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Beat the Bedwetting Blues

3 Steps to a Positive Atmosphere

By Christy R. Stevenson

Pages: 1 2 3 4

It's the middle of the night. You hear a tentative knock on your bedroom door, then the plaintive voice of your child saying, "I wet the bed." You want to respond reassuringly, but you are tired and the words aren't coming to you. How do you react in just the right way?

Whether your child wets the bed every night or only periodically, you are probably concerned about the best way to handle the situation. While there are a variety of solutions to the physical problem of bedwetting, some of which you may have already tried, no rule book exists that specifically answers how to handle the emotional turmoil of bedwetting, both for parent and child.

Until the issue is resolved, your response as a parent to your child's bedwetting is crucial. Your attitude, words and actions can foster a positive, loving atmosphere or a negative, demeaning one. You can shape your child into a confident, successful person or into a depressed, insecure person simply by the way you behave toward your child's bedwetting.

Here are some suggestions to make the task seem less daunting.

If you, as a parent, feel ashamed and embarrassed of your child's bedwetting, how much more ashamed and embarrassed do you think your child feels? Before you can help your child feel better about the problem, you need to help yourself. Find some support – be it friends, family members or other parents who face the same issues – and talk about your feelings and frustrations. By being open, you show yourself and your child that there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Try to be calm and keep your emotions at bay just after a bedwetting incident. Lisa Jacoby Sutherland, a school psychologist in Wheaton, Ill., says to "treat the situation with love and care." "No child wants to be wetting the bed," says Sutherland. "In fact, the humiliation is so very difficult for the child. The one major source of support – typically the parent – needs to be the child's advocate, not a greater source of pain."

Pages: 1 2 3 4

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