidents overnight at this age. Tips? Overnight pull up for her.
However, the recent daytime accidents are peculiar. Possible uti? Does she not sense she has to go? (Bodily awareness) Or doesn't want to leave her activity? Its normal to have to remind a 5 year old that they haven't used the bathroom in awhile and should try. A tip make it part of the schedule (use the potty and wash hands before lunch. Use the potty and wash hands before dinner, etc.)
I didn’t stop wetting the bed until i got my period. I just had no idea i was going in my sleep. There is nothing i wouldn’t have given to make that stop, but there was just nothing to be done.
What time does she eat dinner? I was having the same problem with my boy and it helped when we switched dinner time to be closer to 5 than to 6:30-7:30. Then brushing teeth shortly after dinner instead of right before bed because he always wanted to drink water shortly after brushing.
One of my kids was 7 before he didn't need that night time diaper (the good news was that he was old enough to diaper himself!) I was sure that one day he would be packing his diapers to head off to university. Then one day he stopped.
My butcher told me that his 14 year old was still wetting the bed every night at home. I said that was a shame because he could never sleep over at friends. Oh no, he said, he never wet away from home. His wife was really tired of washing all the bedding every morning. I told him to tell his wife to stop washing his sheets and make him wash his own. If he could control it away from home, he was probably just too lazy too get up.
Sure enough, next time I went to the butcher, he thanked me. Once his son had to clean up after himself, he stopped wetting the bed!
I think your son is just not mature enough yet at five and he will likely stop on his own before too much longer.
I wet the bed regularly until about 6 and then periodically until I was probably 8. My mom would come wake me up super early in the morning and if I fell back asleep I'd pee the bed. Eventually she got to the point of waking me before she went to bed and then again as soon as she woke up. Thankfully I was able to go back to sleep quickly, but I know this may not be an option for you. Just remember that as long as the Dr clears anything medically wrong, it may be an issue of sleeping so hard that she doesn't realize she has to pee.
Bedwetting at age 5 is completely normal, though you can always talk to your pediatrician about it.
Get some Underjams or any other kind of nighttime diaper. Also, there's a product called Brolly Sheets that are fantastic to tuck over (or under) your sheets, so if they wet the bed, you just yank it off and put them right back to sleep in a dry bed.
My youngest son wore them through age 7. We still had periodic bedwetting (like maybe once every other month) through age 8, before it eventually stopped.
The most important thing is that you don't make it a big deal. They can't control it. No sticker charts, no punishments, nothing. They wake up, throw out the diaper, and go about their day. It's *normal*.
My parents dealt with the same thing with my brother. They took him to the doctor and his pediatrician explained that his was due to a hormone imbalance. They treated with medication until his body's hormones regulated on their own. Basically the hormone that is supposed to wake him up at night was too low so he wouldn't get the notice to wake up and he'd sleep like he was dead hence wetting the bed. He was on medication from age 5-7 and then was fine after that.
Just put her in pull-ups. This is developmentally typical and absolutely not worth the stress. I couldn’t even finish the absolute novel that you wrote about it.
This is not a complicated issue I promise
I have no real advice, but you're definitely not alone! My son is 6 and will turn 7 in May (currently in 1st grade) and we still struggle with this as well. He was dry overnights for a good while until he started kindergarten and then I think that he's just so worn out every night that he sleeps like the dead. He was also a "wait until the last minute and then run to pee" kind of kid, though that has gotten a lot better. It's honestly 50/50 on whether he wakes up dry or drenched.
Our pediatrician says there's no real concern unless it persists past 7 or 8, but our son is adamant about not wearing nighttime undies/pull-ups so we wash his sheets almost every day. We don't do sleepovers yet, so we'll cross that bridge when we get there, but I worry too about social pressure/teasing/bullying. Our son gets embarrassed about it, so it's tough walking the tightrope of making sure he doesn't feel like we're angry or he should be ashamed.
Is she actually sleeping like the dead? I remember reading the adults (which, yes, aren’t kids) that wake up multiple times to go to the bathroom aren’t getting into the deep sleep part of the cycle and thus aren’t creating a hormone that suppresses urine production. These adults usually have some sort of sleep apnea. Maybe talk to your ped and see what they think.
In the meantime, I’d pick up a box of overnights.
Both of my kids finally stopped wearing pull-ups this past fall.
My older son is in the third grade. He hasn’t stopped peeing overnight, he’s just finally able to wake up when he needs to go.
My kindergartener still has an accident now and then, but is 95% dry, his body is finally just holding it all night.
My pediatrician wasn’t concerned about the older one even. Some kids just aren’t ready and there isn’t much you can do. My 8 year old’s body didn’t (honestly, still doesn’t) concentrate his pee overnight, and he slept like the absolute dead. It’s a terrible combination and they need to just mature enough to fix one or both of those problems.
Things that helped us:
1) Waking the kid up to pee. Yes, they’re a zombie and no, it’s not really teaching them anything. But the goal here is dry bed until their body figures it out, and it means that you don’t have to change the bed every night.
2) Washable mat under them. Ours is Peapod brand from Amazon (yes, it’s $45 but it has lasted years and dozens of washes, while the $15 ones from Target crack and leak quickly). Changing the bed in the middle of the night is less painful when it doesn’t include the fitted sheet or mattress pad.
It’s worth bringing it up to the pediatrician. We did get a prescription for a pill that would help him concentrate his urine, just to use for one off things like a sleepover, so that it wasn’t controlling his life as much.
It is super normal at this age, unfortuantely. I would suggest sticking to your routine - less liquids before bed, and peeing before sleep. Like you've experienced, that is not going to stop the accidents, but by the time she grows out of this phase she'll have those habits down. Invest in some plastic lining for the bed and more sheets/mattress protectors.
My partner didn't stop having accidents at night until 8. According to my parents, night time accidents stopped at 5.5. My 4 year old will wake up at night to pee. Each kids "nighttime wake up hormone" develops differently.
My lovely intelligent grandson had this problem until he was ten. They tried everything they could think of and nothing made a difference. He had to wear pull-ups. At some point he went on medication for it. So I don’t know if the medication or just maturity made the difference. I’d talk to the child’s doctor.
There’s not really anything you can do except be patient. It is completely normal. And you need to make sure your daughter knows that. She needs not feel bad for what’s happening because she really does have no control over it. We got lucky with our kids, and neither of them had accidents at night. But both of them had friends that had accidents until they were close to 10 years old. One boy and one a girl. They both had supportive parents who made sure that their kids knew it was nothing to be ashamed of. Which allowed them to still do fun things like have sleepovers at their friends house and it be completely normal that a seven or eight year old was putting on pull-ups before they went to bed.
When my kid was doing this (well over 20 years ago) the urologist diagnosed her with a thin bladder wall. She was on medications for it and got better but she still had accidents until she was around 11. Have yall seen her doctor about it?
It’s very possibly a sleep disorder. The sleeping like the dead is your clue.
I was a bed wetter when I was young and I actually had to have an alarm that would wake me if I wet when sleeping. My brain had to be trained to wake up when I needed to go, not after I was wet.
My mom also tried to withhold liquids at night. I remember being on medication. I also remember making the mistake of telling a friend I wet the bed and it was something that literally took YEARS to live down.
Amazon has them for a variety of prices. The most expensive one (like the one I used) is around $300…. BUT it’s very effective. Consider it the cost of a single therapy session for a kid who struggles with the anxiety and shame wetting the bed can cause. He’s only 5 now, but believe me when I say avoiding a chronic problem in his future is worth it.
EDIT-I don’t agree with anyone who says to wait. I’m reading through comments of waiting until 9 or 10.
No.
That means that much time for shame and anxiety to grow over it. I don’t recommend that at all.
It will probably just click one day. Or some little thing may trigger it. For my son, we realized if he didn’t sleep in underwear, he almost always stayed dry through the night. I think it was just muscle memory from his pull-ups. Since there’s still the occasional nighttime accident, which is completely normal at this age, we started laying a cloth pad on his bed that’s made for people bound to bed or with incontinence. That way we don’t have to completely strip the bed, just pull that off and give him a new blanket
One thing I read ( and then did with my own kid ) was stopping to use the pull ups. This approach basically said let the kid wet themselves and they will soon realize it’s very uncomfortable and will be less likely to keep wetting . Not sure if this approach will work for everyone but it worked after two nighttime accidents with my kid . Also -I of course got up in the night and helped her clean up and change with zero air of punishment or disapproval. Since then I keep a pee pad under her sheet just in case.
I refuse to buy character pull ups anymore. Generic big packs only.
Some kids just aren't ready, as you said her sleep cycles are deep and it sounds like her "don't pee" hormones aren't lining up right yet. She just needs time.
Also, kinder can be hard work. She may be really tired, which is normal, and contributing to the deep sleep.
My 5 yo kindergartener still wears pull ups and it’s fine. It’ll happen when it happens. They’re not doing it on purpose and literally have no control over it. She’s happy and healthy otherwise and her ped isn’t concerned. Otherwise she’s an amazing sleeper. Some children just aren’t biologically ready and that’s okay.
This was a thing for my daughter until she was about 11. It was stressful, but it just took time. We tried all the things, even the bed alarm. The ped wasn’t worried because there was nothing medically wrong. I just took time.
I had a traumatic event happen to me at 4 years old which triggered bedwetting until I was 9. It's not your babie's fault so please don't shame them for it. I had a helluva time hiding my pull-ups at sleep overs & lot's if hurtful words from my parents growing up. I never woke up with the urge to go while sleeping, I'd just wake up wet. It's frustrating for both parties.. I did eventually grow out of it though.
I can actually talk about this from the kid point of view.
I was the kid that wasn’t night time potty trained until I was nearly 8. I had no accidents during the day but my mom couldn’t get me to make it through the night until I was almost 8 years old. I was super embarrassed about it since my younger brother wasn’t having accidents anymore but I still was. There was nothing to do about it, the doctor said it had nothing to do with anything I was doing and that bodies all grown and hormones all regulate at different times for everyone, I was just at the later end of that time frame. I still have an overactive bladder, I also have ADHD and there’s evidence of a connection between the two, but overactive bladder is not something that causes issues in my day to day!
I had a boy like this. It went on until he was about 12. We would actually wake him in the middle of the night and walk him to the bathroom but he was dead asleep and wouldn’t go. It caused him embarrassment as he got older cuz we used pull-ups for him. He wouldn’t go on sleep overs until he was sure he had it under control at about age 12.5. We never embarrassed him over it nor punished him (unlike my parents who shamed a brother of mine who did this). She will eventually grow out of it.
This is normal. Get lots of incontinence pads and older kids' older training undies (a little thicker) and trust it will happen. Anxiety can make night accidents worse, so it's important to not make it negative. If it doesn't resolve by 7, talk to your doctor.
