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Bedwetting and Special Needs Kids
By Mary Dixon Weidler
Many children seem to lose self-confidence as they grow older. The gleeful sense of self-pride that accompanies each childhood accomplishment seems to fade with age into a myriad of doubts: Will I be liked? Will I do well? Will I fit in?
Special needs children have the same questions and, the same doubts as other children do. They want acceptance. They want their peers to like them. They want to be like other kids. Yet they already have to deal with a difficulty, disease or disability that makes them different.
Then add to that the problem of nighttime enuresis – better known as bedwetting. It is estimated that up to 7 million children in the United States wet the bed on a regular basis. "Nocturnal bedwetting occurs in a fairly substantial number of children without a disability: at least 15 percent of 5- to 6-year-olds and even about 1 percent of adolescents. It is not unique to special needs kids," says Dr. Harvey Bennett, medical director of the Stanley L. Lamm Institute for Child Neurology and Developmental Medicine of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"It follows, then, that (the same) number of special needs children will be affected as well," Dr. Bennett says. "In fact, the number is probably higher since bladder control is part of the nervous system maturation process, something not always complete in special needs kids."
Enuresis often runs in families. If one of a child's parents was a bedwetter, he or she has a 40 percent chance of being one, too. Increase that to 70 percent for children with two parents who are former bedwetters.
Dr. Bennett, who is also associate clinical professor of neurology and pediatrics at State University of New York (SUNY), says parents are the key to helping the special needs child with a bedwetting problem. "The most significant concern of children is their parents," he says. "They fear the parents may be angry, or, at the very least, disappointed. Most children are aware that their 'accidents' cause smells that are considered unacceptable, as well as unwanted increased laundry activity."
