What Causes It?
No child wants to wet the bed - they're not doing it because they're lazy or naughty. It doesn't mean that they have emotional, learning or behavioural problems. So why does it happen? It's most likely to be one of these common causes:
Runs in the family
You might be surprised to know that bedwetting often runs in the family. If one parent wet the bed as a child, there is around a 40% chance that their child will too. If both parents wet the bed, the odds can rise to around 70%.
Messages between the bladder and the brain
Sometimes, the brain doesn't respond to the signal that a child's bladder is full. Their brain should wake them up to go to the toilet and empty their bladder but the connection has not yet been made. But don't worry, it will in time.
Little bladders
Some children only have a small bladder capacity in the daytime, so at night, their bladder will empty when it reaches the same level of fullness. You can help your child increase their bladder's daytime capacity by slightly lengthening the time in between their trips to the toilet, enabling them to better hold all the urine produced overnight.
Not enough hormones
When we go to sleep our pituitary gland secretes an antidiuretic hormone (ADH) that slows down the production of urine by the kidneys so we don't have to wake up to urinate. Some children are simply at a stage where they produce too little of this hormone and so wet the bed.
A heavy sleeper
Bedwetting children are often ‘deep sleepers', which can mean they're so heavily asleep that the urge to urinate fails to wake them up. Or as one doctor explains to children: "Part of your brain should stay awake while you're sleeping to tell you to go to the loo during the night. At the moment, that's not happening with you". Doctors sometimes recommend sleep conditioning (for example an alarm which goes off when it detects moisture) as a way of overcoming this.
'It's nobody's fault...'
Any one of these reasons could explain why your child wets the bed. It's nobody's fault. These things are out of your child's control for now but with support, encouragement, patience and if necessary, enuresis treatment , dry nights will not be far away.