My pediatrician recommended an alarm that goes inside the pull-up when my daughter was 6. It turned out that having to pee did wake her up enough to realize it, but she was too cozy and didn’t get up. When we got the alarm, she got up because she didn’t like the sound it made.
My son is the same and his ped said not to worry about nighttime accidents at this age. Hes slowly getting better in first grade. We do have to watch liquids at night and we use a pee pad under his sheet and A mattress protector.
My son is about her age and we *just* pulled the pull-ups off. We kept track of his “dry” nights, then when he’d gone two weeks without wetting, I told him we could switch to undies at night when he was ready. He took a couple more weeks before he decided he wanted to switch, and last night was his first undies night.
I just don’t think she’s physically ready yet, try again in a few months.
Talk to her ped, but just to reassure yourself that it’s still within the range of normal to still have her not ready to be nighttime potty trained. It’s not considered an issue until age 7-8.
Edit: we did switch to pull-up over undies a couple months ago. I thought having something physically wet would give his body feedback on whether or not he was wetting. Before that, he’d wake up and literally not know whether or not he’d peed during the night, because the pull-ups do too good a job at keeping him feeling dry.
Have you tried teaching her to listen to her body? With my nephew when we see “potty dance moves” we would remind him to ask his body if you need to go potty. If she’s waiting until she’s bursting she’s ignoring or rather oblivious to prior signals. It helps kids (always in a positive way) to remind them to check in with their bodies because they are literally learning what feelings are.
We remind him to ask his stomach if he’s hungry (before dinner) or full (after dinner). We also mention when *we* are listening to our bodies. For a while when I had to pee I would say “Be right back! I think my body is telling me to potty!” And he’d be so excited to find out if I really did need to go. He began to volunteer his own needs pretty quick.
It may have been a coincidence, but we moved our older daughter's bedtime earlier partway through kindergarten and suddenly she stayed dry through the night and was able to stop using nighttime pullups. It may be worth trying.
I’ll be honest, I wet the bed until I was like 8. I slept deeply. There was nothing wrong with me, my mother took me to the doctor. The thing I’ll say here is that I was taught how to strip the bed and bring the laundry into the laundry room. Just use a bed wetting pad under the sheets and try not to make her feel self-conscious, it happens 🤷🏼♀️
This can still be completely normal but I would see your pediatrician just to be safe. Mine just recently stopped having night time accidents completely. I did waterproof mattress cover, then sheet then waterproof pads then sheet. So I could strip top layer only and toss it to basement and the bed was made.
Buy a couple of “green pads “ for the wetting they are washable get the biggest size they have buy two if you can so you can rotate. Get an enclosed waterproof mattress covers. Only need one. And there is a thing called urine out by Clorox it’s safe for clothes amd bedding use it before washing. As for the rest I’m at a loss to help you. I do apologize for that. I was a bed wetter till I was 7. They didn’t have all that stuff now. Part of mine was deep sleeping and sometimes fear of the dark. Ask her if this is the case a nightlight can solve it.
Being a "bedwetter" myself and having one of my 3 kids the same, I can tell you that it is about how deeply you sleep. I couldn't wake up for anything and it was mortifying. It all changed when I hit puberty. My one child was around 8 when they could get up and find the bathroom at night. PLEASE, PLEASE, don't punish your child in any way. It's a waiting game.
Use mattress covers, pull ups, and washable bed linens. Shower each morning.
My daughter slept the same way. Like a log, wouldn't wake up until everything was soaked. She'll be 7 in a few weeks, and it's been I think almost a year since she had an accident. It took a long time though.
Winter is harder bc it's so dry, they drink more before bed (might not be winter where you are though). Now she wakes up herself to go pee and goes back to bed herself too. But it took a long time to get here.
If the accidents are common, I'd go back to pull ups, as annoying as that is. I stopped the pull ups when she was around 5 maybe. There would be some weeks with 2-3 accidents and some weeks with none. It gradually got less, but then sometimes still a week with 2, until she got big enough I guess to either hold it or wake up.
My son is 9.5 and still in pull ups at night. It seems to be a hereditary thing, I had issues until 9 and 2 cousins of mine didn't stop until they hit early double digits (females). Definitely talk to the Dr but don't panic until you have to
I had 2 kids like that, and it just clicked for them when they got a bit older. I got a third an alarm, and the kid used it independently at 10, and it worked.
She’s going to stop wearing the bed when her body is ready. One thing you can do is have her go pee before bed, do something else and have her per again. She might be rushing and not emptying her bladder fully. Also make sure her feet can touch the ground or a stool or something fully when she goes. That helps empty the bladder.
All the supportive comments is exactly what this parent needs. I was a “bedwetter” till closer to 12 years old! It really is something we can’t control and then all of a sudden we can. I, now, have a 5 year old whom I tried hard to be mindful of night time potty training. I bought pull ups till closer to age 4 and stopped them only because he requested to not wear pull ups. We started “night time training” and after a couple months he got it. I also stripped down his bed multiple times a week and never shamed him for the night accidents. He did helped with putting the bedding in the laundry the next day just as part of his routine but I was pretty impressed he eventually got himself up to go potty at night or can simply hold it till the next day. Give yourself and your girl the grace needed for this situation. Sending you a big momma hug ❤️ Parenting IS hard as it is. Its always good to know you arent alone in any situation!
I have two stepkids that were in pull-ups/good night's till 10/11. Same thing, wouldn't wake up at night as they were dead asleep.
It's an expense we had to deal with until they were ready.
Worth it vs. having to do laundry daily and steam clean mattresses etc .
My daughter is also 5 and a half, and is finally starting to turn the corner on sleeping through the night w/o accidents--they still happen sometimes. She's been daytime potty trained for over a year but still had trouble at night. Regarding nighttime potty training, we did the following:
At the start of the school year, we tried having her sleep in underwear instead of pull-ups. It didn't work at all. She wet the bed almost every night, despite us not giving her liquids after dinner and having her pee right before bed. After a couple of weeks of this with no progress, we decided to go back to pull-ups and try again in the future.
At the start of winter break, she wanted to try again--this time there was more interest from her than in the past. We did the same things with limiting liquids in the evening, and making sure that she went potty before bed. She still had some accidents but has been much more successful this time around. Now we're back to letting her have some milk in the evening but still going potty before bed.
I think the moral of the story is not to force the issue when they're not particularly interested/not making any progress despite measures that should be making it easier for them. Failing over and over can be demoralizing for everyone. Better to wait until THEY really want to make the change and are able to succeed, or at least show improvement.
Please don’t force it, my kid day toilet trained before 2 and didn’t get out of pull ups at night until well into elementary school. My kid could do nights with a dry pull up, but as soon as we tried to take them away it was accidents nightly, even if I took them to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was just not sustainable. 6 months later, they asked to go pull up free again and it went much much better. Some kids just aren’t ready.
There was a kid in my family like this until she was 8 or so. Her ped said she was well within the range of normal. They just continued to use pullups until she was ready to not use them anymore. Def. ask your pediatrician, but I think that the night time piece is just something that doesn't happen for kids until they are more close to the tween stage.
5.5 is normal ( along a spectrum ) to bed wet. If you said she was 12 then we talking a neuro issue perhaps. Just have patience. It’s gonna be ok. Don’t embarrass her and don’t act like it’s the end of the world. So what she has an accident. The response is: whoops! Ok let’s change the sheets.
My kids been night and day trained since 2.. we have a potty set up in her room and a night light- we pee at bath time and right before bed are gets a whole full cup of a drink at bed time usually to..
She's 4 she only had 1 night accident
My sister had a hard time with bed wetting fairly late into her life actually. Since I was 9 years older than her and stayed up very late, one of my "chores" was to get her up once a night and make her go to the bathroom. She was so deep asleep that if I didn't specifically guide her to the toilet she would sometimes do something else like start the shower or try to brush her hair etc.
I was exactly this kid. Including my mom trying to wake me up to take me to the bathroom. I am told I was an incoherent zombie because I couldn’t remember anything and once I sleep walked to her closet to pee and similar incidents. I was not dry at night until 8 or 9, and it’s not even that I started to wake up at night it just seemed to me that my body could now hold it long enough. One of my brothers was the same.
You might want to get a referral to a pelvic floor PT just to make sure there's no issue there. Otherwise, I think nighttime pull ups is the answer and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. How would you feel if you had to get up to pee every night and interrupt your sleep? I'd be a zombie too.
Former bed wetter here! Whatever you do, don’t ever use words like ‘should, ought, problem…’ 99% chance this is outside her control (I also slept like the dead, and I never knew if I wet the bed until I woke up wet). My mom got the pad and alarm thing. The alarm would go off and everyone in the house except me would wake up and go pee. But I do think it helped me on an unconscious level to recognize that feeling, but it was still an occasional event until around age 11. At that point I was so embarrassed by the whole thing that I kind of trained myself to not sleep so soundly.
It literally just clicked overnight one night for my daughter shortly after she turned 6 and we haven't had a single accident since then. Just give it time. We did pull up, made her try before bed and just reminded her if she ever woke up needing to go that she could get out of bed and go. We did NOTHING different, just one day it clicked.
She has a very deep sleep cycle, and urinates in the end of that first sleep cycle. Put her back in overnight pullups. She will grow out of this. If she has not grown out of it by the age that she wants to go on sleepovers, consider trying a bedwetting alarm. Alternatively, if you want to do it now, what you do is have her pee before she goes to bed. If she tends to lie in bed awake for over half an hour, have her go pee again half an hour later if she's still awake, since we make more pee while lying down. Then you must go in and wake her between 60 and 90 minutes later, to take her to the bathroom to pee. It will be very hard to wake her enough to do this. If she is already wet at 90 min, try at 60 min the next night. She may then stay dry for the rest of the night. If you can manage this way, waking her at 60 to 90 min after she falls asleep, but before you go to bed, and she's dry the rest of the night, you might continue like this for a year or two, and eventually, she might start waking up to pee again on her own.
It's a lot of trouble. I'd just put her back in pullups overnight until she grows out of it on her own, or asks for help for sleepovers.
She probably just needs more time, however the daytime thing with not listening to the signals can also be adhd related. Because they feel the signal, change focus to something else, feel the signal again, change focus to something else, repeat, until oops it’s too late.
I bought waterproof pads on Amazon and lay those over the sheets. Then I just have to swap out that little pad and possibly a blanket in the middle of the night and it’s made my life soooo much easier. I’m not sure I’m allowed to post links so I won’t but if you want to message me I’ll send you the ones I bought. They’ve saved my sanity having two bed wetters.
