Bedwetting in young children, also called nocturnal enuresis in the medical world, is simply an involuntary voiding that occurs during sleep. Research shows that children who uncontrollably pee while sleeping usually do it at least twice a week. Besides being embarrassing to the kids, bedwetting is a constant nightmare that most parents have to contend with day after day.
According to several health surveys conducted by various medical experts worldwide, it has been shown that nighttime urination is more widespread among boys than girls. Again, the same research has proved beyond possible that teenage urinary incontinence runs in families.
As such, you should not be unnecessarily worried if your teenage child still wets the bed at night. This article highlights the main causes of bedwetting and some failsafe tips to help you counter sleep time urinary incontinence in teens. Continue reading to learn how to manage teenage bedwetting.
Top 5 Tips for Managing Teenage Bedwetting
1. Determine the Type of Nighttime Urinary Incontinence
To begin with, it is virtually impossible to counter nightly urination without first doing some investigation to ascertain the kind of bedwetting affecting your child. According to painstaking medical research findings, there generally are two types of teenage night-time incontinence – secondary and primary nocturnal enuresis. While primary bedwetting is continuous and most likely a result of a urologic disorder, the latter is marked by interspersed periods of dryness and wetness.
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2. Attention Deficit
While preliminary studies precluded any involvement in urinary incontinence in teens, more recent health reports indicate that psychological factors indeed have a subtle role in this universal phenomenon. Particularly, it has been discovered that children who don’t get enough parenting attention are many times more likely to face nocturnal bedwetting. Therefore, you should consider improving child-parent concern and responsibility to see whether this will somehow hold back the problem.
3. Sleep Apnea
Every competent physician will attest to the proven fact that there’s a close connection between sleep apnea and bedwetting in teenagers. When this medical complication hinders free breathing in the night, the resultant internal pressure may easily lead to involuntary urinary voiding. In fact, this condition can also cause nocturnal incontinence even in adults.
4. Diabetes
Although quite rare among young people, diabetes is among the many medical causes of both primary and secondary enuresis. If you think that your child’s bedwetting is probably linked to diabetes, you can check for any evidence of infection in the urinary tract.
5. Hormonal Triggers
Besides the commonly known reasons for wetting the bed among teens, sometimes the causes may be hormonal. Medics have discovered that Antidiuretic hormone (ADH) is the one that reduces the possibility of a filled bladder when one is asleep. As such, some children bodies can’t produce enough quantities of this hormone, leading to uncontrollable peeing while sleeping.
Top 10 Guidelines for Managing a Bedwetting Teenage Child
1. Bladder Training
Some form of therapeutic bladder training during the day is among one of the most reliable ways to reduce and later completely prevent it. This involves engaging in healthy processes that expand the bladder during the day so as to make it more tolerant during the night. This may be something perfectly such as giving your child a few extra glasses of fluids such as juice or water in the course of the day.
2. Avoiding Bladder-Irritating Foods
Your teen’s bedwetting may be entirely a simple mistake on your part. Giving your child foods such sodas and other foods that contain caffeine may be the sole trigger of the whole unsettling mess. Instead, you should avoid all caffeine-related diets and unnecessary fluids a few hours to bedtime.
3. Bedwetting Alarms
Bedwetting alarms are great for frequent victims of enuresis. This kind of buzzer goes off when the very first drop touches the beddings. Let the child know how to turn off the alarm immediately they wake up to visit the toilet.
4. Boost Parental Attention
If you think that your teenage child’s enuresis may be as a result of attention deficit, you should consider showing them more love and affection. While this may sound obvious, many parents have successfully nailed this seemingly challenging issue by merely improving the child-parent relationship.
5. Positive Counseling
Research has proven that simply talking to your kids about the embarrassment that comes from bedwetting and encouraging them to stop it can gradually help them overcome it. In fact, there are some teens who may not have known that bedwetting is an outright indecent thing. Despite the fact the child may at first feel disappointed by a few unavoidable blunders occasionally, this conscious attempt at stopping nocturnal urination will no doubt lessen the problem, and even entirely curb it after some time.
6. Cinnamon
Away from medical interventions, bedwetting can be addressed using a few home-based remedies. For instance, cinnamon powder is a widely renowned in-home cure for both primary and secondary enuresis. Giving your bedwetting teen some cinnamon at least once every day can effectively counteract this worrying habit.
7. Bladder Infection Treatment
Similarly, it is essential to have your child checked for bladder infection if they are habitual culprits of bedwetting. Remember that having them examined by a qualified physician once you note the problem is among the fundamental steps to take. Nonetheless, this solution is uniquely applicable to teens whose enuresis is a result of an infected urinary tract.
8. Olive Oil
Another home-based method of stopping enuresis is rubbing some olive oil on the child’s lower abdominal area. Do this by heating some olive oil and using it to gently massage their lower abdomen an hour or two before going to bed. However, this procedure may not work for cases triggered by complex medical or anatomical causes.
9. Diabetes/Constipation Treatment
If you discover that your teenage child wets the bed due to diabetes or constipation, note that the surest way to effectively handle this unhealthy trend is by addressing the underlying reasons for its persistence. Therefore, the very first intervention in such circumstances is to have the causative medical issues properly tackled by competent health specialists. However, other methods may be used to accelerate the arduous process of stopping this elusive phenomenon.
10. Always Consult Medical Experts before Taking Any Step
Some parents make the grievous mistake of relying on mere hearsay when faced with the disconcerting nightmare of a bedwetting teenage child. As such, you should never pick ideas on the streets and self-deceivingly think that they will prove helpful. Instead, you ought to enlist expert diagnosis and investigation as it will help nail the real cause of your child’s nighttime urination.
