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ADHD and Bedwetting
Advice and Treatment Options for Parents
By Debora Geary
Alternatively, Dr. Robson says that there might be something else – such as a genetic predisposition or an environmental link – that causes both.
Perhaps because of the lack of understanding of exactly how ADHD and bedwetting might be related, clinicians often recommend treating the two separately.
Dr. Jerry Rushton, a pediatrician and researcher at the University of Michigan, offers this advice for parents: "The best approach is to realize the association and relation of these conditions and to understand that ADHD can cause sleep problems and children to be less attentive to their needs to void, to remember not to drink too much at bedtime and to resist some parent requests at times. However, treating them separately with the most effective approaches for the individual conditions would be my recommendation instead of trying to handle both with a single treatment."
While traditional medicine tends to treat ADHD and bedwetting symptoms separately, there are non-traditional treatments available. These alternative therapies tend to be based on a belief that ADHD and bedwetting are often both symptoms of another underlying cause.
Some people believe that food allergies or chemicals in food can cause both ADHD-like symptoms and bedwetting. By shifting a child to a diet that eliminates the foods to which he or she is sensitive, supporters of this approach claim that ADHD symptoms and bedwetting are often much improved or eliminated. For parents interested in exploring this type of treatment, a good place to start is the Feingold Association, which advocates a dietary approach developed by the chief of allergy medicine at Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco, Calif. in the 1960s.
Want to see more?
- Attention Deficit Disorder: How It Affects the Family
- Understanding Attention Deficit Disorder
- What's Wrong With My Child? An Overview of Attention Deficit Disorder
- Bedwetting and Special Needs Kids
- Bedwetting and Developmental Delays: How the Urinary System Works in Kids
- Under Special Circumstances: Sleep Disorders and Bedwetting in Special Needs Children
- Talk about it!