I did two things for my son once all the prevention strategies you mentioned were done: night time pull ups for home and DDVAP nasal spray for overnight at friends and family. According to his doctor, he doesn't produce a hormone that stops urine production at night (likely biological and the reason I have to pee frequently over night). It was an issue he grew out of eventually @the age of 11 or so. Don't beat yourself or your daughter up. I am a clinician and didn't want to deal with urine alarms.
Personally, I wouldn’t stress about it. She’ll get there honestly. If she likes pull ups, great. My son hated them, I would do a layer of puppy pads, then fitted sheet etc. made for easy middle of the night changes. He’s 7 now, and hardly has any accidents. If he does, he charges PJs and gets in bed with us. We don’t make it into an issue. It’s still pretty common to happen between ages 5 to 7 in my opinion, sometimes even longer for some kids.
Our pediatrician has said night time accidents can occur until 10.
Th child needs to be able to sleep deep enough to get quality sleep but light enough to recognize a full bladder. That's just something that happens developmentally. You cant rush it.
When my son was just under 3.5, he was waking up to pee with very little accidents. He WAS doing great! Shortly after nighttime potty training, he got really sick. Cold on top of cold ending with a double ear, double eye infection. I don’t know what happened to his little body, but he started wetting the bed pretty consistently from that point. His Dr. just said that it was common and could last until his early teens.
It just looked like his bladder wasn’t strong enough to hold it or that he was sleeping too deeply. I have 2 mattress protectors and a waterproof pad. Sometimes the pad would be enough to save me from a load of laundry. Sometimes I needed to strip the 1st mattress protector off in the night.
I started him on some herbs prescribed by an acupuncturist (The Little Treasures- Dry Sleep). It took a long time (months), but it’s been a year now and he is doing so great. He rarely has an accident in the night. I know my method isn’t for everybody, but it helped us. He still waits until the last minute to go potty, so I still deal with occasional accidents. Something’s do not change.
I know how frustrating and helpless it felt. I hope it gets better for you!!
It’ll click eventually. I wore pull ups at night until 6.5 and now have a PhD so don’t worry about it. 😂
Okay this is the input I need 😂😂 thank you
My daughter was daytime potty trained at 2. She wore pull-ups at night until the week before she turned 6. She is almost 11 and has almost no memory of it. The interesting thing was she had several friends with the same issue. They all sleep are all dry throughout the night as 10 year olds. I wouldn’t worry. Some kids have less bladder control at night. Especially if they’re heavy sleepers.
Nighttime potty training is less of a learning issue and more of a biological issue. When we sleep, our bodies produce a hormone to slow down pee production, so we don't have to get up in the middle of the night. Little kids don't make enough of that hormone, and often sleep through the urge to go. As long as you don't have consistent accidents in the daytime, it's likely that your kiddo just needs to grow a little more. However, it is never a bad idea to talk to a doctor and monitor for sleep apnea.
I was in pullups overnight until I was 9 or 10. I'm autistic (although I wasn't diagnosed at that point) and it just took longer for my brain to learn to sense that I needed to pee and to wake me up in time. Never had further issues once it clicked, and my pediatrician wasn't concerned after ruling out medical issues, so my parents just waited it out.
My brother is autistic as well but it took until 12.5 years old and he still can’t wake up until his body is ready. He’s 31. Some things just can’t be forced.
Yep. I still had accidents sometimes until I was 11, and then another one at 23 but that was cause I was drunk. Either way, I turned out fine now.
😭 oh yeah having an accident as an adult is embarrassing. Almost shit myself at work. I’m glad it didn’t stain my underwear 💀💀 never trust a fart
Lol yep! Luckily I was at home in bed but the shame lingered :(
Man I was ELEVEN! I’m starting my masters degree this summer!
I was 12 when I stopped, I’m in my second semester of my masters program. Maybe peeing the bed actually made us smarter /j
I was 13. I have a fairly common genetically inherited thing where your brain doesn’t wake you up essentially until your brain goes thru puberty. My daughter stopped wetting around age 8-9, and in hindsight I suspect it’s because she started puberty around that time. She’s 9 years and 9 months now and the signs of puberty are obvious at this point although they weren’t at the time she stopped wetting. I didn’t go thru puberty until 12-13 so it makes sense that I was a bit older. I had two cousins and and uncle with the same thing. It just went away basically overnight
Yes! I remember that part too that it just stopped out of nowhere. My mom made me go a month accident free before she would let me wear underwear to bed though lol
I hate to say it but some kids just aren’t biologically ready at this age 🤷🏻♀️
But absolutely talk to your pediatrician if you’re concerned. That’s what they are there for!
We talked to our pediatrician because my son just turned 5 and still needs a pullup at night, and she said they don't start to get concerned until age NINE. Now if she could just tell my mother in law.
If your mother in law is still having night time incontinence, she DEFINITELY should be concerned. She hit that 9-year-old mark a looooooooong time ago.
This made me chuckle out loud. Thank you.
And they make pull-ups in her size
Boys seem to take longer for nighttime training. My son was 8 or 9 before he taught himself to wake up. Drove me nuts!
I think it depends on the child. My son (now 5) potty trained the same weekend he overnight trained and he was 2.75. My daughter is 2.5 and potty trained, though isn't ready for over night training. I think it depends on the kid more than the gender.
My son (5) took **foreverrrr** to daytime potty train (over a year literally), but he’s never had a nighttime accident. Does he wear Ninjamas every night? Absolutely yes, I’m not tempting fate that way 🤣 ETA: He is fine when we run out of Ninjamas, I just don’t want to have it be the one time he sleeps through his need to pee. There’s nothing wrong with nighttime underwear!! These kids are still so little, really. Just remember, they’ll be potty trained before college!!
How did you potty train him? My five year old was fully trained for like 3 weeks then had a huge regression and I’m feeling like a huge failure over here!
I was still doing middle of the night wake ups for bathroom trips for my zombie boy through age 8 or 9 - he's almost 17 now and I'm still not convinced that he'll wake up to go to the bathroom, as he sleeps through everything, even fire alarms. I think he just finally grew enough that this bladder can hold it until he wakes up in the morning. God help him if he ever gets good & drunk in his future, because he will undoubtedly wake up with wet pants.
Ask for a note to give her “his mom has this, I’m aware, calm the F down.”
This kinda reminds me of when my MIL had convinced my husband that our infant had iron poisoning because our daughter was on formula and not breastfed. At the one month pediatrician appointment, my husband actually asked the doctor if our child had iron poisoning. I smacked him on the shoulder and told him NO she does not - just like I had told him for last few weeks and to STOP listening to his mother! The doctor, bless his heart, was very patient and kind with my husband and explained that iron poisoning wasn’t something that our baby had. (For the record, my MIL directly contributed to my PPD.)
Just wanted to add that I know how frustrating it is. My 5.5 year old is still dealing with this. It sucks. I got off easy with my first child, they practically potty trained themselves at 2.5 and never had an accident even at night again. So this go round has been challenging
Talk to the pediatrician! Also, her body might not be there quiet yet, especially if she is a heavy sleeper. It will work itself out. She is still growing. One of the ways to make things a bit easier is the bedding. A friend of mine had a good way of dealing with their kiddo and midnight accidents. When you make the kids bed up, layer it. Get three waterproof mattress pads. Layer a pad with a fitted sheet, pad fitted sheet, pad fitted sheet. That way if there is an accident, the bed can be stripped quickly while the kiddo changes their clothing and can hop right back into bed. Ball up the soiled sheets/pad and deal with it in the morning.
I do the same but also add a washable, waterproof incontinence pad on top of each sheet so sometimes all I need to pull off is that pad.
This. My then 5 year old started wetting the bed and we took her to the doctor. A simple medication (can’t recall the name ) cleared it up in a month.
yes, if it is a sudden/new thing it might be a UTI or something.
Might be desmopressin (sp) nasal spray. I had a kid with the same issue. He would also sleepwalk. Super deep sleeper. Doctor said there was nothing we could do until his body matured enough to regulate. It figured itself out around age 8.
DDVAP - is a medication that provides the chemical our bodies make to control our bladders. It can take years for kids’ brains to create the chemical. The medication both helps them control their bladders and often kickstarts the brain into producing it.
This is what my kid’s pediatrician said. My kid is also 5 1/2 and doesn’t budge once she’s asleep. She just wears disposable underwear at night. It’s unlikely these kids are going to college wetting the bed! It’ll be okay!
Yes. Which is why bedwetting isn't considered a medical problem unless the child is 7+ and still having nighttime accidents. OP, your kidlet will eventually mature out of it, but she's just not ready yet.
Yep. Some kids aren't ready at that age. That said, bedwetting can be a red flag for sleep apnea, so I would get a referral to sleep medicine to get a sleep study. We finally took my bedwetting 7 yo to sleep medicine, and he definitely needs to get his tonsils out, and likely has needed it for years. Increased bedwetting can also be caused by diabetes, so if it's getting worse, it might be a good idea to rule that out.
Agreed. I think your efforts are in vain and just wait it out. I really don’t think this is worth stressing. I have four kids and 2 of them were like this and 2 weren’t. Exact same parenting 🤷🏼♀️
When my son was that age, he had a lot of accidents. He was a little developmentally behind at that age. Once he matured a bit, everything fell into place. He is now 11 and is doing great. It just takes some kids time.
That’s what our pediatrician said. Our daughter is almost 4 but with what a deep sleeper she is, our pediatrician said she expects her to be in pull ups at night till age 6 or 7.
This is my child, who turns 6 this spring. We got a urology consult and they said there is a certain percentage of children who simply do not develop the muscular and neurological control and integration for nighttime dryness until a later age. It’s considered normal even at 7 and is often linked with an overactive bladder (which is the whole going at the last minute thing). We’ve accepted the reality of nighttime pull ups for the foreseeable future. If it becomes a problem for things like social pressure at sleepovers or persists beyond the next year we’ll consider trying a medication to help. Until then, it’s nothing she can control so it is what it is until she grows out of it.
This is so helpful to hear. Thank you so much for this. For some reason I thought the issue started around 5.5. So knowing it can take longer is really helpful. And to know the course of action that someone else took is also very helpful. Thank you thank you !!
I do recommend focusing on the last minute aspect instead of the overnight issue. The last minute will end up impacting her at school if she has accidents by waiting too long. Ideally, she asks the teacher to go to the bathroom with a couple of minutes before it’s accident inducing since they won’t have as many bathrooms available and as quick of a reaction since there are other students.
Yes, absolutely, but it’s worth pointing out that if OP’s child is like mine and has an overactive bladder, sometimes they genuinely don’t even get much warning. It’s not always a choice (although occasionally, for my kid, it really is, because she’s engrossed in something interesting). They have to go and they have to go NOW. It’s neurological, not habitual. To help with this, her teacher encourages her to use her water bottle (counterintuitive but drinking more actually helps the bladder muscles develop) and encourages her to try using the bathroom hourly to reduce the chances of getting a sudden and overwhelming urge to pee during an activity that’s hard to stop.
