I'm glad you're here today. I'm going to help you know how to help a child stop
wetting the bed. Be great to get on top of that one, wouldn't it? Bedwetting is
actually something that we can handle fairly simply. Now, simple and easy aren't
the same thing. But it is a simple concept. To understand
why the intervention works, let's review the two primary causes of bedwetting. I'm
talking about a child or a teenager who has never had a significant period of
dryness and they continue to wet the bed on a fairly regular basis. This is what
we call primary nocturnal enuresis. You don't have to worry about that title. But
there are different types of bedwetting that are handled in different ways. This
is the most common type. For primary nocturnal enuresis or common bedwetting,
there are 2 causes and you have to have both to have the problem. One of
those causes is a deficiency of a particular hormone. It's called an
antidiuretic hormone or ADH for short. When there's a deficiency of this
hormone, your body doesn't regulate the chemistry in such a way as to dry you up
for the night. Most people who have enough of the
hormone don't have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Because the hormone just takes care of it. The purpose of the hormone is drying
you up at night. Pretty good thing to have, right? But if
you've got a deficiency of that then that could create a potential problem if
you have the other cause as well. And this other cause is deep sleeping. This
makes total sense, doesn't it? In fact, most of the parents that I've talked to
who have kids who at the bed, they say, "Man, this kid is impossible to wake up." My
doctoral dissertation proved that kids who wet the bed are harder to wake up
than kids who don't. Parents have known this for years. But it was
actually established in the literature until I did my study to prove that. That
was my doctoral dissertation. Which is why I'm talking to you about bedwetting
today. When both of those causes are in place, we have a bed-wetter. If you have
enough hormone but you're a deep sleeper, then you don't have to get up and go
anyway. Problem solved. If you don't have enough of the hormone, but you're not a
deep sleeper then you're going to wake up and go take care of business.
So, both causes are are necessary. Now, a lot of interventions out there
especially them on the medical side. We'll use a synthetic hormone to dry the
kid up for the night. That's awesome if you've got a short-term fix that you
need to get. Like a sleepover a camp-out. Something like that. Then that works
pretty well. But it doesn't solve the problem. So, what we're going to talk
about today is an actual fix from a behavioral standpoint. And it ties back
to classical conditioning. Do you remember back in psychology class where
you heard about Pavlov's dogs. Now, Pavlov, Ivan Pavlov was a psychologist who was
studying behavior. And he found that he could pair a stimulus with a response
for these dogs. He got them to salivate when he would ring a bell. Ding! Dog
salivates. Why would a dog salivate if you ring a bell?
Well because he paired the Bell with a little puff of meat powder into the
dog's mouth. And at first, the Bell didn't mean anything. But would through repeated
pairing of those 2 stimuli, he got the dogs to salivate when every rang the
bell. And the meat powder wasn't even there now. You can train the brain to
respond differently. Now, there's a part of the brain that wakes you up. That's
the part we want to Train. I put together an entire training program for how to
walk through this. Let's put it into context. Here's what we need to do. If you
want to stop the bedwetting, step number 1, enroll the child. now I
assume if you're the parent watching this that you're watching because you
have a child who wets the bed. If you are that child or that teenager then you're
already enrolled. Check off step 1. Awesome. Thank you for coming. If you're
the parent, we need to enroll the child. This is extremely important. So, I want
you to stay very positive. No threats, no ultimatums just hope and positivity. You
might share this video with the child so that they can get a sense that, "Oh,
there's something that I can do about this." Get the child enrolled. Stay
positive. Keep that positive energy going. Now, step number 1 is so important
because stem number 2 is where we encourage the child to take full
responsibility. That can be a little scary, okay? Full responsibility? Yes. This
is that kids problem. Now, you're on the team if you're a parent. You're on their
team. If you're the child or the teenager then you've got a team that includes
your parents or others who are close to you or love you. The child gets to take
full responsibility for this process. That doesn't mean that they're the ones
who are going to organize and oversee it that's why we have you as a parent. But
they get to take full responsibility for what? For being clean and dry. 3 words.
Clean and Dry. That's what they are responsible for. If they are not clean
and dry, then they are the ones who are fully responsible for getting back to
clean and dry. That will be incorporated into the training program. It's their
responsibility. So, what does that mean? If there's a wetting accident and there
will be. That's okay. We're going to use that as part of the training process.
When there's a wetting accident, they are responsible for changing the sheets, for
changing their own clothes, for getting their body clean, for doing the laundry.
Do you follow? Everything associated with that accident is now the responsibility
of the child. You can see that for younger children... And by the way, let's
just throw this in right here. I wouldn't even try this program with a child who's
under the age of 7 or 8. And really developmentally, it's not that
much of a concern until they hit about that age. Now, I know if you've got a 4
or 5 year old who's wetting, you're gonna be concerned about that. But from a
clinical standpoint, we don't even really get concerned about the diagnosis until
the child is older. Now, if you've got an older child or a teen, we're in that
window. And they can be taught how to do the laundry,
alright? Moms not going do it for them. This is the child's responsibility. So,
that's what I mean by the child takes full responsibility. Now, we've got the
child in enrolled, we're staying positive, we've given full
responsibility to the child. Now, we're ready to engage in the training program.
I won't go through the entire program here on this video. I'll give you a few
little insights to it. If you want all of the details, go to finally dry... Finally
dry.info for information. Finallydry.info and you're going to find the
entire program. I've mapped it out for you there. It's a downloadable PDF so you
can get connected to the whole program there. That's the next step. Do the
training program. This is a fairly intensive program that is designed to
train the brain to respond differently. To the signal, the bell. Remember the dogs?
The bell that rings when they need to go to the bathroom. But right now, they're
not waking up to that. Their mind is just sleeping right through it. We want to
train that mind to respond differently. And that's what the training
program is for. Its classical conditioning. It's repetitive learning. So,
you'll go through a few exercises in the training program. There will be practice
protocols that you do before bedtime. Where you go through what's going to happen
if we have an accident. When if we have an accident.
Remember? What's going to happen then? Well, I go through this routine. You practice it
before he goes to bed. You will practice changing sheets for example. You will
practice getting out of the bed and going to the bathroom.
You might even practice the motions of of taking a shower. It's all in the
training program but you're going to go through that. That's the practice element.
There's unconscious habit training where we take the child through a process of
tuning into the signals in their own body. There's a practice protocol for
that. There's nighttime cleanliness training where we go through the
routines of what needs to happen. So, it's a very intensive program that works
really well to train the brain. Make sure you're all ready for that. You don't want
to do this on a night for example where everybody's got to get up early the next
day. Pick a weekend or some time where it's going to be okay if you lose a little
bit of sleep because you will for the first 2 or 3 nights. It's going to
get a little more manageable after that and as the training kicks in, then we get
to a point where we're actually seeing the effect of the training. But make sure
that you're ready for it and everybody stays positive. That positive energy is
going to be really important. Because this is an intensive difficult process, build
in some little rewards along the way. And I would reward adherence to the program
more than success in overcoming the wetting. That's going to come with time.
As the training kicks in. What's going to help is if you reward the little
successes along the way. "Oh, you've followed the program perfectly. Awesome!
Way to go." Have little rewards and treats and incentives set up. Because it is kind
of hard to engage in that kind of a training program. The principles are
simple. so do what you can to persist until you succeed. with the tools that
I've shared with you, I think you're ready for this. the intensive program
that I referenced can be found at finallydry.info.
it's a downloadable ebook that will outline all of the practice procedures
that I told you about. there's also a playlist here at Live On Purpose TV for
bedwetting. Go check that out there's some additional information there as
well. Good luck with this.