Do you want to know how to get your kid to stop wetting the bed? I'm Nicholeen Peck and
I teach all over the world about parenting good communication, child development all through the
lens of the principal self government. And in this video we're talking about stopping the bedwetting.
I remember all too well, my first child training them to do the potty training and the bedwetting
and the frustration and then I remember being told some sage advice. In this video,
I'm going to be talking to you about some of that sage advice, some of it might surprise
you. And then we'll be talking about some things that you can teach your child so that they can
learn not to wet the bed anymore. You know, it's really difficult to do potty training
and to handle bodily functions. It's one thing if a child screens at you, you can say that's
not a calm voice, let's redo it the right way. But when the child wets the bed, how do you say
let's redo that the right way? You know, it's a bodily function that happens. Now I know a lot of
bedwetting happens when a child is potty training. Okay, and that's a normal thing to occur during
that time but I also know that there are many people who bed went way longer than that. And I
know my husband would not be sad if I told people this. But he was wetting his bed for a long time,
I think until he was probably in almost junior high, maybe even he would wet the bed. He had to
take little pills. He said they didn't do him any good. He said, I don't know if he always got them
down because they've tasted really bad. He always laughs and says how his mom tried to disguise them
and everything possible, these little blue pills. But in the end, it didn't stop the bedwetting for
him, there was a thing that happened that he just finally grew out of it. So here's one thing that
maybe a lot of people don't want to hear and that is that ultimately, unless there is
something wrong with the bladder, or the sphincter that is in charge of handling the flow of urine,
then the child will learn it. They'll get it at some point or another and one of the wisest
things that you can do is not take it personally, not get upset and make sure that you stay calm. So
just like when you're potty training, when a child has an accident, you don't get emotional about it.
You handle it very matter of factly. Oh, it looks like we had an accident, or it looks like we wet
the bed. I guess we better clean that up. Right? And then you with the child help them learn how to
clean that up and you don't take it personally, you don't act like it's any big deal. Okay, that
is what you do when you're potty training a child. So why wouldn't we do that even later? I know it
can be more frustrating when the child is nine and wetting the bed or 11 and wetting the bed or
13 and wetting the bed. My son had a friend who had to wear a pull up until he was in his teens.
But you know, to his parents credit, they just said you know what? Some people have problems
at night and if you're going to be one of those people that has problems at night,
it's going to be frustrating for you. But we're going to not let it be frustrating for us and
here's how to handle it when you have an accident. Yeah, here you go, and they just helped him handle
it. They didn't make it a big deal. And I think that's what we always need to do. We need to give
them encouragement like yeah, you can do this, you'll get it don't worry, your body will learn
how to do this, don't worry, and then just let them handle the circumstances. Shaming a child,
getting angry at a child because of it is not the right approach to take. So we're going to
talk about some skill development that you can use to help with bedwetting, but before we do,
do you see that Subscribe button? That subscribe button isn't meant to be pushed, and when you push
it, you will see more videos just like this. So if you want to have more great content in your feed,
click subscribe now. So I teach self government and in my teaching self government parenting
system, I talk about different skills that a person should learn in order to self govern.
There are four basic skills that I suggest teaching children that take care of 99%
of their behavioral problems. Those four basic skills are following instructions, accepting "no"
answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately. The skill that applies
to bedwetting is following instructions. So when your body needs to go to the bathroom,
then your body is giving you an instruction, you need to go. So before bed, you need to
give yourself an instruction I need to go to the toilet, right? That is an instruction you
would give yourself and you need to follow it. But also your body in the middle of the night
might give you an instruction that you need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Well you
have to train your body and your brain to wake up up, so that it follows the instruction. Sometimes
just doing a little bit of pre teaching to the brain can help where you can say, Okay, brain
when the body is instructing itself, to use the toilet, you need to recognize that and wake up.
You need to wake up and go into that bathroom, and use the toilet. So you pre teach your brain,
this is what it's going to feel like, this is what you are going to do, brain, and you work yourself
into that place. So it helps them be proactive about it, right? Help them think ahead of time
each night, okay, if it happens tonight, that I need to go to the bathroom, then brain, you
need to wake up when that time occurs, so that you can get there, you pre teach yourself for success.