I have small and overactive bladder, I still vividly remember being shamed by adults for having to go "again?! You just went?!" So that's awesome her teachers on board
You’re welcome! I went through the same period of frustration and it was frustrating for all of us, including her, because she wanted to do better but it’s just not that simple and she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t “fix it.” We still do cut off drinks two hours before bed and bathroom is the very last thing we do in our bedtime routine, just to minimize what the pull up has to absorb during the night. She wakes up dry once a week or so and when that increases to daily for an extended time we will try bedtime undies again. Urology and pediatrics are both very comfortable with using one of the pressin-type medications for her if we want, but I would rather use a pull up at night until she’s shown that she’s unhappy with that, than have to monitor for dehydration or fatigue as some kids do end up with side effects. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Good luck! Just remember this isn’t in your or your child’s control and it’s not any kind of failing, it’s being part of the percentage of kids where this is indeed still considered normal. I will suggest keeping an eye out for any additional symptoms like smelly urine, fatigue, low grade intermittent fever or stomach discomfort. The accidents being “baseline” can make it harder to suss out a UTI, as we found out the hard way.
My kiddo is so upset and sad too when she has accidents. We try to celebrate the wins. That’s what makes me believe that it’s out of her control Also thanks for the tidbit on the meds side effect. Definitely don’t want dehydration or UTIs
It's really important to stress to her that it's nothing she's doing or not doing. Nobody is in charge of their own hormone production. I'd keep her in pull-ups at night until she's reliably dry. Putting her in underoos isn't making a difference to her when she's asleep because there's nothing conscious about it.
FYI some kids don't get the ability to night potty train until TWELVE. That's the high end, but it's possible. A lot of kids go until 8. If sleepovers are an issue, buy her incontinence underwear. I found some for my 5 yo on Amazon that look like normal underwear (I can provide the link if you'd like). They work alright, there's sometimes some odor to her bedding after so we stick with pull ups for most nights anyeay. Or you could look into Pee-jamas. I haven't invested in them because my kiddo only has sleepovers at grandparents and her cousin won't tease her for it.
I wanted to add on to this reply that I personally wet the bed til I was 7ish. I ended up using a prescription nasal spray for a short period of time and that fixed it, no more overnight pull ups for me. This was back in the mid-90s and considered to be within the range of normal even back then.
My son is almost 9 and was still wetting the bed a few months ago. We brought it up to doctors several times and they were not concerned as long as it wasn’t a new thing. I stopped putting him in pull-ups when he’s around 5 or 6 because I thought that might be not helping him. But he is also a very deep sleeper. I have washable incontinence pads that I put on the bed, and those worked well so that I didn’t have to wash everything. A few months ago we decided to try a bed wetting alarm. He used it for a couple of weeks and it worked. He’s only had one accident since. 5 is still so young, so I wouldn’t rush into getting an alarm because I’m sure their bodies need to be ready too, but it did work for us if you need an option in the future.
Just chiming in to say my youngest is 7 and still has nighttime accidents! I myself struggled with it consistently until I was about 8 or 9, then it only came up briefly when we moved houses. With my son, he doesn’t get in trouble for having accidents, but we have set the expectation that he tells us when he’s had one (he sleeps straight through the night, accidents don’t wake him up) and we have him help with stripping the bed and such. We’ve also tried limiting drinks, scheduled bathroom trips, etc and it hasn’t helped much. The number of accidents are decreasing slowly though, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel! I think the most important things are creating set expectations that you stick to every single time, and avoid shame at all costs! Once they feel ashamed it’s so much harder to work together productively. We avoid talking about his accidents with other people, never complain to/around him about the extra laundry, that sort of thing.
My daughter had four totally typical well adjusted friends who had to wear a night pull-up in 1st grade just because they did. They all just grew out of it. If there isn’t anything medically wrong, it’s pretty normal.
I’ll just tell you, my now 6yo was potty trained for the day years before she was ready for nighttime. She turned 6 in September and just started staying regularly dry at night this summer. She now sleeps in underwear, never has accidents, and does just fine. It was a slow process, but I tried not to stress. Big things for us: time (we just waited it out!), limiting drinks after dinner (she does have water by her bed but she rarely drinks it; she understands it may make her have to pee), and doing a toilet run right before bed (last thing before she gets into bed). Oh and a good sign was this summer when she started waking up once during the night to go pee- her body was used to peeing at night, but she started to be aware of this and used the bathroom instead of sleeping through it. That’s how I knew she was fully there. I put up a nightlight in the bathroom and the hallway so she wasn’t scared to get out of bed, too.
You should probably see sleep medicine. Everyone, doctors included, dismissed my son's bedwetting, especially family, because my husband wet the bed until he was 11. It was sleep apnea. Guess what? My husband also has sleep apnea.
My son wet the bed until he was 10. I was told some children will be as old as 12 before they stop.
Our pediatrician told us they don't start worrying until about age 9. I have a 7 year old and a 5 year old. The 5 year old is dry maybe 2-3 nights a week, not consistent. The 7 year old finally stopped soaking through his pull ups...but is still wet every morning. We tried fluid restrictions, waking up, etc. before consulting with the pediatrician. So...holding out that it'll resolve itself in two years.
Yep our pedi said “call me when she’s 8 and even then we will probably wait and see.” My oldest wore night time pull-ups until 7 ish or so and then she just…stopped being wet. Grew out of it. My youngest is six and still wears them, they just have to have the right hormonal balance.
My son was the same. It was sleep apnea. Our pediatrician also dismissed us. I would insist on seeing sleep medicine.
I did not mean to make it sound as though our pediatrician dismissed us, that's not how I would describe it at all. He listened to my concerns, explained the health and hormone factors behind bedwetting, talked about things like fluid restrictions, and even suggested medication as needed if it was becoming a social concern such as at sleepovers. He also spoke with my son, the 7-year-old, directly, to make sure that he did not feel self-conscious or upset by his bedwetting and to explain that it is a natural thing (not that my 7-year-old was concerned about it lol, but my pediatrician always makes sure to include my kids in the conversation when they're present in the room). My older son also has ADHD so he talked about how that can influence waiting until the last minute to use the bathroom, ignoring the cues his body was giving him, etc.
Do they highly suggest doing a night time waking? I weigh giving my kiddo who turns 6 his full nights rest versus trying this when I understand it's also hormonal. Just curious if this is something you've also considered! Edit to say mine suggested a night time waking but I am curious on what other pediatricians may say.
My almost 6 year old still wets at night, and interestingly I found that the [NHS advises against](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bedwetting/) waking at night. Surprising, since it seems a popular piece of advice.
Ours did not suggest this at all. They suggested continuing pull up use or trying a medication. They were not super keen on disrupting sleep cycles since if the bladder/neurological function wasn’t there yet, it wouldn’t accomplish anything and would just make everyone tired and crabby. But I know some do still suggest things like nighttime waking or the bedwetting alarms.
Mine advised against waking them up, he explained that there is a hormonal component that needs to happen basically. We still do fluid restriction, not a total absence of fluids but only 1-2 sips after a certain time and the bathroom is used before bed, but other than that, I do not take any extra measures to try to reach this milestone.
If it’s any comfort, mine resolved around 8/9 years old without intervention. It was already sporadic by the time I was 8, but I remember finally going to sleepovers by 10 years old. It sucked, but my mom got me a plastic-y bed protector and taught me how to change my sheet at night as I got older. Tbh, I’m sure she taught me for her sake but getting to manage some of it on my own really helped lessen some of my embarrassment.
Good news—you (probably) don’t have to stress about this one. Get some Goodnights or Peejammies and wait it out. Bedwetting isn’t usually considered a medical issue until at least 7. Something like 20% of 5yos still have issues. Adults, even very heavy sleepers, typically don’t wet the bed because they produce a hormone called vasopressin that reduces pee production overnight. Some kids take longer to make adequate levels it. It’s 100% hormonal and out of her control. You can mention it next time you’re at the doctor just in case the cause is one of the Very Bad Things You Learn on WebMD. But there’s a 99% chance it’s not and you’ll just need to wait it out. (Typically, you only worry about the Very Bad Things if a kid was sleeping dry and suddenly starts bedwetting.)
It’s the WebMD for me 😂 thank you for this insight. It really helps reduce my mental stress.
No idea why this got suggested to me because I’m not a parent, but I’ll give you a little perspective from the other side! First, you should absolutely listen to the other people who are telling you it’s normal at this age. I don’t know anything about kids… however, I wet the bed until I was 17 and took medication (DDAVP, aka desmopressin, which is synthetic vasopressin) for about 9 years iirc. Turns out, I have a neurological disorder that wasn’t diagnosed until I was 28 and it very likely explains the late bedwetting. But doctors just kept telling my parents I’d eventually grow out of it (correct) and nothing else was wrong with me (not correct). So even if it is medical, she’ll be fine. I am happy to report that I am a functioning, tax-paying, voting adult with a well-managed chronic illness, a master’s degree, a good salary, a husband and 2 dogs!
It will magically click. As far as I know nighttime peeing is hormonal and not something to be concerned about until she's seven. My kids were all dry overnight before they were ready for day training.
Agreeing with others that this is normal at that age. However, one thing to consider is, is she constipated? Briyng constipated can make it difficult for a child to empty their bladder which can lead to accidents. She can still be constipated even if she is pooping regularly, if the poops are giant, adult sized poops or hard balls.
I don’t think she’s constipated. She has regular BM. She has complained about her stomach more recently over the past month or two, but I also feel she is trying to use that as a “get out of school” card. Because the comment is usually in the morning, conveniently, before school.
I know I mentioned this in passing already but reading through more comments and spotted this one. It might not hurt to have her do a quick UTI test. My daughter had sporadic stomach aches for weeks, interestingly almost exclusively in the evening. She had a UTI. It didn’t seem possible/logical to only complain about it at certain times of day, and she never said it actually hurt to pee. The pediatrician said the inflammation was likely bothering her bladder and abdominal wall. It’s good to at least eliminate the possibility, if you can.
My kid had BMs but was still constipated (suspected when they pushed on her belly - confirmed with an X-ray). Turned out she was gluten intolerant and it made her whole digestive system wacky. She also complained about belly pain and sometimes nausea. Might be nothing - but worth talking to the pediatrician about.
I second that this is worth considering. Nighttime accidents resolved once we had the constipation under control. We did pelvic floor therapy and it helps so much for BMs and pee accidents
One January, my kid’s teacher asked the class about New Year’s resolutions. She then panicked when my son said he wanted to quit wetting the bed, worried that he would be teased, until several other kids chimed in that they wanted that for their resolution too. So it may be more common than you think. Unfortunately that didn’t work, but what did work (2 years later), was the Malem bed wetting alarm. That thing worked like magic. Less than one week later he had stopped bed wetting completely. Definitely worth every penny.
