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Home › Articles › Bedwetting › Daytime Wetting

Daytime Wetting

Helping Your Child Stay Dry

By Lisa Fernandez

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Talk to Laurie* of New Hampshire about her 9-year-old daughter, Veronica, who still wets her pants both day and night, and you'll hear the years of built-up tension oozing out of every fiber of her body.

"This has been such a huge battle," she says. "It has frustrated me to no end.'' Veronica, ready to enter the third grade this fall, has been wetting herself for five years.

The family's first doctor medicated Veronica, saying the child's bladder was "too tight,'' had lost all sensation and was pushing out any urine. But a year and a half of driving two hours each way to the doctor's office every three months, plus the fact that the drugs didn't seem to be working, propelled Laurie to find a second opinion. The new doctor told Laurie her daughter's daytime wetting problem had now become a physiological difficulty. This doctor didn't prescribe any drugs but strongly encouraged that Veronica empty her bladder every two hours, getting into the practice of going to the bathroom.

Laurie has used many methods designed to make potty training fun. "I've tried stickers and rewards and everything,'' she says. "Now, I say, 'You have no choice. Just get in there and go.'''

Veronica has two things in her favor that may help her change her habits: First, Laurie says, Veronica is finally getting old enough so that she's embarrassed when she walks around school with wet pants. And second, Laurie's 2-year-old is also learning to be potty trained, so Veronica and her younger sibling are working on the same issue together.

"Holding It"
According to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., a survey of 2,000 children in 1990 showed that wetting pants in class was the third biggest fear among school-aged children, just behind losing a parent or going blind.

Daytime wetting commonly appears in children ages 3 to 5 who have been successfully toilet trained, but who now see going to the bathroom as a lower priority than playing games or doing other fun activities. While absorbed in a riveting game of Nintendo or stickball, sometimes children opt for what urologists call micturition deferral or "holding it." Putting off a trip to the bathroom is probably the most common cause of daytime wetting among preschoolers, according to the Mayo Clinic. Other possible causes include excessive laughter or excitement; stressful events like the birth of a baby brother or sister; constipation, which may cause a child to avoid going to the bathroom; and external genital irritation from soap or bubble baths.

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