This is incredibly powerful, and motivating for a person to know that they can train themselves
to do something. Here's another thing we want to definitely remember and that is that when you are
having a trouble with bedwetting, obviously don't be drinking before bed, or during the night. So
what you'll probably want to do is set a cutoff time where you say, okay, we don't drink after
8pm, or we don't drink after 6:30pm, or whatever it is, we don't drink, right, and you may want to
also wake your child up in the morning instead of waiting for the child to wake up in the morning.
Because if you wake up the child in the morning and take them to the toilet, then the child's body
will get in the habit of thinking, oh, I've got to wake up and go to the toilet. Instead of waiting.
Sometimes a child will sleep until their body wets the bed. wetting the bed usually happens more in
the morning than in the middle of the night. So if we remember that, we remember okay, well, certain
people's bladder has certain capacity. So let's not drink after a certain time and truthfully,
that's not the best for cleansing the body. But just to conquer this one bit is worth doing for
a bit, okay. So don't drink after a certain point in the night. And then what you do is you wake
the child up in the morning, maybe even early, you say I'm gonna wake them up and go to the bathroom,
have them go to the bathroom, and then might even put them back down to sleep afterward, you could
do that. I know some parents that have woken their child up before they go to bed. So they
put the child to bed, then they wake the child up one more time before they go to bed and have them
use the toilet, put them back in the bed, and then wake them up in the morning too. Sure, that takes
a lot more work on the part of the parent, but what you're doing is you're training the bladder
to wait and that's what you have to do. There are many people who just because they sleep so deeply,
or whatever it is, they don't tell the bladder to wait. And sometimes they need training from you,
as well as that mental programming that they can do for themselves. Now sometimes it's motivating
to have positive consequences when a person actually chooses to get up when it's time. So
let's say you're gonna wake your child up in the morning early so that they have the opportunity to
use the toilet. Well, then what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to say okay,
I'm going to wake you up every morning at 6am to use the toilet. And if you wake up at 6am,
then later, you know after breakfast, you can have one of these fruit snacks or one of these treats
or something like that. And so you'll be able to have a treat every day, if you wake up and you
go potty at 6am, even if you go back to bed, it's fine. But at 6am we potty, okay, and so just that
just the waking up at 6am to potty even if they already went to bed before, doesn't matter. Wake
them up to potty at 6am. If they do that they earn a positive. And did you know you wake a person up
enough times as 6am or 7am. Whatever time you think you want to do to use the toilet, their
body will get programmed to use the toilet at 7am. And I know that because I wake up at 6am Every day
I don't even need an alarm about it just wakes up because it has to go the bathroom and I can
go back to bed after that no problem. But that is my body's cue time to wake up because there were
for many years times where I would wake up and I partied at 6am every single day in other other
years would have had different jobs and stuff. And so guess what? My body just does that. That's just
how it is. We train ourselves to do things. So positive consequences for some of that positive
behavior that is almost surely going to happen is really great because then that makes the whole
experience more positive. I think a lot of people really get negative because they get worn out on
the bedwetting behavior, but you've got to make sure that you are accepting your own "no" answers
too. Every time a child wants a bed that is a "no" answer for you. So that means you need to look at
the situation, keep a calm face, voice and body, say okay and that happened and then drop the subject.
Stop thinking about it every day is a new day and tomorrow can be the day where it doesn't happen
again. Now there's one thing that I can guarantee you, and that is that every person figures this
out. So no matter what your child will get the bedwetting thing out of the way. It won't happen
after a while, it will solve the problem for good. But if you keep increasing the stress,
if you are not calm, it will make it last longer. So are your calmness is key and because of that,
I want to give you a gift for your calmness. I have a calm parenting toolkit on my website,
and today you can have that calm parenting toolkit for free. So in the description below this video,
there is a link that says teachself gov.com/toolkit. If you go to that link,
you can have my calm parenting toolkit for free. It has 10 tools for calmness, I think it
will really help you to decrease the stress which will actually make it so that child will probably
succeed better and not wet the bed as often. Your stress about it actually does make a difference
in then concrete that behavior. So click on the link to that toolkit now and I'll see you there.