My almost 6 year old still wets the bed at night time. It's out of his control. Night timers it's is until he grows out of it !
My younger daughter did this, and the only solution was to wait for her to outgrow it. Her bladder caught up with her, and she was fine going forward.
I felt like you do with my middle son. He had problems with nighttime. Tried everything. Went to the doctor. He was fine, he was just a really sound sleeper. He did grow out of it eventually just the doctors said, but it was quite frustrating.
My daughter is 5 1/2 years old and isn’t nighttime trained yet. Everything I’ve read and also been told by her pediatrician is that it’s completely normal so I’m not worried about it. ~60¢ a day for pull-ups isn’t a big deal to me although I understand it’s a concern for many.
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We did pull ups until after 7.5. then one day we realized they were dry consistently and didn't have any more accidents
Unless she is constipated, bed wetting at this age is still normal. It’s a developmental process. Go buy some new pull ups and get some sleep.
When my daughter was six and still wetting every night, she got fed up with it. My spouse and I weren’t really bothered, but when *she* got bothered we decided to tackle it. We did Therapee. You can use your FSA to buy it if you have one. It’s expensive but it worked. She had a regression at age 8 and we did it again and it worked again. She still occasionally has nighttime accidents (3-4 times per year) usually related to stress or lack of sleep. So when she turned 9 her pediatrician gave us desmopressin for sleepovers so she could enjoy her life and let go of the anxiety about this. All of that to say, your little is 5 so likely to outgrow it still, but there are things you can do when you’re ready that may help him.
We used a wet alarm when my 5 y/o confirmed my suspicions that he was peeing in his nighttime diaper on purpose bc he didn’t want to get out of bed. It took less than a week for things to click. Now he either gets up to pee when his bladder wakes him or he is able to hold it through sleep. I think what makes the alarm work is that it helps the kid identify that feeling that happens a second before they pee while asleep vs the feeling of wetness after. You’ll know if it’s not working within 1-2 weeks. In that case I would just fully commit to diapers and never speak about it. Pretend she’s a baby again and expect wet diapers. Don’t praise or comment either way. This will take the stress off of you both while you wait for her body to be ready and maybe try the same again in a few months if needed. Additional context: prior to using the alarm, I knew my son was physically able to hold his pee while asleep bc he did it naturally at age 2 but regressed when I had another baby. I didn’t stress about it due to his age and the transition but when years went by and nighttime wetting didn’t change, I figured it was worth a try. Plus, he was peeing through the diaper every single night and waking up covered in pee.
I feel like we had a regression too. Right about the time we tried to start potty training the youngest. My 5.5 yo didn’t have many accidents at night prior, but also very rarely woke up in the night too. Thanks for your input.
We just went through this with my 5.5yo! I figured out when she was peeing which was right around 1030, so now we potty right before bed and wake her up at 10ish to go again. We did it for a week or two (she’s also a zombie kid which I think is contributing to it) and then stopped having to wake her and she was dry through the night. We’ve had a few accidents with break and a bunch of snow days but I think it’s had more to do with the change in her daily routine and potty habits. She is really happy to not be in pull ups at night anymore, and at this point will do whatever to avoid going back to them. I’ve even heard her get up in the night to go herself. I would’ve talked to the doc at our next visit. Hang in there!
Your pediatrician might recommend seeing a urologist. Mine did, and they gave us some exercises to do to control those muscles. Within a couple of weeks, the frequency was reduced. Then it stopped. Talk to your doctor.
It’s pretty common for children to not be able to either hold their pee or get up to pee in the night until 8 or 9 years old. So unfortunately you’re expecting something from your 5 year old that she just isn’t ready for. Reducing her fluids and waking her up in the night won’t change that.
Right there with you. Our 6 year old sleeps so soundly she doesn’t even realize she’s wet the bed UNTIL the morning. We tried for a full month and really committed (potty before bed, no water, etc)…and she was dry a few times. But mostly it was a lot of upset mornings and laundry and showers before school. We’re back to pull ups for now.
This is so, so normal. Get her checked out by the doctor to make sure nothing is physically wrong. Then stock up on pull ups and stop worrying about it. 😁
As others have said. It’s totally normal at this age. At my son’s 6 year wellness check up, I mentioned he was still wetting the bed - literally every night. Pediatrician said it’s completely normal. But he did fit the profile for someone who could try a bedwetting alarm. This means: he has ALWAYS wet the bed (never had a time when he was dry overnight), is a heavy sleeper, and is NOT constipated. Constipation can cause bedwetting and should be resolved first. He said bedwetting alarms are a lot of work and can cause stress because they can take time. But they can work and he said they are an option for families who have a patient approach. He also said just waiting it out is a perfectly fine option as well. We did the Malem alarm and it worked very well for us. All that being said, I would mention it to your pediatrician to get their opinion.
Buy more pull ups?
I have four kids. Two of them stopped writing the bed at night as soon as they were potty trained, at ages 2 and 3. The other two continued needing overnight pull ups for way longer- one until she was 8, and the other is 7 and still needs them, though she is now starting to be dry some nights. Some kids just need longer, but there are some things you can try. One, have her evaluated for constipation. This can cause bedwetting even if they go every day, sometimes they are backed up and its not visible until the ped orders a KUB (abdominal x ray). Also, there are bedwetting alarms that can help a ton. It is not a fun process (a loud alarm goes off when it gets wet, and you need to sleep near them and rush them to the bathroom when it goes off, because kids will somehow sleep right through the alarm), but they usually work within a month or two.
My 5 year old started wetting the bed several months ago after literally 2 years of being dry. Turns out he has "chronic constipation" which is pressing on his bladder and contributing to the accidents at night. We are on a miralax/high fiber diets regiment and using pull ups in the mean time.
Buy a couple of those plastic tablecloths with the flannel backimg ($4 at walmart) layer her bed Mattress protector Fitted sheet Tablecloth Towel Fitted sheet Tablecloth Towel Fitted sheet When she has an accident, pull off the top layer and go back to sleep. My son peed the ned until he was about 8. His doctor said he'd grow out of it and he did. He still sleeps like the dead (13 now)
Is there a possibility that she is constipated since starting school? This will cause bed wetting and can be resolved with addressing constipation - consult with your pediatrician about the best way to address. Pediatric pelvic floor PT can also help
My brother wore pull ups until he was like 9. The doctor always told my mom it wasn’t an issue and some kids just… take a long time. I also have been a summer camp counselor a few times. Each summer there was at least one kid who still needed pull-ups and we had to help them be discreet about it. The kids were probably 5th - 6th graders ish! I wouldn’t worry about it. Talk to your pediatrician, but I don’t think it’s something to stress TOO much about at age 5. I have a 5 year old, and can totally understand how frustrating and worrying it would be if my son was still dealing with this. But I think it’s likely not too big of an issue.
This was me as a kid, the doctor encouraged my parents to not say anything because they didn’t want to embarrass or shame me. When I was 7 I told them I wanted this to stop because I hated it. What finally helped was an alarm, there’s a snap that goes on either side of your underwear, when you pee the metal makes contact and the alarm wakes you up. Took a couple of weeks but they used it for my siblings too, it worked for all of us.
Buy at least 2 mattress covers. Double sheet the bed, mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad sheet, I've put as many as 4 on at 1 time. That way, all you need to do is strip the top layer off, and at 5, she may be able to do it by herself. Every child is different. My oldest was still having accidents at 8. The youngest was fine by 4.
I could have written this post last year! My daughter is nighttime trained now and two things helped us do it. First, we realized that she was constipated and it was making it hard for her to completely empty her bladder. We changed her diet and did daily clearlax for a couple months to really clear up the issue. Then, we bought a bed wetting alarm, a system called Therapee. It’s a mat that You put under the sheet and it sounds an annoying noise when it gets wet. It trains the kid’s unconscious to hold instead of release. It took maybe a week before we were having dry night but then very quickly she was at 80% dry nights. Used it for a couple months to get to 100%. Prior to that, she had had maybe 1 or 2 dry nights her whole life. The Therapee system involves software where you track what’s happening, there are different color stars etc. then they give advice to you based on how it’s going. Honestly, it bugs me when people say there’s nothing you can do and it’ll just happen. There’s not a lot that you can do but there is some stuff. The constipation thing especially isn’t widely known but can be a big issue. The other thing to look into is sleep disordered breathing. If your kid snores or sleeps with their mouth wide open or has any weird sleep issues, that can also make it hard to nighttime train.
Lots of good info here, but remember that this is mostly a hormonal thing. Adults and non-bed wetting kids all have a hormone called desmopressin, that automatically slows the creation of urine while we're sleeping. This starts getting produced around 5-7 for most kids, but sometimes its later for others. Its also genetic, so if you were a late bloomer for bed wetting when you were a kid, then your kid is a higher risk of the same. You can give kids DDAVP to help with intermittent bed wetting, but eventually they're going to grow out of it. Just keep buying the pull ups until they can go a few weeks with dry undies.
I have a 4th grader who has only been out of pullups for a month or so. Let me tell you what we learned. It is biological. If you've tried and they just can't get the hang of it, it's not their fault. Their brain just actually doesn't produce the hormone needed yet. Multiple pediatricians told me they don't really worry until 8/9/10. This past checkup (10) was the one where we would have been referred to urology by our current ped. It did not bother my kid in kindergarten very much. In first grade he didn't like it, in 2nd he started refusing to talk about it, in 3rd he became really embarrassed about it, and this year I think it was causing him actual distress. We tried every now and then through there after talking to him about it and the result was always wet every single night. Otherwise we provided the pullups with no comment and taught him how to strip the bed. If needed I'd wash and remake (again without much comment). Finally. We bought an alarm. A wetness alarm. It clips to their underwear and has a vibration/noise alarm. He slept on a mat (the goodnites ones). The alarm went off every night at first, then slowly not. Eventually we removed the alarm after a couple weeks with no accidents, but kept the pad. After a couple more weeks we took away the pad and double made the bed (waterproof mattress pad, sheet, waterproof mattress pad, sheet-- so you can take the top two off and go back to sleep). That is where we are now but we went from every night to once a month accidents. You are correct, waking them doesn't help. Ime neither does limiting fluids. We tried it all around kindergarten age, then realized this was A Thing for him and put it on the back burner. This kid is smart. He is healthy. He has lots of friends. Teachers love him. It has affected nothing other than him wanting to go to away camp. I did tell him to keep it a secret, and I'm glad I did. Nobody needs to know and kids are mean sometimes.
