It can be incredibly frustrating and at times overwhelming when your child continues to wet the bed night. Firstly, let me reassure you that you are not alone – it’s highly likely that there’s at least one other mother of a child in your son’s class experiencing similar things to yourself. The first thing to do is schedule an appointment with your GP or a continence advisor to discuss treatment options. While the conditioning alarm is not suitable for every child you may find it helpful to know that most parents find their children are unable to wake on their own initially. You will need to get up and wake him as he needs to learn to turn the alarm off by himself – this may happen for a few weeks until he learns to wake on his own. The time it takes for children to achieve dryness can be anything from a few weeks to a few months with about 10-15% of children experiencing some relapse – when this happens you need to reintroduce the alarm. Some families have also combined the alarm with experimental approaches such as hypnotherapy and have found it to be more successful than when using the alarm on its own. Waking him at night to take him to the toilet may help in reducing the number of wet beds, however this should only be done if it does not result in disrupted sleep patterns for you or him – in most cases this approach does not teach children to wake-up on their own and go to the toilet. I generally advise against restricting drinks completely although you can reduce the amount he drinks after dinner as well as making sure he doesn’t consume sweetened or caffeinated drinks throughout the day. You can help build his self-confidence by pointing out all those things in his life that he is good at, while reassuring him this is not something that he has a lot of control over. There is a section on the DryNites website devoted to children – he may find it helpful to read though this. You could try using DryNites instead of nappies – point out to him that these are designed for boys up to age 15, it is important that he doesn’t feel that bedwetting is something only babies or toddlers do as this will only add to his sense of embarrassment.

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