Home Care Tips

After your doctor has diagnosed your child with primary nocturnal enuresis, you may want to consider using some of the techniques described below before resorting to alarms and medicines.

These techniques are among the most successful we have found to help your child stop bedwetting and can be effectively combined with those described in  Treatment Options page.

Evening and Bedtime
Reduce the amount of fluid your child drinks in the evening, especially about 2 hours before bedtime.

Your child should use the bathroom to urinate right before bedtime.

It can be helpful to have your child practice getting up from bed to urinate in the toilet just before going to bed each night.

In the evening after your child is asleep, you may lift your child to toilet to encourage urination. This is typically done just before the parent goes to bed. This gives the child a chance to urinate, better empty the bladder, and stay drier through the night.

Make sure the child has easy access to the toilet. Clear the path from his or her bed to the toilet and install night lights to help them find the way.

Motivation and Support
A system of sticker charts and rewards works for some children. The child gets a sticker on the chart for every dry night, with a certain number of stickers earning a previously determined reward. You may want to use the free bedwetting calendar system available on this site.

The parents' attitude toward the bedwetting is all-important:

• Avoid blaming or punishing the child, because bedwetting is a medical problem he/she needs need your help to resolve.

• Be patient and supportive. Reassure and encourage the child often. Do not make an issue out of the bedwetting each time it happens.

• Enforce a "no teasing" rule in the family. No one is allowed to tease the child about the bedwetting. Your family needs to decide if it is OK to discuss the bedwetting in front of other family members.

• Reassure the child that you want to help him/her overcome the problem.

Disposable Products
Some believe that you should avoid using diapers or pull-ups at home because they can interfere with the motivation to wake up and use the toilet. Others argue that pull-ups help the child feel more independent and confident. Using pull-ups or not is a personal decision, because, you as a parent know you child best. Some parents comprise and choose to limit the use of these products on overnight trips, such as camping or sleepovers.

To reduce potential damage to the mattress, you may want to consider using absorbent mattress protectors or a waterproof bed cover such as a plastic sheet.

Should you ultimately decide to use a treatment with an enuresis alarm, many families find it convenient to attach the alarm to the underwear and then have the child wear a pull-up over the underwear.