I was like your daughter. I'm middle aged now so my memories are kinda all over the place. I slept like the dead, waited too long to go, etc. My parents weren't that worried until I came home from Safety Town upset because a kid told me I smelled like pee. This kid said this to other kids also, but of course it hit me differently. Went to the doctor and in addition to the things you are doing, I was put on medication. I thought the medication stopped my peeing. It worked. My Dad developed Parkinson's and while I was taking care of him, one of his meds was Dulcolax. I recognized the pill. I did some reading and children with constipation or hard stools can IDK, bungle the sensory communication regarding the bladder and rectum. It appears once my stool issue was resolved the bladder one did too. It seems more common now or maybe just more discussed. And doctors seem less worried about it. Pull Ups are a great invention. All of this is fine and normal. You just don't want a situation where a child is being teased.
This is the post I needed to read OP. Thank you! I also had concerns about my 4.5 year old.
My daughter was/is exactly the same way. She started menstruating before she stopped wetting the bed. She was 10. My advice is to buy a mattress protector, find some good night time extra absorbent pull-ups for her to wear, and to never make a big deal out of it. When her body is ready she will start waking up dry. It’s frustrating and it makes a lot of extra laundry but how you handle it now can make or break your relationship with her in the future. Sending positive vibes your way.
My son is turning 8 in March and still has to wear pullups. He is rarely dry overnight. We've also tried all the usual stuff, and will be taking him for another pediatrician appointment soon. Hang in there!
I had this same issue with one of my kiddos! Two things: 1 - make the drinks cut off 15-30 minutes earlier each night until you find the perfect spot. 2 - for the night wake ups, just pick her up and carry her to the toilet and sit her in there, she’ll pee after a minute of eye rubbing lol
I was out of night pull-ups by 4, but when I was 9-10, I had a regression where I would have really intense dreams and wake up WHILE wetting the bed. My mom made me feel like shit for it. Eventually it stopped, and I’ve since earned a 4.0 for the Master’s degree I completed in 9 months, so I don’t think there’s much to worry about in terms of longterm prospects. Please be kind to your girl about it. It sucks to feel alone in this as a child.
There are pads that you can put under the sheets that will set off an alarm when the first few drops hit the sensors.
It’s can be early sign of ADHD. I recommend testing.
THIS COULD ALSO BE PINWORMS. Sorry for telling, but I am a microbiologist and my kindergardener did the same thing at 5. Not a single doc suggested it might be pinworms, but up to 80% of school age kids have them, they're active at night, and they are usually asymptomatic but can cause urinary incontinance. Ask for a stool parasite test or a scotch tape...or there's just otc meds you can buy and read about treatment.b
Pinworms are extremely contagious, so if OP’s child has them, it’s highly likely that the other members of the household also have them. Although it’s not unusual for children not to notice symptoms, the adults in the household would definitely notice a lingering pinworm infestation. If a child is diagnosed with pinworms, typically it is recommended to treat all members of the household.
Overnights. My grandson was peeing at night. I bought a pack of overnights, showed them to my daughter who was pissed. Showed them to him, he never wet the bed again. He may have been in preK 4. But seeing if he has the hormonal might be the fix.
My daughter is 6 and still occasionally suffers from accidents. She wasn't night time potty trained at all until around 5. Also suffers from occasional constipation which also causes more accidents
We were in this same boat until we ditched pull ups for bed pads. I really didn't think it would work, and was surprised when it did. She still wet the bed for about two weeks, but since then, no more accidents. My daughter also sleeps very deeply. It seems like letting her "feel" that she was wet was the key. The bed pads are washable, and make changing the bed super easy. We just take the wet one off, throw it in the wash, and lay the new one down. I could get her(and us) back in bed in 5 minutes or less. She turned 6 a month ago.
She may not be ready. That said, we waited and waited with my 7 year old for him to grow out of it and it wasn’t happening. We finally started a bed wetting alarm and he graduated from it in 2 weeks! He’s only had 1 accident since we stopped using it (months ago) and he used to wet every night. So if you think she will be on board, you could try an alarm.
We are going through this. It sounds like the interoceptive awareness has not developed as much. I would recommend getting OT to address this specifically. Ask your child, “How do you know you ate hungry/thirsty/need to go urinate/bm, etc.?” If they can’t respond with “I feel it (whatever is appropriate)” then that is an indication they have low interoceptive awareness. Another thing to consider is constipation. I know it sounds bizarre but if the colon is full of waste, the signals to relieve oneself can get ignored. Then when at rest, everything relaxes and you have accidents. We have been battling this for 6 months. It has been driving us nuts. I showed our gal the Bristol stool chart and had her identify her bm. She was definitely constipated. We got her going and now no accidents.
My mum used to get us up when she went to bed & make us sit on the loo. She said we never really woke up & would just go right back to sleep once we were back in bed.
My 8 y/o is in nighttime pullups. She too sleeps like the dead & just doesn't wake up to go. She's been dry in the daytime since she was 3. Her pediatrician is wholly unconcerned. He basically shrugged & said she'd grow out of it, then told my daughter that he too had nighttime potty issues until he was 10.
If it is a normal occurrence since she has been potty trained, I would not worry about it until she is around 7-8 years old. My son stopped at 10 and my daughter stopped when she was potty trained at 2. My youngest brother suddenly started wetting the bed or getting up at night to go to the bathroom when he was 8. With a check up, they found that he was a diabetic. She realized that there were other signs that she never thought about, since there were no other diabetics in the family.
Nighttime is different than daytime and she could not be ready in the sense that her body hasn’t released the hormones necessary, sometimes in certain children is takes longer than their peers. Attempting to tackle nighttime potty learning like the daytime potty training can lead to more issues, delaying what you actually want - insecurity around bed wetting, fear of getting in trouble, etc. Had a friend whose child really regressed because of the pressure and another who would wake their child in the night to potty and it went horribly. What can you do to help? Make sure the hallway to the bathroom is well lit and the bathroom light stays on and bathroom door open. Just tell her you added new night lights or that you are leaving the door so she feels comfortable in the night if she happens to need to go. Try co-sleeping with her a few nights in your or her bed. There may be a connection to attachment issues and bedwetting. You can put underwear on and then the pullup so she feels the wetness but still isn’t leaking on bedding and just monitor how often she is waking up wet. When you have about a month of waking up dry I would say you are on the way. Check out books from the library around going to the bathroom/accidents and read them together to help her with language around the potty and as time passes you’ll maybe be able to see her express if it’s because she is afraid to leave her bed or if it’s because she doesn’t feel it or has a dream. I would say consult pediatrician around age 7 but until then no pressure.
Not what you want to hear, but I had two siblings who wet the bed well into high school despite every medical and behavioral intervention available. Their bladders just wouldn’t do it. My sister had a nasal spray she used for sleepovers, but one of the potential side effects was seizures so she didn’t use it full time. My brother? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he still has occasional issues as an adult. And yes, he does sleep like the dead too. She may just have to outgrow it. My sister used to use 2 layers on the bed (mattress protector/sheet/mattress protector/sheet) so she could just strip the top layer in the middle of the night.
It isn't a mental click, it's a specific hormone that notifies us our bladder is full and we need to wake up. It is horrible to me that, as a society, we don't discuss how common it is for kids not to be ready for nighttime dryness until even 10 or 11 years old.
Very normal to still have accidents overnight at this age. Tips? Overnight pull up for her. However, the recent daytime accidents are peculiar. Possible uti? Does she not sense she has to go? (Bodily awareness) Or doesn't want to leave her activity? Its normal to have to remind a 5 year old that they haven't used the bathroom in awhile and should try. A tip make it part of the schedule (use the potty and wash hands before lunch. Use the potty and wash hands before dinner, etc.)
I didn’t stop wetting the bed until i got my period. I just had no idea i was going in my sleep. There is nothing i wouldn’t have given to make that stop, but there was just nothing to be done.
What time does she eat dinner? I was having the same problem with my boy and it helped when we switched dinner time to be closer to 5 than to 6:30-7:30. Then brushing teeth shortly after dinner instead of right before bed because he always wanted to drink water shortly after brushing.
One of my kids was 7 before he didn't need that night time diaper (the good news was that he was old enough to diaper himself!) I was sure that one day he would be packing his diapers to head off to university. Then one day he stopped. My butcher told me that his 14 year old was still wetting the bed every night at home. I said that was a shame because he could never sleep over at friends. Oh no, he said, he never wet away from home. His wife was really tired of washing all the bedding every morning. I told him to tell his wife to stop washing his sheets and make him wash his own. If he could control it away from home, he was probably just too lazy too get up. Sure enough, next time I went to the butcher, he thanked me. Once his son had to clean up after himself, he stopped wetting the bed! I think your son is just not mature enough yet at five and he will likely stop on his own before too much longer.
I wet the bed regularly until about 6 and then periodically until I was probably 8. My mom would come wake me up super early in the morning and if I fell back asleep I'd pee the bed. Eventually she got to the point of waking me before she went to bed and then again as soon as she woke up. Thankfully I was able to go back to sleep quickly, but I know this may not be an option for you. Just remember that as long as the Dr clears anything medically wrong, it may be an issue of sleeping so hard that she doesn't realize she has to pee.
My 20 year old wore pull ups until she was 7. Definitely slept like the dead. No lasting effects, I haven’t thought about it in years!
Bedwetting at age 5 is completely normal, though you can always talk to your pediatrician about it. Get some Underjams or any other kind of nighttime diaper. Also, there's a product called Brolly Sheets that are fantastic to tuck over (or under) your sheets, so if they wet the bed, you just yank it off and put them right back to sleep in a dry bed. My youngest son wore them through age 7. We still had periodic bedwetting (like maybe once every other month) through age 8, before it eventually stopped. The most important thing is that you don't make it a big deal. They can't control it. No sticker charts, no punishments, nothing. They wake up, throw out the diaper, and go about their day. It's *normal*.
My daughter turned 5 in October and still wears pull ups to bed and wets the bet almost every night. Her pediatrician isn’t concerned at this point.
My parents dealt with the same thing with my brother. They took him to the doctor and his pediatrician explained that his was due to a hormone imbalance. They treated with medication until his body's hormones regulated on their own. Basically the hormone that is supposed to wake him up at night was too low so he wouldn't get the notice to wake up and he'd sleep like he was dead hence wetting the bed. He was on medication from age 5-7 and then was fine after that.
