Waking child up at night to pee, does it actually help them night train?

[BananaMama]

My 6yo really wants to be dry overnight. I've recently started waking him up to pee before I go to bed (he goes to bed at 7:30, I get him up to pee around 9:45). This has resulted a dry pull up in the morning. I'm wondering if this strategy will actually help his body night train, or if I'm interrupting his sleep for no real benefit. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience?

While I'd also prefer he be dry overnight, I'm not pressing the issue and I'm ok with using the pull ups as long as necessary, I just want to help him reach his goal of being dry overnight.


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[dogmom]

The short answer is no. I don’t have a lot of time to write now, but I encourage you to talk to your pediatrician about it and do some research online about nocturesis (medical name for it). I’ll try to post later. The bed wetting store has some good info also.

[twowhat?]

In my experience, it does jack squat. DD2 wasn't night trained until she was nearly 9 years old - she just wasn't ready. She wore pull-ups until then.

[Mommy_Mea]

It did for DS1, and not at all for DS2.

[Melaine]

Following! In the same spot with 6 year old DS. He doesn't seem to care, and I honestly have had more on my mind so haven't tried to figure it out beyond some googling which got me no where. I'm of the opinion that it doesn't really help and I despise the thought of waking him to pee.

[TwinFoxes]

One of our DDs night trained immediately, the same time as she potty trained. Our poor other DD did not. We got her up before we went to bed every night because it made her upset to wake up wet the next morning. But, she didn't even wake up when we took her to the potty. She would go in and do it and not even really wake up, she'd immediately go back to sleep. I don't think we would have taken her if she really woke up. I don't know if it helps with night training, but if he wants to be dry, I don't really see a downside to taking him to the potty at night.

[sariana]

It didn’t work for DD, but the alarm did. She HATED that thing and couldn’t wait to get rid of it (by not needing it anymore).

[gcc2k]

About a year ago, when DS1 was 6.75, he wanted to be able to wear underwear to bed so we would wake him up before we went to bed, approximately 2 hours after he had gone to sleep. About 60% of the time it would work to keep him dry. However 30% of the time he was already soaked by the time we woke him, and the other 10% of the time he wet himself later in the night. Sometime we just had to go back to pullups.

At the beginning of this summer we started using the alarm. He is on his 13th week with it and is nearly "cured". I really thought it would be a quicker fix than it has been, so if you choose that route have patience. He is to the point now that if it goes off it's because he has a dime size drop of pee in his underwear. To me that isn't bedwetting, but we technically haven't reached the 2 week stage without the alarm going off so he still wears it. He is also able to completely take care of it himself in the middle of the night, unlike the first several weeks where we had to get up with him.

Bedwetting is really hard! But your DC will get there, especially with an alarm and/or time.

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[MSWR0319]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about waking him up. DS1 was a night wetter until about 7.5 I think. Our pediatrician was not worried AT ALL. It's a body maturity not something they are doing on purpose. And, it can be slower with boys. He said they don't even start worrying about it until 8 and even then they can talk about things like the alarm, but then start to check other causes first. That being said, we found out that DS1 was constipated (despite going daily) and had sleep apnea. Both of which can contribute to night time wetting. Once we got the constipation under control, the night wetting stopped almost immediately. DS hated that he needed to wear pull ups but he just couldn't stop. The pediatrician's favorite tool is this:https://www.goodmix.com.au/product/bristol-stool-chart/. He said if stools aren't mostly #4 and sometime #3, then you have an issue which could be affecting nighttime wetting.

[twowhat?]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about waking him up. DS1 was a night wetter until about 7.5 I think. Our pediatrician was not worried AT ALL. It's a body maturity not something they are doing on purpose. And, it can be slower with boys. He said they don't even start worrying about it until 8 and even then they can talk about things like the alarm, but then start to check other causes first. That being said, we found out that DS1 was constipated (despite going daily) and had sleep apnea. Both of which can contribute to night time wetting. Once we got the constipation under control, the night wetting stopped almost immediately. DS hated that he needed to wear pull ups but he just couldn't stop. The pediatrician's favorite tool is this:https://www.goodmix.com.au/product/bristol-stool-chart/. He said if stools aren't mostly #4 and sometime #3, then you have an issue which could be affecting nighttime wetting.

This is pretty much exactly what our pediatrician said. Even at our 8 year checkup, he still wasn't worried...he said that by 9 years old there would be "things we could try" but he emphasized just not making a big deal about it. When DD2 was about 8.5 she pretty suddenly became able to wake in the middle of the night when she needed to pee - it was a transition of not more than 2 weeks so the whole body maturity thing completely makes sense. And side note, DD2 has been on Miralax for constipation since she was a baby.

DD2 was worried about it in terms of sleepovers...we found a pull-up option that was more discrete, I kept a plastic bag in her overnight bag, and she would simply go to the bathroom to put it on, and then take it off in the bathroom and put it in the plastic bag to take home. No one ever knew.

Anyway if your DS really wants to be dry and waking him up is working, I don't see a reason to change that!