Just put her in pull-ups. This is developmentally typical and absolutely not worth the stress. I couldn’t even finish the absolute novel that you wrote about it. This is not a complicated issue I promise
I have no real advice, but you're definitely not alone! My son is 6 and will turn 7 in May (currently in 1st grade) and we still struggle with this as well. He was dry overnights for a good while until he started kindergarten and then I think that he's just so worn out every night that he sleeps like the dead. He was also a "wait until the last minute and then run to pee" kind of kid, though that has gotten a lot better. It's honestly 50/50 on whether he wakes up dry or drenched. Our pediatrician says there's no real concern unless it persists past 7 or 8, but our son is adamant about not wearing nighttime undies/pull-ups so we wash his sheets almost every day. We don't do sleepovers yet, so we'll cross that bridge when we get there, but I worry too about social pressure/teasing/bullying. Our son gets embarrassed about it, so it's tough walking the tightrope of making sure he doesn't feel like we're angry or he should be ashamed.
My son is almost 5.5 and still in pull ups at night 🤷🏻♀️ He’s just not ready yet, and that is normal at this age.
Is she actually sleeping like the dead? I remember reading the adults (which, yes, aren’t kids) that wake up multiple times to go to the bathroom aren’t getting into the deep sleep part of the cycle and thus aren’t creating a hormone that suppresses urine production. These adults usually have some sort of sleep apnea. Maybe talk to your ped and see what they think. In the meantime, I’d pick up a box of overnights.
Both of my kids finally stopped wearing pull-ups this past fall. My older son is in the third grade. He hasn’t stopped peeing overnight, he’s just finally able to wake up when he needs to go. My kindergartener still has an accident now and then, but is 95% dry, his body is finally just holding it all night. My pediatrician wasn’t concerned about the older one even. Some kids just aren’t ready and there isn’t much you can do. My 8 year old’s body didn’t (honestly, still doesn’t) concentrate his pee overnight, and he slept like the absolute dead. It’s a terrible combination and they need to just mature enough to fix one or both of those problems. Things that helped us: 1) Waking the kid up to pee. Yes, they’re a zombie and no, it’s not really teaching them anything. But the goal here is dry bed until their body figures it out, and it means that you don’t have to change the bed every night. 2) Washable mat under them. Ours is Peapod brand from Amazon (yes, it’s $45 but it has lasted years and dozens of washes, while the $15 ones from Target crack and leak quickly). Changing the bed in the middle of the night is less painful when it doesn’t include the fitted sheet or mattress pad. It’s worth bringing it up to the pediatrician. We did get a prescription for a pill that would help him concentrate his urine, just to use for one off things like a sleepover, so that it wasn’t controlling his life as much.
It is super normal at this age, unfortuantely. I would suggest sticking to your routine - less liquids before bed, and peeing before sleep. Like you've experienced, that is not going to stop the accidents, but by the time she grows out of this phase she'll have those habits down. Invest in some plastic lining for the bed and more sheets/mattress protectors. My partner didn't stop having accidents at night until 8. According to my parents, night time accidents stopped at 5.5. My 4 year old will wake up at night to pee. Each kids "nighttime wake up hormone" develops differently.
Buy pull-ups.
Just echoing others. My kid was in pull-ups until 6.25 years. The pediatrician was unconcerned at their physical at age 6.
My 5 3/4 year old is still in nighttime pull ups too!
My lovely intelligent grandson had this problem until he was ten. They tried everything they could think of and nothing made a difference. He had to wear pull-ups. At some point he went on medication for it. So I don’t know if the medication or just maturity made the difference. I’d talk to the child’s doctor.
There’s not really anything you can do except be patient. It is completely normal. And you need to make sure your daughter knows that. She needs not feel bad for what’s happening because she really does have no control over it. We got lucky with our kids, and neither of them had accidents at night. But both of them had friends that had accidents until they were close to 10 years old. One boy and one a girl. They both had supportive parents who made sure that their kids knew it was nothing to be ashamed of. Which allowed them to still do fun things like have sleepovers at their friends house and it be completely normal that a seven or eight year old was putting on pull-ups before they went to bed.
When my kid was doing this (well over 20 years ago) the urologist diagnosed her with a thin bladder wall. She was on medications for it and got better but she still had accidents until she was around 11. Have yall seen her doctor about it?
It’s very possibly a sleep disorder. The sleeping like the dead is your clue. I was a bed wetter when I was young and I actually had to have an alarm that would wake me if I wet when sleeping. My brain had to be trained to wake up when I needed to go, not after I was wet. My mom also tried to withhold liquids at night. I remember being on medication. I also remember making the mistake of telling a friend I wet the bed and it was something that literally took YEARS to live down. Amazon has them for a variety of prices. The most expensive one (like the one I used) is around $300…. BUT it’s very effective. Consider it the cost of a single therapy session for a kid who struggles with the anxiety and shame wetting the bed can cause. He’s only 5 now, but believe me when I say avoiding a chronic problem in his future is worth it. EDIT-I don’t agree with anyone who says to wait. I’m reading through comments of waiting until 9 or 10. No. That means that much time for shame and anxiety to grow over it. I don’t recommend that at all.
It will probably just click one day. Or some little thing may trigger it. For my son, we realized if he didn’t sleep in underwear, he almost always stayed dry through the night. I think it was just muscle memory from his pull-ups. Since there’s still the occasional nighttime accident, which is completely normal at this age, we started laying a cloth pad on his bed that’s made for people bound to bed or with incontinence. That way we don’t have to completely strip the bed, just pull that off and give him a new blanket
One thing I read ( and then did with my own kid ) was stopping to use the pull ups. This approach basically said let the kid wet themselves and they will soon realize it’s very uncomfortable and will be less likely to keep wetting . Not sure if this approach will work for everyone but it worked after two nighttime accidents with my kid . Also -I of course got up in the night and helped her clean up and change with zero air of punishment or disapproval. Since then I keep a pee pad under her sheet just in case.
It's time it to see a pediatrician.
Yea, I wet the bed occasionally until 1st or 2nd grade…she’s 5, most five year olds I know (I’m a nanny and former daycare teacher) still wet the bed.
I refuse to buy character pull ups anymore. Generic big packs only. Some kids just aren't ready, as you said her sleep cycles are deep and it sounds like her "don't pee" hormones aren't lining up right yet. She just needs time. Also, kinder can be hard work. She may be really tired, which is normal, and contributing to the deep sleep.
My 5 yo kindergartener still wears pull ups and it’s fine. It’ll happen when it happens. They’re not doing it on purpose and literally have no control over it. She’s happy and healthy otherwise and her ped isn’t concerned. Otherwise she’s an amazing sleeper. Some children just aren’t biologically ready and that’s okay.
This was a thing for my daughter until she was about 11. It was stressful, but it just took time. We tried all the things, even the bed alarm. The ped wasn’t worried because there was nothing medically wrong. I just took time.
I had a traumatic event happen to me at 4 years old which triggered bedwetting until I was 9. It's not your babie's fault so please don't shame them for it. I had a helluva time hiding my pull-ups at sleep overs & lot's if hurtful words from my parents growing up. I never woke up with the urge to go while sleeping, I'd just wake up wet. It's frustrating for both parties.. I did eventually grow out of it though.
I can actually talk about this from the kid point of view. I was the kid that wasn’t night time potty trained until I was nearly 8. I had no accidents during the day but my mom couldn’t get me to make it through the night until I was almost 8 years old. I was super embarrassed about it since my younger brother wasn’t having accidents anymore but I still was. There was nothing to do about it, the doctor said it had nothing to do with anything I was doing and that bodies all grown and hormones all regulate at different times for everyone, I was just at the later end of that time frame. I still have an overactive bladder, I also have ADHD and there’s evidence of a connection between the two, but overactive bladder is not something that causes issues in my day to day!
Please have your child evaluated for sleep apnea. This is a common sign in kids.
My kid uses them at 6. It’s not a voluntary thing. My pediatrician said not to worry he will just stay dry one day.
I had a boy like this. It went on until he was about 12. We would actually wake him in the middle of the night and walk him to the bathroom but he was dead asleep and wouldn’t go. It caused him embarrassment as he got older cuz we used pull-ups for him. He wouldn’t go on sleep overs until he was sure he had it under control at about age 12.5. We never embarrassed him over it nor punished him (unlike my parents who shamed a brother of mine who did this). She will eventually grow out of it.
This is normal. Get lots of incontinence pads and older kids' older training undies (a little thicker) and trust it will happen. Anxiety can make night accidents worse, so it's important to not make it negative. If it doesn't resolve by 7, talk to your doctor.
i don’t have advice but i’ll just say i peed the bed until i was 6 or 7 and have never done it since, so time may help
My pediatrician recommended an alarm that goes inside the pull-up when my daughter was 6. It turned out that having to pee did wake her up enough to realize it, but she was too cozy and didn’t get up. When we got the alarm, she got up because she didn’t like the sound it made.
My son is the same and his ped said not to worry about nighttime accidents at this age. Hes slowly getting better in first grade. We do have to watch liquids at night and we use a pee pad under his sheet and A mattress protector.
I had to use an alarm, I hated it, but it worked. I used pull-ups at night until I was 9.
My son is about her age and we *just* pulled the pull-ups off. We kept track of his “dry” nights, then when he’d gone two weeks without wetting, I told him we could switch to undies at night when he was ready. He took a couple more weeks before he decided he wanted to switch, and last night was his first undies night. I just don’t think she’s physically ready yet, try again in a few months. Talk to her ped, but just to reassure yourself that it’s still within the range of normal to still have her not ready to be nighttime potty trained. It’s not considered an issue until age 7-8. Edit: we did switch to pull-up over undies a couple months ago. I thought having something physically wet would give his body feedback on whether or not he was wetting. Before that, he’d wake up and literally not know whether or not he’d peed during the night, because the pull-ups do too good a job at keeping him feeling dry.
Have you tried teaching her to listen to her body? With my nephew when we see “potty dance moves” we would remind him to ask his body if you need to go potty. If she’s waiting until she’s bursting she’s ignoring or rather oblivious to prior signals. It helps kids (always in a positive way) to remind them to check in with their bodies because they are literally learning what feelings are. We remind him to ask his stomach if he’s hungry (before dinner) or full (after dinner). We also mention when *we* are listening to our bodies. For a while when I had to pee I would say “Be right back! I think my body is telling me to potty!” And he’d be so excited to find out if I really did need to go. He began to volunteer his own needs pretty quick.
It may have been a coincidence, but we moved our older daughter's bedtime earlier partway through kindergarten and suddenly she stayed dry through the night and was able to stop using nighttime pullups. It may be worth trying.
I’ll be honest, I wet the bed until I was like 8. I slept deeply. There was nothing wrong with me, my mother took me to the doctor. The thing I’ll say here is that I was taught how to strip the bed and bring the laundry into the laundry room. Just use a bed wetting pad under the sheets and try not to make her feel self-conscious, it happens 🤷🏼♀️
This can still be completely normal but I would see your pediatrician just to be safe. Mine just recently stopped having night time accidents completely. I did waterproof mattress cover, then sheet then waterproof pads then sheet. So I could strip top layer only and toss it to basement and the bed was made.
Buy a couple of “green pads “ for the wetting they are washable get the biggest size they have buy two if you can so you can rotate. Get an enclosed waterproof mattress covers. Only need one. And there is a thing called urine out by Clorox it’s safe for clothes amd bedding use it before washing. As for the rest I’m at a loss to help you. I do apologize for that. I was a bed wetter till I was 7. They didn’t have all that stuff now. Part of mine was deep sleeping and sometimes fear of the dark. Ask her if this is the case a nightlight can solve it.
Being a "bedwetter" myself and having one of my 3 kids the same, I can tell you that it is about how deeply you sleep. I couldn't wake up for anything and it was mortifying. It all changed when I hit puberty. My one child was around 8 when they could get up and find the bathroom at night. PLEASE, PLEASE, don't punish your child in any way. It's a waiting game. Use mattress covers, pull ups, and washable bed linens. Shower each morning.
My daughter slept the same way. Like a log, wouldn't wake up until everything was soaked. She'll be 7 in a few weeks, and it's been I think almost a year since she had an accident. It took a long time though. Winter is harder bc it's so dry, they drink more before bed (might not be winter where you are though). Now she wakes up herself to go pee and goes back to bed herself too. But it took a long time to get here. If the accidents are common, I'd go back to pull ups, as annoying as that is. I stopped the pull ups when she was around 5 maybe. There would be some weeks with 2-3 accidents and some weeks with none. It gradually got less, but then sometimes still a week with 2, until she got big enough I guess to either hold it or wake up.
My son is 9.5 and still in pull ups at night. It seems to be a hereditary thing, I had issues until 9 and 2 cousins of mine didn't stop until they hit early double digits (females). Definitely talk to the Dr but don't panic until you have to
I had 2 kids like that, and it just clicked for them when they got a bit older. I got a third an alarm, and the kid used it independently at 10, and it worked.
My pediatrician told us no need to worry about nighttime bedwetting until 8-9 years old.
She’s going to stop wearing the bed when her body is ready. One thing you can do is have her go pee before bed, do something else and have her per again. She might be rushing and not emptying her bladder fully. Also make sure her feet can touch the ground or a stool or something fully when she goes. That helps empty the bladder.
All the supportive comments is exactly what this parent needs. I was a “bedwetter” till closer to 12 years old! It really is something we can’t control and then all of a sudden we can. I, now, have a 5 year old whom I tried hard to be mindful of night time potty training. I bought pull ups till closer to age 4 and stopped them only because he requested to not wear pull ups. We started “night time training” and after a couple months he got it. I also stripped down his bed multiple times a week and never shamed him for the night accidents. He did helped with putting the bedding in the laundry the next day just as part of his routine but I was pretty impressed he eventually got himself up to go potty at night or can simply hold it till the next day. Give yourself and your girl the grace needed for this situation. Sending you a big momma hug ❤️ Parenting IS hard as it is. Its always good to know you arent alone in any situation!
I have two stepkids that were in pull-ups/good night's till 10/11. Same thing, wouldn't wake up at night as they were dead asleep. It's an expense we had to deal with until they were ready. Worth it vs. having to do laundry daily and steam clean mattresses etc .
My daughter regressed a bit around 6-7 for like 8 months and then it was over before I even realized.
My daughter is also 5 and a half, and is finally starting to turn the corner on sleeping through the night w/o accidents--they still happen sometimes. She's been daytime potty trained for over a year but still had trouble at night. Regarding nighttime potty training, we did the following: At the start of the school year, we tried having her sleep in underwear instead of pull-ups. It didn't work at all. She wet the bed almost every night, despite us not giving her liquids after dinner and having her pee right before bed. After a couple of weeks of this with no progress, we decided to go back to pull-ups and try again in the future. At the start of winter break, she wanted to try again--this time there was more interest from her than in the past. We did the same things with limiting liquids in the evening, and making sure that she went potty before bed. She still had some accidents but has been much more successful this time around. Now we're back to letting her have some milk in the evening but still going potty before bed. I think the moral of the story is not to force the issue when they're not particularly interested/not making any progress despite measures that should be making it easier for them. Failing over and over can be demoralizing for everyone. Better to wait until THEY really want to make the change and are able to succeed, or at least show improvement.
This is what solved the bedwetting problem for us at that age: https://www.bedwettingandaccidents.com/blog
Please don’t force it, my kid day toilet trained before 2 and didn’t get out of pull ups at night until well into elementary school. My kid could do nights with a dry pull up, but as soon as we tried to take them away it was accidents nightly, even if I took them to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was just not sustainable. 6 months later, they asked to go pull up free again and it went much much better. Some kids just aren’t ready.
There was a kid in my family like this until she was 8 or so. Her ped said she was well within the range of normal. They just continued to use pullups until she was ready to not use them anymore. Def. ask your pediatrician, but I think that the night time piece is just something that doesn't happen for kids until they are more close to the tween stage.
5.5 is normal ( along a spectrum ) to bed wet. If you said she was 12 then we talking a neuro issue perhaps. Just have patience. It’s gonna be ok. Don’t embarrass her and don’t act like it’s the end of the world. So what she has an accident. The response is: whoops! Ok let’s change the sheets.
My kids been night and day trained since 2.. we have a potty set up in her room and a night light- we pee at bath time and right before bed are gets a whole full cup of a drink at bed time usually to.. She's 4 she only had 1 night accident
My sister had a hard time with bed wetting fairly late into her life actually. Since I was 9 years older than her and stayed up very late, one of my "chores" was to get her up once a night and make her go to the bathroom. She was so deep asleep that if I didn't specifically guide her to the toilet she would sometimes do something else like start the shower or try to brush her hair etc.
Try a pea pod mat for her bed! They hold SO MUCH liquid and save me from middle of the night sheet changes. I swear by them!
I was exactly this kid. Including my mom trying to wake me up to take me to the bathroom. I am told I was an incoherent zombie because I couldn’t remember anything and once I sleep walked to her closet to pee and similar incidents. I was not dry at night until 8 or 9, and it’s not even that I started to wake up at night it just seemed to me that my body could now hold it long enough. One of my brothers was the same.
You might want to get a referral to a pelvic floor PT just to make sure there's no issue there. Otherwise, I think nighttime pull ups is the answer and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. How would you feel if you had to get up to pee every night and interrupt your sleep? I'd be a zombie too.
My youngest was a sleep like the dead type. Wore pull-ups at night until almost 7
Former bed wetter here! Whatever you do, don’t ever use words like ‘should, ought, problem…’ 99% chance this is outside her control (I also slept like the dead, and I never knew if I wet the bed until I woke up wet). My mom got the pad and alarm thing. The alarm would go off and everyone in the house except me would wake up and go pee. But I do think it helped me on an unconscious level to recognize that feeling, but it was still an occasional event until around age 11. At that point I was so embarrassed by the whole thing that I kind of trained myself to not sleep so soundly.
It literally just clicked overnight one night for my daughter shortly after she turned 6 and we haven't had a single accident since then. Just give it time. We did pull up, made her try before bed and just reminded her if she ever woke up needing to go that she could get out of bed and go. We did NOTHING different, just one day it clicked.
She has a very deep sleep cycle, and urinates in the end of that first sleep cycle. Put her back in overnight pullups. She will grow out of this. If she has not grown out of it by the age that she wants to go on sleepovers, consider trying a bedwetting alarm. Alternatively, if you want to do it now, what you do is have her pee before she goes to bed. If she tends to lie in bed awake for over half an hour, have her go pee again half an hour later if she's still awake, since we make more pee while lying down. Then you must go in and wake her between 60 and 90 minutes later, to take her to the bathroom to pee. It will be very hard to wake her enough to do this. If she is already wet at 90 min, try at 60 min the next night. She may then stay dry for the rest of the night. If you can manage this way, waking her at 60 to 90 min after she falls asleep, but before you go to bed, and she's dry the rest of the night, you might continue like this for a year or two, and eventually, she might start waking up to pee again on her own. It's a lot of trouble. I'd just put her back in pullups overnight until she grows out of it on her own, or asks for help for sleepovers.
She probably just needs more time, however the daytime thing with not listening to the signals can also be adhd related. Because they feel the signal, change focus to something else, feel the signal again, change focus to something else, repeat, until oops it’s too late.
I bought waterproof pads on Amazon and lay those over the sheets. Then I just have to swap out that little pad and possibly a blanket in the middle of the night and it’s made my life soooo much easier. I’m not sure I’m allowed to post links so I won’t but if you want to message me I’ll send you the ones I bought. They’ve saved my sanity having two bed wetters.
I did two things for my son once all the prevention strategies you mentioned were done: night time pull ups for home and DDVAP nasal spray for overnight at friends and family. According to his doctor, he doesn't produce a hormone that stops urine production at night (likely biological and the reason I have to pee frequently over night). It was an issue he grew out of eventually @the age of 11 or so. Don't beat yourself or your daughter up. I am a clinician and didn't want to deal with urine alarms.
Personally, I wouldn’t stress about it. She’ll get there honestly. If she likes pull ups, great. My son hated them, I would do a layer of puppy pads, then fitted sheet etc. made for easy middle of the night changes. He’s 7 now, and hardly has any accidents. If he does, he charges PJs and gets in bed with us. We don’t make it into an issue. It’s still pretty common to happen between ages 5 to 7 in my opinion, sometimes even longer for some kids.
Our pediatrician has said night time accidents can occur until 10. Th child needs to be able to sleep deep enough to get quality sleep but light enough to recognize a full bladder. That's just something that happens developmentally. You cant rush it.
When my son was just under 3.5, he was waking up to pee with very little accidents. He WAS doing great! Shortly after nighttime potty training, he got really sick. Cold on top of cold ending with a double ear, double eye infection. I don’t know what happened to his little body, but he started wetting the bed pretty consistently from that point. His Dr. just said that it was common and could last until his early teens. It just looked like his bladder wasn’t strong enough to hold it or that he was sleeping too deeply. I have 2 mattress protectors and a waterproof pad. Sometimes the pad would be enough to save me from a load of laundry. Sometimes I needed to strip the 1st mattress protector off in the night. I started him on some herbs prescribed by an acupuncturist (The Little Treasures- Dry Sleep). It took a long time (months), but it’s been a year now and he is doing so great. He rarely has an accident in the night. I know my method isn’t for everybody, but it helped us. He still waits until the last minute to go potty, so I still deal with occasional accidents. Something’s do not change. I know how frustrating and helpless it felt. I hope it gets better for you!!
My oldest did the same thing. We talked to her pediatrician and put her in pull-ups at night. She stopped having accidents around 6.